LETTER ONE JERRY COOKE 161N EAST 82 ND ST NY October 24 1984.

The arena as you put it which Fortune provided in those years was a very fine one. 2 strong art directors, Will Burtin and Leo Lionni, were outstanding men. Quite different but first class. The sort of layouts we are talking about here are hard to come by these days. There was space for good pictures. I personally was quite happy with Fortune in those years and so were my colleagues. As for the style those were still the days of large format cameras and color films. Most of the pictures you sent me were done with 4 x 5 Demidorff and Linholz which meant they had to be set up, often posed. 35mm photography was still not too acceptable in color and though LIFE was using it a lot but not necessarily for industrial subjects.

I have done and still do a lot with Sports Illustrated, in fact I was their Director of Photography for 4 years. It is of course very different work from the Fortune portfolios. Action Sports photography does indeed need a sharp sense of timing which usually is not so necessary in industrial work. But above all one has to have one’s own point of view, one’s opinion, visual and editorial, for any kind of photography.

Of the work you sent me the Forging Story is my all time favourite It would be very interesting to see how how such a story would look today given the difference in camera equipment, film and lenses, and probably many changes in the Forging Industry. The Milwaukee portfolio took me two months. I visited each plant for a day to look, then another one to shoot. I even rented a summer cottage near Milwaukee for weekends.

LETTER TWO JERRY COOKE 161N EAST 82 ND ST NY October 24 1984. 1. I think the switch from large format to 35mm probably came in the late 50’s and early 60’s  partly because of faster and better films and partly because magazines finally realised that they could handle 35 mm in terms of engraving, reproduction etc  a lot of my lighting was done with large Flashbulbs all wired together often as many as a dozen or more Usually it was done it what we called the ‘OPEN FLASH’ technique that means camera on tripod, shutter opened, Flashbulbs set off , shutter closed. This contributed some of the available lighting into the exposure, and was (and is) particularly effective if you have things like hot flow steeL, welding sparks, etc which cannot be illuminated but must make their own impression onto the film  - It was time consuming and  cumbersome but often very effective. Each flashbulb had to be changed after each exposure. 2. My point of view was (and is) mostly visual when faced with anything, industrial or otherwise. I like to think I see things and people my way as indeed probably everyone does. The trick is to translate the way you see onto film and hope it comes out the way you wanted it..

I do indeed like the looks and atmosphere of workers, there is enormous honesty in manual labour and one can see it. The response was indeed  always guide to the work , workers love to be photographed, and since normally no-one takes any notice of them all day long. Yes it may be somewhat nostalgic a vision but I’m not sure. You have actually made me think about that and I may go to Fortune and see if there isn’t a portfolio that would explain the then and now.

3. re Milwaukee, I believe the subject, the factories were chosen by the editors. I had my list of I think 26 . The rest were up to me. I looked at each, decided what to shoot and did it. No retakes, no going back. Everyone loved the project. It was a Civic high. I don’t know who wrote the captions, someone at the magazine, of course. I spent a day in each factory just looking. I certainly understood what was going on before taking the pictures.

4. I am not familiar with Aikins and Rittase. Bill Vansittanrt was what I considered a journalistic photographer, I don’t think he had a very strong visual sense. Ritchie, from what I remember, always struck me as almost a PR type photographer/ everything was new and shiny sort of. Bourke-White did lovely black and whites. I don’t believe she did much industrial color because she started shooting for LIFE in 1936, then there was the war and she didn’t do too much after that. But she had a strong sense of the dramatic, the juxtaposition of man and machine, which is really the heart of industrial photography, at least as I see it.

5. re black and white, and color, that was and is determined by the makeup of the magazine. If the story is planned for the color pages, you shoot in color. If b and w you shoot in b and w. Nowadays it is predominately all color. Occasionally a portfolio might be just right in Black and White, for whatever reason or taste, e.g. subject matter, mood, whatever. But that’s relatively rare. As for the dominant color  attracting the eye, well yes it probably does in a way but then that is what our world is like really, it is in color so why deny it. A red sunset will indeed catch the eye. But you can’t get away from that What I do object t to is for instance dressing up some workers in colourful shirts, or things like that.

I am a great believer in leaving things the way I find them when I photograph rather than changing the mood by whatever means. No National Geographic red checked shirts for me.