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Police Vs. Photographer
Going under cover with Photographer Carl Fischer Harold Hayes, the late, innovative editor of Esquire Magazine, had sent four excellent writers, Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, Terry Southern and John Sack, to cover the Chicago Democratic Convention in August, 1968, even though the resulting article was not to be the cover story of the November issue. The cover, representing another story, had already been designed and photographed.
Then, when anti-Vietnam war protestors and overly repressive Chicago police brought national attention to the bloody street riots, Hayes wanted a new cover. George Lois, who designed Esquire's unique and controversial covers, suggested that we symbolize the violence by a portrait of the four writers looking at a body young man lying face down in the gutter.
With light equipment and one assistant, I took the 7 o'clock evening flight to Chicago on Thursday, August 29th and met with an editor and the writers at their hotel. After arranging for a shooting session for early the following morning, my assistant and I went out to scout a suitable location. Not far from the hotel we found a quiet street and I climbed up on a mailbox to get a looking-down view of where the figure would be lying. Almost immediately, several arrogantly inquisitive police drove up and, while I lamely muttered something innocuous about photographing this colorful city at night from a perch atop a mail box, and showed them a press pass, the Chicago police, paranoid from a week of damning coverage from journalists, immediately arrested us and we were carted off in a paddy wagon.
Since I couldn't, of course, admit to what we were preparing to do without getting into even worse trouble, I stuck to my unconvincing story. Late that night, we were grudgingly released.
It was clear that we could not set up that posed scene without attracting attention. (Besides, Jean Genet, I was told, was in the country without permission. Something about the Cold War and him being a communist.) So, back at the hotel I organized a quick escape to New York early the next morning.
The following noon, on wonderfully cobblestoned 155th Street between Eighth Avenue and the Harlem River Drive in Manhattan, I photographed the assembled writers and a ketchup-stained model from a ladder. The black and white film was processed and printed that night (there was no time for a color cover, but the black and white documentary-look seemed more appropriate anyway) and Lois put the cover together the next day, Saturday.
Somewhat late, I managed to get away for the Labor Day weekend, but with an immense sadness. As bad luck would have it, one of the best covers we ever did for Esquire had been killed, and since it's story ran in that November isssue, the picture, clever and sacreligious, would never be published.
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