In Flight, John White Shares His Light

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Before she became a staff photographer at The New York Times, Michelle Agins was an intern at The Chicago Daily News, where John H. White was already making his mark on the city's photographic scene. He looked out for her and gave her advice an d encouragement, even after he went to The Chicago Sun-Times and she to New York.

Soon after he and the rest of The Sun-Times's photo staff were fired late last month, Ms. Agins went to Chicago for her godson's graduation. While there, she visited Mr. White at his home. Their conversation has been edited into a first-person narrative.

While everybody else was stunned and upset that The Chicago Sun-Times had fired its entire photography staff, I couldn't stop thinking of one man. They did that to John White? The Chairman of the Board? That's like the Bulls getting rid of Michael Jordan.

For a hot minute, my South Side Chicago roots took over - I was ready to roll down.

M. Spencer Green/Associated Press John H. White at a June 6 protest in front of The Chicago Sun Times's headquarters.

John was the photographer I looked up to when I was an intern at The Chicago Daily News, where he was working in the early 1970s. My godfather, John Tweedle, told me to look him up. John looked out for me, encouraged me and nudged my career. I watched him on the streets, in the darkroom and even stood by his side as he carefully put together the portfolio that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1982.

When I visited him, he was not letting the firing change how he felt about himself, or his fellow photographers, one bit.

“A job's not a job because of labor law,” he said. “It's just something you love. It's something you do because it gives you a mission, a life, a purpose, and you do it for the service of others.”

All he had wanted to hear from the executives who let him go was two words that never came: thank you. But even then, he did not respond with anger.

“I light candles, I don't curse the darkness,” he said. “Even now, my colleagues are cursing the darkness. I'm lighting the candles. And I give wings to dreams, I ain't breaking no wings. I'm not clipping any wings. Make a difference in the world. One light. One day. One image.”

John taught me how to fly.

I had been taking pictures since high school, but when I got to The Daily News, I was a copy-girl intern. But I also tried to copy John the minute I saw him walk through the newsroom after an assignment. I would sneak away and go back toward the darkroom - his chapel away from church - and watch him unload his cameras and ask him about his day.

I even tried to walk like he walked. I had seen a lot of photographers on assignment, but to find John White, you had to look in the shadows. He was never where you could see him. He was always where he could be, like he was hovering over in a corner. Like he could see everything in a room. He had this look. He kept his camera low-key. And all of a sudden, he'd pick it up and find the real subject. The one you hadn't seen before.

He didn't do this for prizes, though he won a lot of them. He did it for “consistent excellence.” And for as long as he had been taking pictures, it never got boring or predictable.

“I've got the same set of eyes, nothing's changed,” he said. “Every day, a ba by is born. Every day, someone dies. Every single day. And we capture everything in between. You think of this thing called life and how it's preserved. It's preserved through vision, through photographs.”

John H. White “Ice House.”

You've probably figured out by now that John thought about bigger things. He was a religious man, born on a Sunday into a family of preachers in North Carolina. When he tells one and all to “keep in flight,” it's as much spiritual advice as it is professional. He takes that advice himself, even after the slight of seeing one of his pictures published in his old paper with only “Sun-Times Library” as the credit line.

“I can't get caught up in those things,” he said. “You got to look at the big picture, because I know the true photo editor.”

Like a good storyteller - or a preacher - he taught with examples from his life, often talking about moments with his father in North Carolina. He remembered one night walking through a wooded patch with his father, who reached out and grabbed a firefly.

“Look at my hand,” his father said as he gently squeezed the insect. “And look what he's doing. He's making a light. He can't contain his light. God gives us light and we can't contain this light. Be like the lightning bug. Don't let anyone contain your light.”

I was still an intern when, despite protests from some of the other staff photographers, I was sent out to cover how children were dealing with a teachers strike. I went out to Cabrini-Green, passed by a dentist's office and saw a boy sitting in the chair. I went in and asked if I could photograph the dentist, and he agreed.

Nothing much was happening.

I thought it was going to be a boring picture. All of a sudden, the dentist yanked a tooth from the kid's mouth. He didn't tell me he was going to do this. The kid's eyes crossed and his mouth was open. The paper ran it with “He'd Rather Be in School” as the caption. That shot helped the other photographers accept me.

“Everybody remembers that picture, a billion-dollar picture,” John said. “People realized then that she's doing what we did, she's spreading her wings and trying to fly, and you know, it's like you were that lightning bug. You didn't let them contain you and keep you down.”

I swear I didn't even know what the Pulitzer was when I watched him assemble the portfolio that would earn him journalism's highest prize. I stood beside him in the darkroom as he printed (with a towel slung over his left shoulder). I watched him put paper, make careful measurements and lay out a story. He showed me h ow to tell a story.

Years later, John and I both covered Pope John Paul II's Mass in Central Park. I showed off my computer and my new digital camera. I was proud of where he had helped me get. But not as proud as he was.

“It's like your child,” he told me. “And they got a touchdown. You know what I mean? And it wasn't a Hail Mary touchdown, you know what I mean? It was from one end of the line to the other. You know? It required a lot, but you got the touchdown. This is the journey. You go through storms, rain and hurricanes, and forces of evil. You know. But you keepin' the fight.”

John, I was just doing what you taught me: staying in flight and sharing the light.

Michelle Agins/The New York Times John White in his home th is month.

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