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- RFK & Ceasar Chavez in Delano, CA, USA on the occasion of Chavez’s ending a lengthy fast. A mass is being said from a flatbed truck; to the right and behind the camera. 1968 No model releases
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- Jimi Hendrix, Monterey Pop Festival, 1967
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- Mississippi State Police, Marks, Mississippi, during the Poor People’s Campaign. There was very little that this gentleman liked about me, least of all the relative immunity I enjoyed as a member of the press amongst others of the same trade.
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- Washington, D.C., Poor People’s Campaign, June, 1968. Photographer Jill Freedman, who wears an SCLC badge. There were a number of us who were called to spend months on the story.
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- Mrs. Margaret Franklyn through the screen door of her home in Marks, Quitman County, Mississippi, then the poorest county in the USA. 1968
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- MLK’s Funeral, Atlanta, GA, 1968. Casket being carried from the Ebinezer Baptist Church.
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WILLAM JAMES WARREN
William James Warren is a documentary photojournalist living in San Diego, CA. He is currently organizing his archive at Briscoe Center, U of Texas, Austin, courtesy of APAG’s introduction.
Visual Philosophy: “Multum in Parvo; I strive to distill the essence of what I see, feel and imagine into compelling visual form, with the greatest possible depth and economy. I seek images with a narrative, which invite curiosity and reward contemplation.”
Born in 1942, raised in Westchester, CA, he was the only son of Depression survivors — his senior aircraft engineer/inventor father and his office manager/wordsmith mother. Their tough love included debiting Warren’s allowance $0.10 for every use of the term: “You-Know”. Despite funds being tight, they provided him with his first 35mm camera, a modest Petrie range finder. It was the first of some dozens of cameras to follow over a sixty-year career that became his raison d’être.
Self-educated in photography, Warren’s career officially began in 1965, as a Combat Photographer/Reporter for the PIO (Public Info Office) of the 101st Airborne Division, U. S. Army, in Vietnam, where he was a natural for the job, owning both a camera, a dictionary and a white belt in journalism. Dirck Halstead, head of UPI, Saigon, liked Warren’s meager portfolio and invited him to remain in Vietnam as a stringer, after his discharge in 1966; an honor he declined, having had enough of a war he judged un-winnable, insane and hazardous to his health.
“I left my M-16 rifle, 200 rounds of ammo, hand grenades, behind in Vietnam, but kept my Nikon-F, per the example of Gordon Parks’ ‘A Choice of Weapons’. I had been raised on a diet of John Steinbeck and Life Magazines. My (virtual) tutors were W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, et al of the Farm Security Administration school. I channeled them all subconsciously in obedience to a spiritual calling to witness and record my impressions of the history unfolding around me.
“Forget Depth of Field, seek Depth of Feeling” became my mantra and theme song, with the words ‘Truth to Power’ worked in.”
On his return to California, he began freelancing, driven to record the Anti-War, Counterculture & Civil Rights Movements of the ’60s and ‘70s. His plan to return to college was derailed as assignments consumed his energies.
Warren’s broad interests and empathetic eye led him to his many subjects, and clients, as diverse as: ACLU, L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra, Suicide Prevention Center, Constitutional Rights Foundation, Charles Drew Medical School, Psychology Today, Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), Center for Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara, CA. His exposure through the L.A. Free Press and UPI, attracted the New York press. His early editorial clients include: United Press International, Los Angeles Free Press, L. A. Times – West Magazine, Associated Press, Newsweek, Time, Life, LOOK, Psychology Today, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, et al.
Influenced by the cinéma vérité work of Frederick Wiseman, Warren used a cover story in Newsweek on Abortion to sell his first half-hour documentary to CBC. The film, aired on CBC Weekend, influenced legislation in Canada & US, leading to Roe v. Wade. That film’s success led to ‘Thank You Jesus’, a half hour vérité documentary on Pentecostal ‘Jesus Freaks’, who at the time were busy recruiting lost youths on Hollywood Blvd and baptizing them in the surf of Venice Beach, subjecting them to rape and other abuses.
After LOOK’s final demise in 1979, Warren began shooting for organizations and corporations: NASA – Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lockheed, Northrop, Fluor, National Semiconductor, Gladstone (Medical) Institutes, Agrigenetics, NYSE, NJ&NY Port Authority, and many others.
Introductions to legendary graphic designers Robert Miles Runyan, James Cross, John Grissom Divers and Saul Bass, opened the gold mine of the Corporate Annual Report. Assignments paid magnitudes more than editorial and yielded round-the world tours in the bargain. For Warren, the the line between work and play ceased to exist.
Surfing this wave, Warren met Charles O’Rear, renowned National Geographic photographer, who invited him to join the Westlight Stock Agency, where Warren quickly rose to the upper 10% of earners. Craig Aurness, Westlight’s owner, invented the stock photo catalog, catapulting the stock business into a career in and of itself. Thousands of licenses have been issued for reproduction of Warren’s work, globally, in all fields of media and publishing.
Awards include: American Institute of Graphic Arts, Eastman Kodak, Fuji, Communication Arts, Graphis, Art Direction, Graphic Design, USA, Financial World, Print Magazines; New York, Western and Los Angeles Art Director’s Clubs.
Warren’s work is included in the permanent collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA. One of his portraits of Jill Freedman graces the cover of the APAG Handbook, selections of his work are currently available at Alamy.com.
Web Portfolio: williamjameswarren.com
Contact: will@williamjameswarren.com