Inventing baseball heroes: Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, and the sporting press in America

Abstract

Wasser, Julian, and Brad Elterman (photography editor). The Way We Were: The Photography of Julian Wasser. Bologna, Italy: Damiani, 2014. 176 pp. $60.The Way We Were: The Photography of Julian Wasser would be a wonderful addition any room as a coffee table book. Wassers photos, black-and-white and a few in color, depict Los Angeles and Hollywood in the 1960s and the 1970s and feature many celebrities of that era- many of whom continue be in the news today via their musical or movie performances.Beyond the coffee table aspect, however, Wasser, a photojournalist, not only shares strong photographs depicting social changes on the West Coast but also shares photos showing the intimacy that could be captured before the age of paparazzi and before publicists controlled what photos could be taken of their clients. Because of this, Wassers book could be great fodder for discussion and reflection in photojournalism courses about the importance of photographers instilling trust in their subjects. This is a particularly important issue if one is planning pursue this kind of work now in our fast-paced, digital world.Wasser writes only a few hundred words at the beginning of the book, but he explains readers how his interest in photojournalism began, which should be of interest journalism students and instructors alike. He explains that as a teen in the late 1950s, he was interested in newspaper crime photography-a passion that began when he worked as a copy boy at the Associated Press bureau in Washington, D.C. That interest dissipated, though, when he started college and decided he wanted become a magazine photographer.But then he was drafted, and instead of living in foxholes, he says, he got a job as a photo intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy and moved San Diego. His move the West Coast seemed complete-and Los Angeles was very close by. But he couldn't settle there right away.The Navy sent him an airbase in Japan where he had the chance wander the streets ofTokyo shooting as many photos as he could. After his release from active duty, he finally moved the Los Angeles area to begin my dream Hollywood life. Wasser worked as an assistant an advertising photographer. However, when he began getting assignments from Time magazine as a contract photographer, his boss fired him.Over the years, in addition Time, Wasser has submitted and has published in Life, People, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, TV Guide, and Fortune magazines-among others. Overseas, he has had work published in the Paris Match, Der Spiegel, Oggi, Hello, and the London Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph. And many of these intimate 1960s and 1970s images are shared in his book. The cover features a 1963 image of actor Steve McQueen exhaling cigarette smoke.The first photo inside his book is at Jack Nicholson's home in L.A. Nicholson sneers happily at Anjelica Huston, who wears a tiny white bikini and holds an LP record in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It's fun. It's revealing. It's comfortable. The photo was taken in 1971 and published in the German publication Stern.The book offers more photos of Nicholson and continues with photos of John Travolta, Jodie Foster, Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, and so on. …