L'ancien éditeur George Sweers apporta de la couleur aux pages du "the St. Petersburg Times".

article publié sur tampabay.com
le 3 septembre 2010

George Sweers rencontra Marilyn Monroe en Corée où elle se produisait sur scène pour soutenir les troupes et où il travaillait pour l'agence AP. En 1961, Mr. Sweers a eu le tuyau que Marilyn Monroe et son ex-mari Joe DiMaggio logeaient au Redington Beach. Sweers se présenta et Marilyn se souvint de lui. Le couple le laisse prendre cette photo.

ST. PETERSBURG — George Sweers was a risk taker who lived to tell the world about his adventures.

The former Associated Press and St. Petersburg Times photographer and editor ducked rocks and bullets in Japanese riots. He glided down the Mekong River in Vietnam with an American regiment. He buzzed military bases in Florida in a rented plane to see how closely they were being guarded.

No one seemed to notice the plane, and his photos embarrassed generals.

In a long and ground-breaking career, Mr. Sweers also aimed his lens at simmering East-West tensions along the Berlin Wall; anxious preparations at Guantanamo Naval Base during the Cuban Missile Crisis; and hundreds of Cuban citizens fleeing that country in 1965.

His peers acknowledged the superior work with numerous awards. In 1969, the National Press Photographers Association named Mr. Sweers its editor of the year.

But his greatest risks and accomplishments might have come within the walls of the Times, where Mr. Sweers helped incorporate regular color into the newspaper at a time when many in the industry thought that feat was impossible.

Mr. Sweers, a 33-year employee and director of news illustration for the Times, died Aug. 27 of multiple illnesses, including cancer. He was 82.

"George was an excellent photographer who also was able to manage photo staffs and develop a photo system that helped the St. Petersburg Times become a leader in the world of color in newspapers," said Hal Buell, the retired head of the Associated Press photo service.

Before he came to the Times in 1959, Mr. Sweers was the AP's photo editor for Asia. He liked a good party — and a good martini — at the Toyko press club.

In 1959, Donald Baldwin, a former AP colleague in Tokyo and then-managing editor of the Times, hired Mr. Sweers as a photo editor. It was more than a matter of playing traffic cop to a few photographers. The paper, led by editor Nelson Poynter, wanted to break out of black-and-white pages all day, every day.

"Life was in color. Television was in color," said former managing editor Mike Foley, who now teaches journalism at the University of Florida. "And so the paper should be in color."

But how? Decades before the digital revolution, it took skill, patience and time to get color onto a page.

"There were naysayers all around," said Jack Belich, a former Times editor. "There was resistance in the newsroom and on the production side."

The paper shelled out more than $1 million for new equipment, and the Times overtook the Milwaukee Journal and the Miami News as the standard setter for color photography and graphics in newspapers.

"We were the talk of the country," Belich said. "It literally took years for the other papers to catch up."

Because no one else was supplying the kind of color photographs he wanted for the Vietnam War, Mr. Sweers decided to go to Vietnam himself. He spent a year with the Army's 231st Transportation Company and filed lengthy dispatches about what he saw.

Back home, as director of news illustration, Mr. Sweers managed art and photography, reporting to Poynter and then to his successor, Eugene Patterson. During the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1972, when Patterson ordered front-page color photos in the next day's paper, Mr. Sweers hopped on the back of a motorcycle, gripping the driver's waist as he zipped between traffic to a chartered plane at Miami International Airport.

He helped process and edit the film in a makeshift, in-flight darkroom, then returned to Miami Beach before dawn with hundreds of fresh newspapers for convention guests.

"He remained calm in the face of incredible news," Foley said.

Mr. Sweers was born and brought up in Kansas City, Kan. He got a job out of high school as a wire photo operator for the AP. He worked his way up to photographer and volunteered to cover the Korean War when it broke out in 1950.

His first marriage, to the former Ruth Bean, lasted 22 years and produced three children. Mr. Sweers had been married to his second wife, Marie, for 33 years.

Though his cancer caused concern, his sudden downturn and death took his family by surprise. The last day of his life, at Palms at Pasadena Hospital, Mr. Sweers announced, "I'll sure be glad to get out of here and get a martini."

Biography
George Edward Sweers
Born: Jan. 25, 1928.
Died: Aug. 27, 2010.
Survivors: wife Marie; sons, Mike and David and his wife, Debbie; daughter Susan Manley and her husband, Mike; stepdaughter Marea Ronshausen; and one granddaughter.
Service: None, according to his wishes.

Marilyn Monroe et Joe DiMaggio, en Mars 1961,
sortent de leur hôtel Tides Motor Inn à St Pete en Floride.

Marilyn Monroe et Joe DiMaggio, en Mars 1961, à Saint Petersburg, une ville de Floride, située entre la baie de Tampa et le Golfe du Mexique. Marilyn a rejoint Joe qui s'occupe de l'entrainement de l'équipe de base-ball les Yankees.

> photographie de Arthur Rickerby
 

Marilyn Monroe et Joe DiMaggio
dans les rues de Floride, Mars 1961.

Marilyn Monroe et Joe DiMaggio sont de retour à New York, après avoir passé un séjour en Floride.

Marilyn Monroe et Joe DiMaggio assistant à un match de base-ball au Yankee Stadium de New York, opposant l'équipe des New York Yankees contre les Minnesota Twins. Photographies de Lee Lockwood.

>> Photographie de Irving Haberman

 > video

Marilyn Monroe et Joe DiMaggio
à une soirée chez Bob Hope, en Californie.
Avec le général William F Dean, tenu en captivité par les Coréens du Nord pendant 3 ans, et de retour au pays en octobre 1953.

- Bonus sur le blog -

> Les robes blanches et noires de Ceil Chapman
> Ceil Chapman's white and black dresses
article Les Robes Moulantes à fronces de Ceil Chapman

Marilyn Monroe et Joe DiMaggio dînent au El Morocco,
à New York, le 12 septembre 1954,
en compagnie de Milton H. Greene.

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Marilyn Monroe photographiée en 1953.
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Marilyn Monroe photographed in 1953
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avec la costumière de la Fox, Ann Landers

> photo datée du 24 septembre 1953
 

>> Photographies de Frank Powolny

 

> publicité de "Movie Play", Juillet 1954:

> Dédicace

> couvertures de magazines:


 

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Marilyn Monroe photographiée en 1953, promo pour le 4 juillet,
jour d'indépendance des USA;
Marilyn porte le maillot de Comment épouser un millionnaire
Photographies de Bert Reisfeld ou Frank Powolny
Marilyn Monroe photographed in 1953, publicity for July 4,
day of independance in USA;
Promotional portraits for How to marry a millionaire
Photographs by Bert Reisfled or Frank Powolny

 >> Série "Independence Day" & Fireworks

> montage:

> couvertures de magazines:
 

© All images are copyright and protected by their respective owners, assignees or others.
copyright text by GinieLand. 

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