GaryGardiner

Pope John Paul II In The Hotel Darkroom

After traveling across the country from New Orleans to Los Angeles with 27 cases of equipment we settled into a hotel meeting room. Our overnight task was to turn it into a darkroom to handle an unknown number of rolls of film, prints, and analog photo transmissions to a variety of locations domestic and foreign.

When completed, we would leave for Detroit with our 27 cases and leave no trace of having converted the meeting room into a messy darkroom. This is how it began. Actually it began with a trip to Home Depot for materials.

 

 

 

When Pope John Paul II made his visit across the United States in 1987 digital photography was still in the prototype stage with Kodak not yet ready to release the 1.3 megapixel DCS 100, the first professional digital single-lens reflex camera.

It wasn’t until 1988 that Nikon and Fuji began selling digital cameras.

In 1992 the first wire service photo from a digital camera made the AP wire. It was shot by AP photographer Ron Edmonds using the DCS 100 tethered to an Apple Macintosh desktop computer operated by Jim Gerberich under the photographer’s platform at the Democratic National Convention.

That meant that wire service and newspaper photographers covering the Pope’s trip in 1987 shot film. Lots of film. All of it color. Someone had to process the film, make prints, and transmit the photos back to the newspapers or to AP photo editors in New York and Washington.

Darkroom duties fell to several groups of AP staffers and stringers who leapfrogged across the country arriving in each city ahead of the Pope and carrying enough darkroom equipment and photo transmitters to quickly process as many as 50 rolls of film at a time and transmit color photos to multiple newspapers at once. The crew I was with traveled from New Orleans to LA then to Detroit for the Pope’s final stop. By then the number of traveling newspaper photographers whose film, prints, and transmitting we handled were much fewer.

The photo with this post shows our crew as we arrived in Los Angeles carrying 27 cases, crates, and containers with film processing equipment, enlargers, and photo transmitters. Almost everything was secured with duct tape.

From left is Steve Pyle from the Milwaukee bureau, David Longstreath of Oklahoma City, Gary Gardiner, Mark Humprey of Nashville, and Tracie, a photo stringer from Texas. At right, making the selfie and group photo is toothpick-chewing Dave Martin of Montgomery.

Among the containers are several heavy-duty cardboard boxes, Halliburton cases, custom-designed and manufactured in Columbus Cabbage Cases, and our suitcases.

Not included in the travel kit were darkroom chemicals, printing papers, and the items required to turn a hotel meeting room into a darkroom without damaging it.

But that’s another story.

 

This story was published July 30, 1972, in “Florida,” the Sunday magazine of the Orlando Sentinel. Reporter Tom Fiedler and I had been visiting Klan events and members working on a story about its recent resurgence in Central Florida.

The most visible action the Klan took was a parade in full KKK garb down the main streets of Lakeland, Fla. It was the first of several trips to the area Tom and I made to photograph and interview Klansmen and their families.

One of the first rallies it held after the parade was a cross-burning where white-robed and -capped Klansmen paraded in a circle around a burning cross after hearing a collection of speeches espousing its racist tenets.

Tom and I arrived at dusk and immediately split up as I had little time to take photos before it got too dark for anything other than the cross-burning. Tom wanted to talk to the principals, most of whom I’d already photographed.

After a few minutes, I was approached by a robed Klansman, his white hood in hand.

“Who do you work for?” he asked as he stepped just inside my social distance.

“The Orlando Sentinel,” I replied.

“You’re not Tom Fielder are you?” he asked.

After I answered I wasn’t he wanted to know if Tom was at the rally. I lied and said id he was at the rally he came alone and I didn’t know where he was or even if he was there.

As he turned to walk away he leaned into my face and told me he was very angry with Tom about the story he wrote about the parade.

Tom’s lede for the story read – “The bedsheet shenanigans of the KKK were revived Saturday as more than xxx marched through downtown Lakeland.” (I don’t remember the exact number.)

Tom wasn’t surprised that he’d angered a Klansman. He was properly proud that one of their numbers had been offended.