Capturing great moments in history is tough work, but somebody's got to do it. Canadian news photographer Andy Clark - who has made a career out of being in the right place at the right time - gave a jaw-dropping slideshow presentation at the West Coast Railway Heritage Park last Thursday (Feb. 17).
Named Photojournalist of the Year in Canada for 2010, Clark is a senior photographer for Reuters and the president of the News Photographers Association of Canada. Over the past 25 years, he's seen it all, from driving a Humvee in the Gulf War, to accompanying various Canadian prime ministers on their personal airplanes, to catching rides on Canadian military patrol aircraft in the Arctic. And has the photographs to prove it.
"People think great moments in history were great photographs. They weren't," he told the group with a laugh. "Real history's boring."
Clarke was Brian Mulroney's personal photographer for two years during Mulroney's term as prime-minister and said "one of the most boring photographs he's ever taken" was the actual behind-the-scenes signing of the Meech Lake Accord.
"I was there all night with them - when all the premiers and the prime minister met and signed the Meech Lake Accord about five in the morning - and they're all sitting there, feet up on the desk, whining," Clark said. "Maclean's magazine wanted some behind-the-scenes pictures and the Prime Minister's Office approved them, so I sent them to the photo editor whom I knew very well and she phoned me back and said, 'This is the most boring crap I've seen all week!'"
More galvanizing moments awaited. Placed within a military unit as a photographer three weeks before the start of the 1991 Gulf War, Clark came close to being fired upon in a "friendly fire" incident when the soldiers entrusted to safely accompany him to the infamous Desert Rats brigade forgot the passwords.
An hour before the ground war began, he found himself "waiting to get the word to go."
"In fact, I drove," he relayed. "I drove one of the Humvees because they realized, when we started moving to invade Iraq, they didn't have someone to drive one of the Humvees, so they asked if I would."
Another memorable experience was camping in the Saudi desert as part of Pierre Trudeau's entourage in 1980, which he revisited by showing a photograph of Trudeau on a hookah pipe.
"That's him and the oil minister of Saudi Arabia at the time, Sheik Yamani We camped in the desert Bedouin-style. It was fantastic."
The newspaper business is in his blood - his grandfather worked for the Toronto Star his entire life as a writer and his great grandfather was the Star's editor, although it skipped a generation when his father became a teacher.
In 1970, Clark's grandfather secured him an interview at the Canadian Press in Toronto and Clark became a copy boy in the photo department at the age of 18. Five years later he was a photographer.
Never without a camera, Clark estimates he has travelled to 80 countries and, out of that, maybe 30 countries multiple times. His photography portfolio offers a tantalizing glimpse into a globetrotting life saturated with adventure that most only dream about. Many world leaders - including the Dalai Lama, Pope John Paul II, Queen Elizabeth and Hillary Clinton - have faced his lens.
He's been regularly assigned to the elite "deadline" room at the Oscars ("the stars with their awards would come into that room and we would photograph them one by one"), is passionate about cricket and loves digital cameras.
"At Reuters, we went digital very early on, so I stopped shooting film officially in 1997," Clark told the group. "In the last few years before I went digital - because I didn't wear gloves - my hands would just break out terribly from the chemistry, so it was great to go digital in that sense."
Contrary to what one might think when viewing Clark's collection, he never stages a shot, never practices photo manipulation (anything that can't be done in a darkroom) and never uses a flash. He also works pro bono on projects for Photosensitive, a non-profit collective that uses photography to achieve social justice.
"A lot of the time, I have these ideas - I might wait hours and nothing happens or it never happens but I'm very patient," he said. "I shoot first then ask, because if you ask first, the picture is gone."
When asked what he considers his favourite assignment, Clark answered, "Ah, so many. I've seen the world for free."
Clark was hosted by Squamish Valley Photography Club. His work can be found online at www.clarkfoto.ca.
