Jack
Fields, former SJSU PJ Prof: a great teacher, photographer, person
While talking to SJSU Alum Kim Komenich yesterday I learned about the recent
passing of former SJSU JMC visiting professor Jack Fields. Jack was at SJSU when
Kim and I went through the PJ program. He was our photojournalism teacher. Here
is what is on the San
Francisco Bay Area Press Photographers Association website about Jack:
Retired freelance magazine photographer Jack Fields, former San Jose State University photojournalism instructor, died of heart failure on December 13 at his Placerville home. He was 87.
Fields served for three years as "Visiting Professor" at SJSU in the late 1970's. While at SJSU he pioneered what he called a "no-nonsense" approach to photography, a subject that was often taught as "pure art" at many universities.
Fields was founding chairman of the Bay Area chapter of the American Society of Magazine Photographers in an era when Wayne Miller, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Imogen Cunningham were members of the organization.
As a young boy in Kansas, Fields dreamed of "far-away places with strange sounding names". After a formal education and a wartime stint in the South Pacific, Fields embarked upon a 50-year career, traveling on assignment for Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Look, and Life.
Before World War II, Fields earned a Bachelor's degree in Science from Kansas State College. He was planning to teach but was sent to New Guinea with the armed forces where he began taking pictures. He was assigned as a photographer for the Air Force?s Yank Magazine when he contracted tuberculosis and was returned to the U.S. to recuperate. While at Cragmor Sanitorium in Colorado Springs, Fields met Dorothy Gindling, also a patient and fellow TB sufferer, whom he married in 1948.
After five years of recuperation, the Fields moved to Los Angeles where Jack attended the Art Center College of Design while Dorothy enrolled in writing classes at the Maren Elwood School. As an art student, he sold his first photos to Look Magazine. After completing their studies, the Fields traveled to Europe, working on assignment for various publications.
The Fields became known for their ability to find interesting, yet untold stories, especially in the South Pacific. In 1971 they approached a Japanese publisher with an Idea for an all-encompassing book on the region which became their 1973 book "South Pacific".
Fields was the first photojournalist to report on Micronesia after it became a U.S. Trust at the end of WWII. His photograph of a laser pioneer at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center was used as a reference image for a commemorative stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service in August, 1999.Memorial contributions may be made to the Nature Conservancy. Condolences may be sent to Dorothy Fields, 6021 Golden Center Dr., Placerville, CA 95667-6222. Dorothy Fields' phone number is (530) 622-1772.
I
remember Jack very well. He was a wonderful guy and a great teacher. In 1994 we
gave Jack and Dorothy our dog Reno, a black and white Shetland Sheepdog and he
had a loving home with them. Jack lived a good life and he still lives on in the
hearts, and the eyes, of many of us who knew him.
[Click here to see larger version of photo]
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Labels: Campus Photographs, Photography, SJSU, teaching
Globe-trotting photo essayist Jack Byron Fields dies at 87
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Jack Byron Fields, whose photographic essays from far-flung places appeared in magazines such as Life, Look and National Geographic and helped to transform photojournalism, has died.
Mr. Fields, who was 87, died of heart failure Thursday at his home in Placerville (El Dorado County), according to Wes Larsen, funeral director at Foothill Cremation & Burial Service of Placerville.
Mr. Fields took up photography while stationed in New Guinea with the Army Air Forces during World War II. In the 1950s, he became one of a relative handful of freelance photographers who used a combination of the advent of 35mm film, newly available jet plane travel to remote locations, and good business sense to tell dramatic visual stories from foreign lands for top U.S. magazines.
Previously, American photographers typically had not traveled as far and wide, and they had worked with large, clunky cameras that were difficult to use )spontaneously and did not capture movement well, according to Kim Komenich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Chronicle photographer who met Mr. Fields when Komenich was a student at San Jose State University in the late 1970s.
Mr. Fields and some other photographers of his time moved from the tradition of taking static, single pictures, to shooting multiple images that represented a narrative, Komenich said.
Mr. Fields traveled to Europe, Africa and the South Pacific with his wife, Dorothy Gindling, a writer who collaborated with him on numerous articles and books, including the 1973 book "South Pacific." They made a living globe-trotting and reporting what they saw.
"They came into journalism when photography and magazine journalism was in its heyday," Komenich said. "There was no CNN, and people waited patiently for their Life magazine to show up."
Sal Veder, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for the Associated Press, said Mr. Fields took photography beyond a craft and made it an art form.
"His eye was a little different than others," said Veder, who is now retired. "He had a foreground, background and middle ground. ... Your eye followed his photographs like a painting."
Mr. Fields was born in Thermopolis, Wyo., in 1919, and later moved to Kansas. He earned a bachelor's degree at Kansas State College (now Kansas State University) and was heading toward a teaching career. But his plans changed when World War II broke out and he was sent overseas and assigned to take photos for the Army Air Forces' Yank magazine, according to Mr. Fields' photography Web site ( www.gardensculptures.net/Fields.htm).
His life took another unexpected turn when he contracted tuberculosis and was returned to the United States to recuperate. While at a sanatorium, he met Gindling, also a patient suffering from tuberculosis.
After their wedding, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where Mr. Fields attended the Art Center College of Design and his wife took writing classes.
The couple started their careers by traveling to Europe and freelancing for magazines back home, including Smithsonian and the Saturday Evening Post.
Later, they went to the South Pacific and reported on Micronesia, Mr. Fields' Web site says.
In the late 1970s, Mr. Fields served as a visiting professor at San Jose State University, where he became a mentor to Komenich and another longtime Bay Area press photographer, Paul Chinn, among others. Komenich and Chinn went on to work as photographers at the San Francisco Examiner, where Komenich won his Pulitzer Prize, and joined The Chronicle when the Hearst Corp. bought that paper in 2000.
Komenich and Chinn said that Mr. Fields not only taught students the craft of photography, but also schooled them in running a good business and maintaining ownership of their work.
"He showed us that professional photographers needed to protect their rights and to be compensated well enough that they could continue to take more pictures," Komenich said. "Most editors thought about photos as commodities and didn't think about the people behind them."
Mr. Fields is survived by his wife, Dorothy Gindling, of the family home in Placerville. Memorial contributions may be made to the Nature Conservancy, Attention: Treasury, 4245 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington, VA 22203. No memorial service is planned.
This article appeared on page B - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle
