He's a celebrity. He's Matthew Thayer. You know, you never get to see him. He's always
behind the camo.
You're tuned to a new show called Mostly Maui. We are going through the Akaku vaults to find
gems from Maui's past. But we also want to see the videos that you send in. So if you'd
like to contribute to Mostly Maui, please call 8-7-1-5-5-4 because it's your show.
Mostly Maui.
This special edition of Mostly Maui is about photographer Matthew Thayer from 2010.
My first picture in the mind is, I was so excited. I came right out of college. I drove across
country, flew from the west coast. I was here for three days, had my first front page photo,
but they got my name wrong. I was Matthew Thayer. My whole life I've been Matt Thayer,
and they made me a Matthew and a Taylor. But I didn't care. I read my picture in the paper.
So I was just very stoked. I was, you know, I was hit the ground running, you could say.
That was Roy Tanaka who made me Matthew. And I don't know, you know, I just, I was just
so happy to have the picture in the paper. I didn't even think about it. And so, but
from that time on, I've been Matthew Thayer in the paper.
Matthew Thayer, Maui's excellent and foremost photojournalist. At the Maui News for more
than 30 years, was interviewed at an exhibition of his own work at the Schaefer Gallery in
2010.
The idea behind the exhibit is how 30 years of not only photographs, but how Maui has
changed, how newspapering, the technology has changed. It's been a very big time with
the Hawaiian Renaissance, Kaholavi being returned. And it would have been easy to say, no, you
know, we don't, we don't need you here. We don't want you here. But instead, I've been
able to see, you know, many historic events and to capture them for the, to share them
with the island.
It's 30 years of having fun, I guess. You know, I love my job and it doesn't seem like
it's been 30 years, but it is. I started in 1980 as a summer intern at the Maui News.
And just having a great time while I was doing it, too. I'm very, just very blessed to be
able to have this job.
I tell people that are interested in photography or if they want to do it, that it is like
a sport. The more you do it, the better you become. To anticipate where to be before the
moment happens, just a lot of practice. It's a juggling act. You're trying to capture the
movement and the essence of something. But, you know, I tell people it's not a Pepsi commercial.
We can't go and say, hey, we need more light over here. Amp up the, the, the lights, you
know, you have to take what you get in journalism.
I think that was one of the things that helped me with my photography, that I only had one
lens, a 50 millimeter lens. And that meant I had to get up into people's faces to take
their picture. There was no telephoto. You couldn't be too far away. And I think a big
part of photojournalism is speaking to people, being able to cross that little barrier that
to, there's a trust to say, okay, you can take my picture. You can take my kid's picture.
Sometimes it's, it's, there's luck involved for sure. You know, when something happens
and if you just turn and if it's in focus, and I used to be the old thing with film,
you'd shoot something and you'd never tell anybody you, oh man, I got a shot until you
saw it. You process the film, you just keep your mouth shut because you could jinx it.
When I was a young photographer, I would never go anywhere without my camera. If I went into
the bank, I carried my camera. I went into a grocery store because you never know when
you're going to see something. And if you don't have your camera, you can't shoot it.
Wayne Tanaka, who was of big influence, my early career at the Maui News, he taught me
something that you can't just blaze through and hope you got something. There's one moment
when it's, you know, it's the ultimate shot. You time it and click there. Don't hope the
camera can do it for you. Timing your shot and picking it. We processed film the other
day. I didn't process film in 15 years, but we were shooting film, or Black and White.
And in the, we each shot a role and I found myself much more selective when it was film.
You know, you really compose that shot, focus it and then shoot it. Whereas now it's, you
know, it is much more, you're inclined to shoot it around and then look at it to see
whether you got it. That's become the new thing for photographers. You look at it and
see if you got it, which is a great tool. Digital is amazing. For my job, I would, I'd
never go back to film. But it, I think that there was the elements of that about working
with Black and White. Black and White, you can't, while people with color, you can't
excite their eyes with bright blue sky or the red, somebody's clothing. It's about content.
It's about the essence of the photo. And I think that that helped me coming up through
the Black and White era in that you, you had to have something that was eye catching because
of its content, not, not because of its color. The photo of the boys on the trampoline upside
down, I think that was one of the more difficult photos that I've, I've taken. And it captures
just a moment that was, you know, a once in a lifetime sort of thing. I really, really
liked that picture. Okay. I was driving down, I believe it was Kahakalua Road. And the streets
over on that side, and I see this kid appear and then disappear. What in the world was that?
So I pull over and drive up and, and I see these kids playing in the yard. It was a summer,
summer day. I think it was like the end of the, end of summer vacation. And I introduced
myself, I'm from the My News. Can I, can I take your picture? And they were doing a thing
called a super balance where they would, these two guys would use their weight. They would
hit at the perfect time to send him flying. And I don't know why they had the, the hose,
but the, you know, car, the water droplets. And you can kind of see the water coming off
his feet. It just really added the, it showed the motion of the, of his trajectory. And
there's a little look on his face where he's, you can see he's a little worried, you know,
he's up there really high and he's scared. And we've managed to contact, he lives in
Massachusetts now. And through the magic of the internet, McKenna, my intern, was able
to track him down. And one of these boys lives in Maui Meadows, Scott Clarkson. And this
other boy here, we haven't been able to track down. So if Ryan Oldridge is out there, you
know, give us, look me up on the internet. We'd like to send you a picture. There is
a special place in my heart for these photos. And they, they all have their, their strong
points and what, what makes them special to me. A couple of cowboys, Sunny Boy, Minoa
and Blondie Fratus. I think that's sort of an iconic, it looks like a Marlboro man commercial
or something. And that one, that won an award. But yeah, I don't know. I love them all.
Yeah, this is Sunny Boy, Minoa. He was the ranch manager at Haleakla Ranch and Blondie
Fratus. Sunny Boy is no longer with us, but Blondie is still around. And we were doing
a story about the, a roundup, the, and branding. And yeah, I just, that's one of my favorite
photos. You can see, this is kind of interesting. We have some high school kids, they like this
one. This is the front page for that story. And here's a marijuana bust. They, the guy's
garage caught on fire because he, and so the, I was standing outside and a fireman goes,
are you getting the shot? I said, it's kind of dark in there, you know, couldn't see.
And so he turns these big bank of lights on the fire truck and he turns them on and lights
up the whole house. He's like, yeah, bro, thanks a lot. So what we, but we, you know,
made the decision, like you can see the old page, you know, it's yellowing and just we
left that as it is, just the patina of age. And, but that's, that's Blondie and Henry
Silva. Henry Silva is a renaissance man of Maui Poneolo. He is, he's a leather worker
of saddle. He shoes, shoes horses, but he has his work in the Smithsonian, his leather
braiding that he does. This is a beautiful picture of Henry Silva right here.
Oh, that's Henry. Yeah, that's Henry Silva. And he lives up in Kula. And still, I think
he still shoes horses for the ranch. I'll tell you a story. There's a photo with George
Harrison on the cover of our newspaper. He was in court in a lawsuit with his neighbors
about beach access, trying to get his privacy. He had blocked off a beach access in his neighbor's
pseudom. I thought everything was cool. We're going to take George's picture, a beetle.
That would be neat. I'm sitting in court. The, the break comes. I stand up with my cameras
and I get the biggest stink guy from George Harrison. He's like, oh, you know, it's like
a rate of punch me. It seemed, you know, but I just walk up, you know, and I'm going to
take your picture and he, and he looks me right in the eye and says, I've had bloody
photographers flying over my house. I have them running next to my car. If you want to
take my picture, run next to my car. By this time, I start to get a little angry, but still,
you know, keep trying to keep my cool. But I said, I don't run next to people's cars.
And I never will. Yeah, this is the one that has a lot of age on the page. Still look a
little stink guy there. Yeah, he wasn't really quite, quite pleased with me. I don't think
still. But I got the shot. As a photographer, particularly as a photo journalist, you're
oftentimes put in a strange position between getting the news, getting the story and possibly
invading somebody's private situation or privacy. How do you deal with that? Well, if you don't
take the picture, you can't make that decision later in the newsroom, but we'll, we've had,
we have had discussions, you know, do we run this? Do we not run this? There's times out,
you know, I just, I won't, I don't, I won't shoot something because I know that it's inappropriate
or, you know, you're, it's not something that we would run in the paper. But that's, you
know, making a decision out in the field that, you know, could be wrong. So a lot of times
we'll, we'll shoot and then decide later whether we're going to, we're going to run it. We're
not going to run the, the torn body. You know, it's just, that's not the kind of paper we
are. As a photographer, you have to have a critical nature with your work. You have to
be able to look at and say, this is what I did right. This is what I did wrong. And you've
got to try to grow every day because there's no sitting still with this. And the, the,
the best picture that I've ever going to have is I'm hoping it's still out there. I wake
up every day thinking that there's something great out there and I just have to find it
and be ready. If it happens in front of me, I got to be ready to shoot it. My whole career
has been the next photo. You get, you take it, you get it, you know, so that it goes
to an editor and then you go out in the morning and look at it in the paper. And then about
that time, my interest is pretty much done with that picture, you know. And I first
started, I was, I was just putting stuff like in big boxes, you know. And then I, as I said,
I started to realize that there's a, you know, I sort of dating stuff and, and filing it
better. But yeah, as far as the, the, the, the greatest photo, yeah, I'm hoping there's
still something amazing out there.
Have you taken that great photograph already? Is that it over there or is it yet to be taken?
It's still out there, man. It's still out there. The Aloha Flight 243 was probably my
biggest as far as worldwide. I had the front page of almost every newspaper in the world.
Maui was the center of the news world for about two or three days. And that was an exciting
time, especially covering a miracle. You know, it wasn't a disaster where we had, you know,
everybody aboard killed. You know, one, there was one person, a flight attendant that was
lost. She was sucked out of the plane. But everybody else landed safely. And that was
an amazing thing to cover.
This is a kind of a wide shot. The, what happened was this was a structural failure. And so
this rivets and this section just flew off. And it was, this plane was going from Kaha'u,
or excuse me, from Hilo to Honolulu and over Kaha'u, this, this came off. And it's amazing
it stayed together. If you look at photos on the other side, you can see the structure
was tweaking. Amazing they brought it in. The pilots, they, they did a special kind of
landing with the flaps. I think with the flaps down full thrust. It's a very fast landing.
But they managed to bring it in so that it wouldn't, wouldn't break apart on landing.
I could have, I could have covered a, you know, a fireball at the airport when it landed.
But that's not what happened. So you can see if this is a passenger being taken off and
a flight attendant helping, touching base with him.
That was 1988.
Do you think you would have gotten this photo today with TSA out there and everything?
I probably would have gotten a lot more trouble for jumping a fence and, you know, running
across the runway. It would have been a little different. But, you know, to get this, get
the photo, I think it might have been worth it.
Convertible airlines, huh?
Yeah.
Yeah, they, the, the next morning this was painted blue. They got rid of the logo. And
I stayed with the story till the very end. It was a very, you know, fascinating process.
They broke it up for scrap. And I remember when they broke the wings off this, this plane.
Was the oldest jets in the fleet. It was a Boeing 737 and just was an older jet and
it was structural failure. And so this changed how America treated what they called the geriatric
jets.
So this one, after this incident, they started testing for the failure and the rivets. It
was like the rivets and something to do with the structure of the steel. Just being pressurized
so many times, making that hop from, you know, Honolulu to the, to the neighbor islands.
I shot a roll of film from the, the Halecoa. I took it out of my camera in case of my cameras
were confiscated, put the roll in my sock and then ran across the tarmac and, and, and
got my shots. That's probably a handheld leaning, you know, of on the ground or leaning up
against something. I'm pretty sure I know you didn't have a tripod. This is a setup
photo. You know, almost all of these are, you know, just taken as news. But this one,
we were always taking a picture of a sign to take a photo of Barry Rivers, people who
made a difference, right? And so the idea was, we're going to have him juggling these
film reels. And so Daryl, he tied the reels up and it was in this room up on the ceiling
with fishing line. And so before Barry got here, we needed, I wanted to set my lights
up. So this was just a practice shot to get the shot, you know, this fingers, the light
shining through his fingers and stuff. And, but I liked it better than Barry. And so when
it came time for the exhibit, Daryl Irwig, co-curator of the exhibit, he managed to,
he got in there. So this one is one of the few shots, or one of the only shots in here
that has been photoshopped extensively, you know, to take out the fishing lines and stuff
like that and pose that photo.
It's a great shot. It also makes Daryl look exceptionally talented.
Well, he's an Italian guy. I don't know if anybody can juggle that well, but...
Five film reels. That's pretty good.
That's pretty good. This one was at Camp Amua. These are mini counselors and a helicopter
was taking off. The hair popped up and I talked to the kids about it, our students, that this
photo could be better. If it was a Pepsi commercial, we'd do a retake and we'd have her hold her
hands down.
This is another one that we've tracked down three out of the four people. And invited
into the show, sent them model releases. We're still looking for one. But, you know, these
girls are about 14 years old and that was in the 90s. So last names change and who knows
if we'll ever find them.
But it'd be nice to be able to give them a print. This is a cool page. You've got Liz
Jane's, her wonderful column that she used to do, and this history of Whiney Village.
We have a page earlier on the wall. Every time I went to Lahaina, I'd go to Whiney Village
and chronicle the end. It was the end of the plantation camp era. It was the last one where
people were living in.
No, you get to see that which is kind of cool. Get to record it.
Yeah, yeah, and it's gone. Yeah, it's gone. There's a lot of things on this island that
are gone. It's been lucky that I've been able to...
Any place we can see them is in your photographs. Really kind of interesting, I guess so, yeah.
Let's come over to my office in the dark room. But this is how we used to make the pages.
They would be waxed on the back and actually with, you know, using a knife, they would
be put together. And then the person who was the sports editor or the person in charge
of that page, they would say, they would have to read it. And then they would go, okay.
And then they'd say, it's good to go.
Wow, so it was literally cut and pasted.
Cut and pasted. That's what cut and pasted is about.
Yeah, this is actual cut and pasted. And sometimes they would, you know, to stretch a story,
like say you've laid it out for this, it was too short, they would cut it and they'd make
spaces. They'd just stretch it, stretch it out.
Literally stretch it out.
Wow.
And here's my office. I love this part of the exhibit. Yeah, we had so much fun with this.
We have a lot of the credentials from the events I've covered. This is a postcard from
Hasegawa General Store. When it burned, Harry Hasegawa gave me a card. It had been in a
filing cabinet, so it didn't burn. It just singed on the one corner because air couldn't
get to it. But this is from the day that the General Store burned down. That was a gift
from Harry Hasegawa. This is a photo I just found, but remember the five trees intersection?
And they had moved and one of them died. I must have said hold for confirmation. But
you have the, you can see where, that's where King K. Kaliki High School is now. One of
the changes, there was a pineapple field back then.
Just when I was on Wheel of Fortune, there's Patsy Jack and I.
How'd you do? I did okay. Yeah. Yeah, it was a blast. I was on three nights. They had
tryouts on Maui and I went out to cover it and I said, I'm going to try out. What the
heck? Yeah, I'm going to get on Wheel of Fortune and they did.
Okay, so this is the kids' favorite part of the exhibit. This is the revolving door.
So you go in here and you disappear. You disappear. Nice. Come on in. Okay, here we go. No ender.
Here's the dark room. Nice. It's to spend half my work day in the dark room and it was
like a place of, it was our domain. The people, the editors, the reporters, they just, they
knew that magic happened in here. They didn't know what really went on. It was a place that
smelled bad and they would give us these rolls of film that they had shot and then we made
pictures out of it somehow. And so people either, they come in and they say, wow, this
is interesting. I've never seen this. Or they sort of get this glassy look in their
eye and say, oh, the dark room. Those people always say the same thing. Where's the smell?
Where's the fixer? Yeah, where is that smell? But this is pretty true to life of what a dark
room would be like. You'd have your prints drying that you'd made and you got your different
trays for, for processing. We process film. And so we actually have some film that we
shot recently to show kids what that was like. Yeah, real film. And this is a contact strip
that's blown up, but this was a dare day rally with the big monster truck. And it's, I talked
to the kids about, okay, you know, this is the photo I chose, you know, why, what, you
know, take a look, which one would you pick? And we have the enlarger here. Nice. And it
still works. So the deal is we're going to try to actually get the chemistry and make
prints in this room, this dark room, make it a functional, actual working dark room
before, before the exhibits off. Yeah, that's the plan.
Have some kids come in and actually do some old school developing. Yeah. Yeah. Here's
a picture of Keith Tuguma giving a ticket. Yeah, he's never done that before. There
you can see the guy deserved it. Look how he's parked. He gave me two in one day for
the same thing. Really? My clips, the photos or the newspapers that I felt worth worthy
of keeping. Starting with the Matthew Taylor photo right there. That's my first photo in
the paper. And in the 80s, you can see I met Daryl Orwig right there. That's 1981. And
this must have been a big thing. That's when I mounted a camera on the wing of a biplane
and did a loop to loop over EO needle. But there's spot color. So you can see where it's
kind of black and white. And then right about in here, it becomes much more colorful. How
we deliver the news. This photo here is one of the ones that people seems to touch people
the most. And it's this dog. They just people just really like that picture. Well, I was
hanging off the end of the dock shooting without looking. And I got lucky. Okay, he
was holding onto the pier like this and shooting like that. Yeah, looks like this. This one,
I think conveys animals better to me, though. You know, you, what do they say? Dog bites
man. That's not a story. Man bites dog. That's a story. So this is a little play on that.
This is a cow bites cowboy. And this guy, these are the two best cowboys in the state
really. This is Stanley Joseph, Jr. from Oahu. And this is Ken Miranda from the big
island. Wow. And they are great cowboys. And that's up with the Makawau rodeo. Yeah, this
is the Makawau rodeo. One of my favorite things to shoot. Oh, yeah, it's a fun. Whoa, he looks
like it hurts too. I don't think he's enjoying that. Ouch. Yeah, I don't think he's smiling.
You know, I think he's smiling. But I think the cows enjoying it. Yeah, one for the cow.
What putting together exhibit, I realized that we have 60 photos on the wall. And I have
so many. This was my safety net. This slide show. It's an hour long, more than 700 pictures.
Wow. And I have an intern, Kyle Deely, he just graduated from Kamehameha School. He helped
assemble this, put it together for me. I expected the people to sort of treat it like
another picture. They might walk by, maybe look at it. But I'm amazed they have the
benches here. People sit down for an hour. And watch it. Watch the whole thing. And when
they do, they see people from the community that they know, like Bernard Calpe, you know,
these just a lot of faces from the from the island. Oh, yeah, blackie. Yeah. He's moving
the windsock bar. Right. This guy was blind, but he would use a power saw. And he was a
he was a he built this. Imagine cutting out with a table saw. Blind. Wow. Working with
him. He was a mechanic at the finer mill. Wow. Diabetes, and he lost his sight at 49,
aged 49. Wow. And he still had vision. Still knew how to do it. It still worked with stuff.
So he was still puttering around. Hey, there's Uncle Boy. Yeah, Uncle Boy. Miss him. Yeah.
What a great energy. Yeah. He was always positive. Yeah. He did. He did a Hawaiian spirit. Yeah.
I try to keep it as positive as I can. That's been one of the things I'm a positive person.
And I've and I think Maui is a very positive place. We're so fortunate. The people that
live here, it seems like it was a Maui attracts creative people that have a very positive energy.
And and I just I think with my photos, when I can, I try to convey that this this energy
that Maui has. And if I were to write a caption for this, I guess it would be that, you know,
it's it's 30 years of Maui's history, and how it's evolved, and newspapering and how it's
changed. And where we're going, I don't I don't know. There's we don't know the answer for that.
But the my news will be there to cover the story.
