Brian is going to Iraq Monday.
He's going to be gone for three weeks and I'm going to revisit some of the better families
that I've touched on.
I just wanted to.
I never took a photo class.
I never took a journalism class.
I just sort of learned by doing.
Well, I grew up outside of Boston in a suburb town called Dover.
I went to Dover High School, public school and then graduated and went out to UMass
and Amherst.
Because they almost sort of know what's going on.
Alright.
See ya.
My roommate, my freshman year, was the assistant photo editor of the school paper and I really
got immersed into it.
I got like a.8cume I think that semester.
No I know.
I just wish there was some left over for the project, but that's okay.
That'll be fine.
I fell in love with not only photography but I think the whole newspaper business in general.
It's not like I came into this with like I'm a photographer and I end up being a newspaper
photographer.
It all sort of happened seamlessly, simultaneously.
I was shooting pictures of the school paper, getting off on that rush of like being at a
concert or a basketball game and seeing a picture in the paper the next day and sort
of learning my craft through the newspaper genre.
That's sort of what I did.
Before I met him I saw his pictures and we started picking up the Patriot ledger and
saying well who's this new kid in town because this is most definitely a new kid in town
and it says here his name is Bill Green.
The Patriot ledger was a great place because there was just endless amounts of space.
My boss started a weekly picture page which a lot of the other photographers didn't show
much of an interest in but I thought it was great.
I mean you come up with your own story idea, shoot it and I was actually down in the composing
room laying it out and sometimes writing them.
So that was a tremendous learning experience as far as learning how to tell a story in
multiple photos, not having them be redundant and also seeing it from the other end as a
designer what works and what doesn't.
When you're stuck with laying out the work that you created I think it really makes you
a better photographer as far as thinking ahead of like oh I need this, I need that, you know
you learn about detail shots and closers and dominant images because you have to put it
all together so it makes you a better photographer.
I tried to convince him to come to the globe and I knew that he had turned down the job
once before.
I was having such a great time there and I realized you know with the union it would
have meant working nights and weekends for forever I mean or until you moved up.
After a lot of soul searching I turned it down.
I told him, I said you know this is not going to happen every day, these jobs don't come
around every day and this is the greatest opportunity you're going to get.
But luckily a few years later I got another phone call from Stan and he said you know
there isn't going to be a third phone call.
At that point you know when you've done the bean supper five straight years and the picture
pages of the mud wrestlers and the kids first haircut and the country fair and after five
years or so you're sort of feeling like I need a new challenge and so I went for it.
Teddy.
I'm Claire with the Multi-Quality.
When you first meet Bill he looks like a hippie.
He's like right out of the 60s and I'm sorry for saying that Bill but you know it's true.
For me and for our family I think that kind of put us at ease his free spiritedness.
Bill put us at ease right away.
The Civil War had generated lots of conflicts in villages where families were separated
and over time a very large group of young people mostly boys were moving around the
country looking for safety from the conflict in the Civil War.
There were these numbers large number of youth languishing in this refugee camp in Kakuma
and through the United Nations the State Department and other agencies decided that
they would get 3,500 of these kids out of the camp all of them before they turned 18
and into refugee centers in the United States.
My family would be taking in 4 of these refugees in addition to our already 4 kids so our family
was about to double in size.
I think the mood that really struck me was sort of you know strangers in a strange land
and it wasn't too hard to show that.
I mean I remember at one point him saying what are stairs for you know your son shines
but it gives no warmth.
But he has some wonderfully deep questions and once he said why do black people not
live in the country they all live in the city because they were Dinka tribesmen.
You know another great question he said he said why are your rich people skinny and your
poor people fat?
It made me think I couldn't answer some of these questions but it was wonderful observations
from like this pure being from a different place.
So we decided that it'd be fun to take these guys to a big community swimming pool in Vermont.
This is Bill I'm going to get a picture in the showers and not that kind of a picture
but I think another photographer might have come up and he might have been more interested
in the action photos of him coming off the diving board which would have been great.
But I think Bill went to a different place.
You know we never felt like he invaded our privacy as he was invading our privacy.
I was thinking maybe we should go embedded with someone you know try to get in because
I knew the airport was closed and Bill said no we should get as close as we can and work
our way over and that was exactly right.
The first trip I made to Haiti was in 82 for the ledger.
It was a kind of a mission of mercy church group that went down and it was fine and but
I fell in love with the people.
The story was fine but it was not terribly exciting.
I guess the first thing that struck me I mean other than just the sheer horror of the event
was that things hadn't changed much in Haiti in 20 years.
You know when you're doing something like that your first you get so jazzed up because
being the photographer is almost the most insignificant part.
You just fly by the seat of your pants and experience.
He's a great journalist where he finds stories.
He would you know I would come back and I would be writing a story.
He would follow his photos and he'd just get in the truck with the translator and run out
and find another story.
He suggested a story about what Haiti is like at night and it ended up being one of my one
of my favorite stories I've ever written and and it's because of Bill you know because
it seems like an obvious story but there was a lot of concern about safety at night and
all these things but and we're like well how visual can it be there's no light but but
we were able to to do it.
Maria was was wonderful to work with probably one of the best writers oftentimes I think
photographers have been relegated as second-class citizens in a newspaper and so often we've
been trained you know like dogs this is the story you go shoot it you know but every day
she would you know would talk and and would sort of come up with best story available
I mean sometimes they were hers sometimes they were mine.
You know he can go into a country where he doesn't speak the language and not only get
around but but but tell a true story you know really really nailing and and and do it with
a with a great deal of compassion so I feel in front of the hospital where he captured
you know this this child you know with long eyelashes and she was she was really dehydrated
and I felt gasping for air you know we it was probably one of the most important stories
we told the people dying in front of the hospital where they had come for help and no one was
helping and that those photos were so vivid that they you know I started getting emails
and Haiti right away from people here and and also from the people who were going to
be helping them and and maybe folks said you know wish they had moved a little faster to
help them.
I'm proud of the work I did in Haiti but you know I you also see 500 other photographers
running around some guys there for two months and you might be there for a week and so it
you do what you can you do it the best of your ability and you're working crazy out
20-hour days and going nuts and I mean it's hard it's terribly heartbreaking I mean you're
just you're exhausted but there's still a special place in my heart for finding a story
in New England that no one else is doing or no one it isn't in the public realm of consciousness
and I just get more satisfaction out of that because in effect you've you've discovered
and you've brought to light something I mean any any idiot can get on a plane and go to
Haiti and a lot of us do but I get a special joy out of covering kind of untold stories
in New England.
He feels when he finishes a story like this how lucky he is you know he says how the way
it's the condition some of these people live in and you know because we've talked about
many times when I come back home I say boy am I a lucky guy and you know this is a nice
area to live in New England's a nice area he liked the project he was a big project
guy he could make a project and do a nice piece locally he didn't have to go to a third
world country.
My father lives up country in northern New Hampshire so I've spent a lot of time up
there over the years and I've always have a real love of the people there's something
about them they are devoid of affect they have no agenda they're not worried about their
political correctness factor what they're wearing how they appear what they're thinking
they're just like blank slates you know I am who I am and I didn't know a guy once I
said do you mind if I hang out with you and take your picture and he said I don't care
and the way he said it was like he really meant I don't care you know I don't get it
but if you want to hang out with me that's fine.
I think Bill stays fresh because he's always working on projects it's easy for a newspaper
photographer to burn out you get the same assignments constantly and his longevity has been remarkable
really because I remember 25 years ago him being a great photographer and the career
arc of most photographers doesn't last that long they burn out especially newspaper photographers
they get better quickly they hit a peak there's so much burnout in the industry and Bill's
never burned out he won photographer a year twice and that's been done before but usually
a photographer will win it you know once and then win it again like the next year or a
year after or something like that and Bill won it 10 years apart and it seems like he's
always sort of in the running to win it again and let's face it most of us go to the desk
at a newspaper and you get handed two or three pieces of paper every day and you're shooting
things that our reporters think are good stories and they often are great it's some of many
of them are not conducive to photography or really storytelling photography so every year
I try to and I don't like have a checklist but I usually end up producing two to three
to five stories that I think are stories that are not only journalistically sound but also
visually rich but Bill is a little bit of a mystery to me to be really honest I just
I can't figure out how he does it you know he's this guy with who never appears to comb
his hair and like is totally zen and can kick back at some you know hall and play the guitar
and just have a good time just like this regular Massachusetts guy and then you know then he's
in the middle of Port-au-Prince driving around like he's lived there forever I don't know
how he does it. Bill does a really good job of balancing work commitments in life which
is really important a lot of photographers get so focused on career I guess a lot of
you know anybody in general can get so focused on their career that they neglect other parts
of their life then their life is out of balance and then they they burn out. I don't really
think about staying fresh I just I'm I guess I'm lucky that I have an awful lot of diversions
I mean you know I have a wonderful wife and I have three kids I I play in a rock and roll
band with my best friends as from childhood I'm an avid fisherman fly fisherman and I
never really thought about it but I think yeah maybe that gives you just sort of a total
cleansing or you know of your mind and you're just move on to other things and you're not
even really thinking about photography I don't have time I mean there's other things to do
but while you're doing those other things because you're always thinking about it but
you're not really thinking about it but it's in your soul I mean you'll stumble across
something and say oh my god that's a great that should do that story. I'll probably have
the big one on the court I just love the game. Well Bill Bill was always a storyteller and
I think you Bill will tell stories well in any medium he chooses. And as long as my body
holds out and my mind holds out I'll be on the court. When I start working on that story
I remember thinking oh this is great you know you get her diving for loose balls and then
you also will can show her as a grandmother thinking you know how do you you know juxtapose
this aggressive young soul with like being quote-unquote sixty-nine and I remember saying
do you have grandchildren she said no and I remember thinking oh great you know I was
heartbroken. And then I said what do you do Sheila when you're not playing basketball
she says well I go to church and I said what do you do at church and she said I'm in the
bell choir and lights went off in my head choir she's a choir girl. So I sort of that
just came about and I sort of used that and then you know her taking her gloves off and
lacing up her sneakers I thought it was a neat way to put her in a different context
where you maybe would normally think of a seventy sixty nine year old woman. You know
as a photographer at a newspaper you have very little control over you know you shoot
what you shoot but then whatever ends up in the paper it's hard to know. What he understood
was with video he could own the story. He loved the fact that he could just put it all
together himself exactly the way he wanted to tell the story. I really enjoyed the whole
multimedia thing at newspapers because as a storyteller you know spaces decline in newspapers
you know the space is free and yet you know the addition of audio and or video and stills
I mean it's like there's no rules. The games all open again and you feel a little bit like
you're twenty five again and that you know you've got this whole new world to discover.
A good photographer wants a good assignment and will do a great job. A great photographer
doesn't need a good assignment to do a great job and Green's a great photographer. He's
got such a great rapport with his subjects they trust him you can see it in the photographs
you can see also that he repays that trust with a lot of respect he always treats his
subjects with a lot of dignity. I think his curiosity has never been dampened by his age
or his years of doing this type of assignments. He's a real package and he can do anything
that's why he's very valuable. He's got the feeling and what he sees touches him he captures
that and then he touches us. He's always looking for ideas about how he's approaching from
everyone he talks to he just he likes talking he likes to listen even better. He's so passionate
about his stories that he will just find a way to do them and he does a lot of them on
his own time. I think I'll always be taking pictures. The great thing about photography
is that age doesn't affect it much you don't lose your eye hopefully. But I don't know
I never really spend time thinking about the future I mean I try to think about like right
now or like tomorrow what am I going to do but I don't think I'll be going away anytime
soon as far as telling stories. I mean where I am or how I'm doing it sort of always seems
somewhat irrelevant. I've got a million ideas I want to pursue and I'll keep pursuing.
I've got a million ideas I want to pursue and I've got a million ideas I want to pursue
and I've got a million ideas I want to pursue and I've got a million ideas I want to pursue
and I've got a million ideas I want to pursue and I've got a million ideas I want to pursue
and I've got a million ideas I want to pursue and I've got a million ideas I want to pursue
