From The Vault Of Art Shay: Politics Makes Strained Bedfellows

By Art Shay in News on Jan 11, 2012 8:00PM

Showing my liberal prejudice against my former CO, Ike, I showed a confused looking Republican lady with her spilled ice cream. (© Art Shay)\r\n

Politics is a game of give and take. Here in South Dakota, 1960, JFK , whose long ago predecessor had taken this chief\'s land, is now (futilely) importuned by the chief to give it back for implantation with a few gambling casinos. (© Art Shay)\r\n

Even with one wife, Lenore, Mormon Michigan Gov. George Romney, father of presidential candidate Mitt, had so many kids that Wikipedia lost or refuses to count them all, mentioning only Mitt, who was 15 around the time he helped George\'s campaign for the GOP nomination in 1968. When I shot this family picture at the Governor\'s Mansion in Michigan, Mitt was probably out learning the difficult sixth verse of \"America the Beautiful.\" When Mitt was a campaigner for himself, he espoused, if that\'s the word, abortion, and has spent much time since trying to abort the statement from his resume. (© Art Shay)\r\n

Barry Goldwater, campaigning with wife Margaret Johnson in Rockford in 1964. Time and then \<em\>Playboy\<\/em\> printed Barry\'s try at a semi-pornographic bunny joke. My favorite, probably apocryphal, Goldwater joke came when he was a younger candidate for Congress and (presumably before Phoenix had become the Winter Capital of Rich Jews in Northern Cities) the management of a golf course, hewing to their rules of restriction, attempted to keep Goldwater from teeing off because he was reportedly born Jewish. Teed off but smiling, Goldwater is reputed to have said, \"I\'m only half-Jewish, my mother was a shiksa&mdash;so can I play nine holes?\" There was no Charlie Rose in those days to ask him outright about this canard. And, come to think of it no Charlie Rose to defend his own name from being considered Jewish, either. In the bare-knuckled hustings of that day. Like maybe Rosenberg? (© Art Shay)\r\n

Props are a photographer\'s ally sometimes. At lectures (most recently at Apple) I deadpanned about how a determined photojournalist some times has to follow his subject into the next world. Richard J. Daley found this 1968 Mexican Harp as neat as any Irish one from the \<em\>Auld Sod\<\/em\> and trailed more new voters, too. (© Art Shay)\r\n

The bittersweet nature of picturing political people (even such well-dressed and well-intentioned ones as these earnest partisans) sometimes results in a parade of illiteracy as sad as the problem that brought the pickets to Springfield, IL in the first place. (© Art Shay)\r\n

(Legendary Chicago-based photographer Art Shay has taken photos of kings, queens, celebrities and the common man in a 60-year career. In this week's look at his photography archives, Art shares with us some of his favorite political shots over the years.)

When I was a young reporter for Life magazine hunting for picture stories, I was well aware of the seasonal nature of our world. Summer was, without doubt, the silly season. Idiots out on the water were always doing something picturable. Sex was year round as a good subject. Someone was always fucking up — the happy victim of the week. One up-and-coming starlet with a story ready to go had put out for the photographer in LA when he told her it was up for a cover, but the story limped along low on the list. Furious, she hocked her agent with so much talk of her once-again sacrifice of her virginity, he went to New York and hit a big editor, Wilson Hicks—a very serious and religious man—with a tiny additional push, joking about the price the starlet paid.

It was male complicity, rampant at the time, meant to speed up the story. Hicks, who had displaced the starlet's cover with a GI in recognition of that week's big event—Pearl Harbor—blew up and killed the starlet's cover for all time. And rusticated the agent for his ploy.

So much for lobbying .

Food and Sports were prominently in the mix: the first rollerskating hamburger joint ladies; the Notre Dame line at Mass praying to murder Tulane foreshadowed Tim Tebow. Theater? Of course! Movies? Yes!! How many times did 50 go into 20? Many. Cul-chah, ah yes, for we-uns born or bred as inter-lect-youalls. The kid novelists, chess champions, music prodigies.

But because our founder-owner Henry Luce was a serious man (with a strong right wing), we worked looking over our left shoulder carefully. One Saturday, at deadline time, the Great Man, unbeknownst to the edit writers, slipped into the hot editing seat, to work on headlines as he did in the early days. The writer had headlined a serious Chicago story capriciously, aiming his wit at a friend on the copy desk who he knew would change it to something inoffensive. But he had reckoned without Mr. Luce at the helm. Luce saw nothing wrong with the headline, so that issue of Life bore a spurious but accurate anti-vivisection caption: "Illinois Sure Loves Its Pussy."

Here, in this silliest of all recent election seasons, are some of my own forays.

If you can't wait until this time every Wednesday to get your Art Shay fix, please check out the photographer's blog, which is updated regularly. Art Shay's book, Chicago’s Nelson Algren, is also available at Amazon.