Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | C | Columbia Journalism Review

MaryAnne Golon: picking shots. (The Light Box).

Article Excerpt
Last year MaryAnne Golon, Time magazine's picture editor, dispatched some of the world's best photojournalists to cover the border between Mexico and the U.S. The resulting photographs, by people like James Nachtwey, Alex Webb, and Vincent Musi, were gritty and dense, smoldering with the colors of the people and the sky and the land. Golon loved them.

But she had to fight for them. Arthur Hochstein, the magazine's art director, wanted something less photojournalistic, more stylistic. "He didn't think the photos were right for Time," says Michele Stephenson, the magazine's director of photography. Golon stood her ground. "Welcome to Amexica" ran thirty-two pages as the June 11, 2001, cover story.

If anyone understands how to maneuver in the complex and often cutthroat world of photojournalism, it is Golon. "MaryAnne is a very forceful personality," says Stephenson. "She is opinionated and passionate." But to become such a newsroom force has required more than passion; it has been a nineteen-year learning curve, and along the way Golon even had to quit the magazine and then come back to it.

"I left Time because I suffered from bloody head syndrome," Golon says. "I was like a boxer who couldn't get back into the ring. Walter Isaacson (Time's managing editor then) was not exactly pro-photojournalism; it wasn't considered a `hard element.' I needed to go where...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!