The first jury to recognize the visceral, heart-wrenching power of the now-famous Oklahoma City bombing photograph taken by Charles Porter IV did not include seasoned newspapermen, Pulitzer Prize panelists or any journalists at all. It was a group of neighborhood ladies at Walmart.
“They were looking over my shoulder, and they started crying. [One] said, ‘Oh, honey, what have you got? What did you take a picture of?'” Porter says. “And that’s when I kind of went, ‘Wait a minute. Hold on. I might have something here.'”
Years before the smartphone would make everyone a citizen journalist with the ability to take gigabytes of pictures and video that could be edited and shared with the world nearly instantaneously, Porter drove the roll of film that included one of the most famous pictures of the 20th century to his neighborhood Walmart.
A 25-year-old bank employee with side jobs taking pictures of weddings and University of Oklahoma athletics, Porter knew the girls behind the counter, and thought they might be persuaded to process his film ahead of other customers, which they did.
The handful of pictures he was given included one of Oklahoma City firefighter Chris Fields cradling the limp body of a bloodied infant, an extraordinary moment of tenderness and humanity amid the inhumanity of the terrorist bombing of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that left 168 people dead in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
Porter had no idea what to do with his pictures and whether anyone would be interested in them. Acting on a tip from a media-savvy friend, he found the local Associated Press office in the phone book and drove over, leafing through his pictures as he went. None impressed him more than any other.
“I was still new enough to photography that I was looking at my photos and going, ‘Man, these are really clear, and really crisp, and they’re really in focus,’ and I was really excited,” Porter says with a laugh.
AP photo editor Wendel Hudson knew instantly the magnitude of what Porter handed him. Two of Porter’s pictures were sent out to AP clients around the world, and the image of Fields and baby Baylee Almon appeared on the front page of hundreds of newspapers and magazines. Porter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for spot news photography.
Porter will be one of the speakers on Saturday, May 14, at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, which is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize with daylong events, free and open to the public, and the opening of the exhibit “Pulitzer Back Stories.”
Among the other winners and finalists scheduled to speak are four-time Pulitzer winner Carol Guzy (of the Washington Post and the Miami Herald); three-time finalist Mike Stocker of the Sun Sentinel; Greg Lovett, picture editor at the Palm Beach Post, speaking about Dallas Kinney’s 1970 Pulitzer-winning photographs of Florida migrant workers; and Brian Smith of the Orange County Register, which won for its coverage of the 1984 Olympics.
The self-effacing Porter, now a physical therapist living in Fort Worth and the father of two young children, has an uneasy relationship with his Pulitzer Prize. He does not display the picture in his home. He keeps the trophy, an inscribed 2.5-inch block of glass, in a cabinet next to a similar trophy he won in a charity golf scramble.
Porter is “ecstatic” at being invited to PBPC’s Pulitzer celebration, but says he shouldn’t even be allowed in the same ZIP code as Carol Guzy.
“Who am I? Don’t mistake for one second that I think that I am any kind of professional photographer at all,” Porter says. “I believe I have some talent to take photos. I believe I have a decent eye, but I’m not in their category. Never have been. Never will be. I was placed in the right place at the right time, and I was prepared and equipped to take advantage of that opportunity.”
When his bank building shook on that fateful morning, Porter assumed the city had imploded a downtown office building and thought the resulting wreckage might make an interesting subject to practice abstract photography for his portfolio. He went to his car and grabbed his only camera, a Nikon, and walked a couple of blocks until he felt the crunch of broken glass under his feet and smoke and dust filled the air.
Limited by the film in his camera, Porter relied on shooting one frame at a time. His sports training taught him to anticipate movement and to keep the eye that was not on the viewfinder open to see action on the periphery.
He was focused on an ambulance, where an injured person was being tended to, when out of the corner of his eye he saw a police officer emerge from the rubble with Baylee Almon and hand her to Fields. He took one picture of the handoff and another of Fields walking away. Baylee later was pronounced dead at the hospital.
“I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t frame it. I just shot it at the right time,” Porter says.
Porter credits a higher power for his famous photograph, which he says illustrates who we humans are, instinctively, to one another when confronted by such horror.
“There’s comfort and compassion in the fireman, who took his gloves off, before he grabbed a hold of the infant,” Porter says. “He’s not holding her with his big, old nasty firefighter gloves. He’s got her in his bare hands.”
The Palm Beach Photographic Centre, 415 Clematis St., in West Palm Beach will celebrate the centennial of the Pulitzer Prize with a series of public events noon-8 p.m. Saturday, May 14, and the opening of the exhibit “Pulitzer Back Stories.” The exhibit runs until Aug. 6. Admission is free. For information, call 561-253-2600 or go to Workshop.org.
