Rangefinder Magazine
December 2004

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Profile: The Versatile Paul Slaughter by Lou Jacobs Jr.
From Jazz Musicians to Olympic Athletes

Dawn Light on Westlake, Hangzhou, China

Paul Slaughter explains his three professions: “After studying the method style of acting in New York City in the early ’60s, I worked in summer theater and TV in the U.S. and Australia. Following that, I landed a DJ job on an FM jazz station in Los Angeles, and my third profession has been photography. My friend, film producer Leslie Stevens, encouraged me when he saw some of my experimental pictures. I got a bank loan to buy Nikon and Hasselblad systems. With a portfolio, I approached the contacts I had at recording companies and then began shooting album covers.

“Some of my first subjects were the Jackson Five when Michael was 10, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, Carmen McRae and Miles Davis. From my theater work I learned about lighting and design, and using medium format I did studio portrait portfolios for actors, though now I use a Nikon SLR system.”

Paul never had a mentor but early on was impressed with the work of Ernst Haas and Pete Turner and the compositions of Paul Strand. Paul Slaughter is self taught and never worked for another photographer. He studied the works of great painters, and when he got challenging jobs, he shot experiments first as rehearsal. In 1971 after a year as a photographer in L.A., he took his portfolio to New York to show ad agencies and publishers. His reception varied from “No style” to “I really like your work.” At Life he met Melvin Scott, photographic director of Time-Life Books. The two men enjoyed good rapport, and as soon as he was back in L.A., Paul received an assignment from Scott.

Wynton Marsalis, Lensic Theater, Santa Fe, NM. 2002	Pina Bausch Dance Company, 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, Pasadena,CA.	Tibetan Monks, Samye Monastery, Tibet.

Over a three-month period he worked on the book American Cooking, The Great West, for which he traveled to the Southwest and Santa Fe for the first time. Then he photographed leading film composers for an “As You Remember Them” series for Time-Life Records. Among his subjects were Henry Mancini, Miklos Roza who scored Ben Hur and Bronislaw Caper of Green Dolphin Street fame. “Fortunately the work kept coming,” Paul recalls, “including photographing celebrities on TV talk shows. I also covered the Emmys and Academy Awards for an agency that marketed internationally. A lot of my advertising pictures were selected from my stock collection.”

Another career aspect for which Paul is well known is photographing jazz musicians. He admits being a “jazz nut,” and he had met and interviewed some legends of jazz on his radio show, such as Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Count Basie. He told me, “I began photographing musicians at concerts, at small Southern California clubs and at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Sometimes I was on assignment, other times I photographed when there were opportunities, and also for the love of music. There was nothing like it, subtle dramatic lighting and listening to cool sounds. I shot Tri-X and tungsten color films. In the past couple of years I’ve had the opportunities to photograph Wynton Marsalis, Wayne Shorter, Nancy Wilson, Dave Brubeck and others.”

Boat with Man, Bali, Indonesia.	Dizzy Gillespie, backstage at The Lighthouse, Hermosa Beach, CA. 1975.	Hemp Carrier, Cochin, Kerala, India.

In the mid-1970s Paul worked and traveled in Europe and Africa for three years, capturing lifestyles, culture and landscapes. On his return home, he signed with stock agency Image Bank, and was with them through their transitions under Kodak and Getty. He left TIB/Getty in 2002 and is now with another stock agent. He has an agent for his celebrity and music collection.

Much of Paul’s foreign travel occurred between 1975 to 1992. During that time he worked for the Los Angeles Times Home magazine to produce, write and photograph three special issues on Greece, Yugoslavia, Morocco and Tunisia. In 1989/90 he was a contributing writer and photographer to Petersen’s Photographic magazine and wrote a monthly travel story about various states and countries. “For those stories I created images of lifestyle and travel topics,” he says.

A counterpoint to Paul’s jazz photography is his architectural photography. “During my European and African travels,” he observes, “I learned a lot about using natural light on well designed architecture.” Where he now lives, in Santa Fe, NM, he has photographed the modern Santa Fe Art Institute as well as the new Institute of the American Indian Arts campus. Some of his work includes interiors for which he uses a 28mm PC (perspective control) lens mainly. Paul’s repertoire also includes fine art photographs derived from world travel and from many locations in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona for the last 15 years.

Roof Top Tiles, Kyoto, Japan.	Dave Brubeck, 83 years old, Popejoy Hall, LTNM, Albuquerque, NM. October, 2003.

Paul specializes in versatility, evidenced by his becoming the official photographer of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. “It was the result of sheer luck and a bit of a good deed,” he informed me. It began with magazine coverage he did of the Bella Lewitsky Dance Company, which had a limited budget, so he gave them usage rights for a small fee. This led the company manager to suggest that he contact the L.A. Olympic Committee. They hired him as staff photographer for his versatility and good sense of design, he says. Months before the games began he ran a complete studio at Olympic headquarters in an old Howard Hughes aircraft factory.

He shot everything from tabletops to portraits. During the games he hired other photographers to help cover events. Intriguingly, he says, “I was assigned to capture a fine art look of individual sporting events and had unequaled access to everything.” He covered the Olympic Torch Relay from NYC through many states to Los Angeles. When the final L.A. Olympic report was published, with 11x17-inch pages in two volumes weighing 45 pounds, numerous of Paul’s images were used including three gatefolds shot with a Fuji Panoramic camera. The city of Los Angeles exhibited 36 of his fine art prints of the games, and sets of the collection are now with the Los Angeles Natural History Museum and the L.A. Public Library.

Over the years Paul’s fine art work, mainly landscapes and details, has been exhibited in galleries in L.A., Hong Kong, New York City, Santa Fe and Albuquerque. A photograph of Carl Lewis running his 100-meter victory lap at the L.A. Olympic games is in the ASMP collection at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. Collectors and other museums also hold selections of his photographs, to which he adds new material intermittently.

	Samburu Woman, Samburu, Kenya.

For the past 14 years Paul has been on the staff of the prestigious Santa Fe Workshop where he has conducted photographers to locations in New Mexico. Previously he led Thru The Lens Tours in Asia, Europe and Africa. He told me, “Tours and workshops have been a great teaching experience that allowed me to create a great collection of my own work. In workshops I assist participants to develop their own photographic vision. I emphasize that ‘less is more,’ and that the camera should be an extension of one’s creative vision.” Asked whether the digital revolution had changed things, he says, “Not with the way I teach, but more digital equipment is appearing in my workshops. Whether analog or digital, cameras are still tools to record creative images.”

For 15 years Paul has lived in Santa Fe where he does architectural and magazine assignments and supplies stock to various clients. His wife, Inée, is executive director of the Indigenous Language Institute, and they have a teenage son who is deep into his computer. Paul says, “I love the climate here at 7000 feet where I have the good fortune to capture, now and then, one of those exquisite plays of light on the New Mexican landscape. I don’t think I’ll ever retire because creating new images is always a joy.

1984 Olympics. Carl Lewis carrying the American flag during his victory lap after winning the 100 meters.

“Presently, I scan my work on a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000, enhance the pictures in Photoshop and print on an Epson 2200. I’ve been using a Nikon Coolpix camera to learn the basic techniques of the digital medium. Attending a recent invitational workshop on digital SLRs at the Santa Fe Workshops, I was sold on Nikon digital cameras and look forward to their new 12 million pixel model D2X to be released in 2005.”

Paul Slaughter seems very comfortable with his versatility because having several ways of expression is always rewarding. He loves jazz and classical music, which are quite consoling, especially on winter days when he’s temporarily snowed in. He thinks widely, and says, “Photography is a strong, visceral force in furthering unity and understanding… It enables us to show the magnificent beauty of our fragile planet and its extraordinary people.”

An exhibition to Paul’s jazz work is scheduled in Santa Fe at the new Verve Gallery (505-982-5009) from Jan. 21 through Feb. 26, 2005. Note some of his photographs on www.slaughterphoto.com or www.Jazzphotoart.com.

Lou Jacobs Jr is the author of 28 how-to photography books, the latest of which is Studio Lighting (Amherst Media). He has taught at UCLA and Brooks, and his photographs and stories have been published in numerous magazines. He is a longtime member of ASMP and enjoys shooting stock during his travels in the U.S. and abroad which is leased through several agencies.