LIFE THROUGH A LENS

Photographer John Chao chronicles 50 years of adventures in a new book

story by RUTH BERKOWITZ | photos by JOHN CHAO

Darrell Jones

Last February as snow fell fiercely in the Gorge, forcing I-84 to shut down intermittently, John Chao braved the weather. After taking a Covid test, he packed his suitcase and drove from his home in Mosier to the Portland airport where he boarded a nearly empty flight to Seattle and then to Seoul, South Korea. Pursuant to pandemic protocol in that country, Korean authorities dressed in hazmat suits, face shields and masks greeted Chao when he disembarked and escorted him to a small hotel room, where he quarantined for two weeks.

The quarantine was fortuitous, even a “blessing of sorts,” Chao says, because it gave him time to work on his book, 50-Year Vision Quest. Chao, who was born in Taiwan and spent the first decade of his childhood in Peru and Brazil before his family settled in Michigan, originally planned to print his photographic memoir in China. However, the Chinese government demanded he remove two of his photographs. Chao felt that he couldn’t change history, but he could change printers. So, he found a top-notch printer in Korea and got to work.

In the 12-by-20-foot hotel room, Chao tuned all 500 of his photographs, making sure the color specs matched the Korean printer’s profile. Chao was used to this tedious type of work from his days as editor and publisher of the award-winning American Windsurfer magazine.

The result is a stunning, museum-quality book documenting Chao’s life as a photojournalist and adventurer. The 264-page book is not only visually captivating but also a page-turner, full of enthralling stories detailing a life well lived — or as Chao puts it, “a life well received.”

“The camera was a passport to adventure,” Chao tells me as we sit in the living room of his Mosier home. His 6-foot-2-inch frame serves him well as a photographer, allowing him to stand over crowds and empowering him with a physical presence that has sparked memorable expressions. With the west wind shaking the oak trees outside and rattling the windows, Chao reflects on his past.

Courtesy of John Chao John Chao, inset, has photographed subjects all over the world, including one-time presidential candidate John Kerry windsurfing in Massachusetts, top, and a pair of Tibetan mastiffs he encountered while en route to Mount Everest.

In a way, Chao’s home is a metaphor for of his life. It had no concrete plans, no intricate architectural blueprints, but it is intriguing and stunning. He bought the eight-acre property in 2005 while looking for land for his girlfriend’s 30 dogs (she was a breeder). A few years later, when he started building his home, local resident Israel Urenda knocked on his door to see if he needed help. Since Urenda and his brother were skilled in stone and stucco work, Chao decided to use their talents. The stone walls and fireplace evolved with a focus on the magical view of Mount Hood. The deck, also constructed with rock, contains an outdoor pizza oven where many have gathered over the years. The greenhouse this summer is hot and fertile, overflowing with sweet tomatoes.

“I never set out to be a photojournalist,” says Chao. In fact, his parents had hoped he would become a doctor like his sister. But he was the black sheep of the family, in no hurry to get through college, much less go to medical school. “I squeezed four years at Wheaton College into eight,” he says, smiling and shaking his salt-and-pepper shoulder-length hair.

In 1970, 17-year-old Chao became interested in photography and the darkroom while working on the high school yearbook. It just so happened, while roaming the streets of Flossmoor, Ill., with a camera in hand, that Chao snapped a photograph of a burning building and submitted

John Chao’s book, left, documents his life as a photojournalist and adventurer. It features hundreds of photos taken over the last 50 years — including the first image he sold, right, to the Chicago Tribune in 1970.

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it to the Chicago Tribune, receiving $25 and validation for the image. When he developed the photograph, Chao noticed the silhouette of a firefighter that made the image even more intriguing. “The camera saw something far more interesting than just a burning building!” Chao writes in his book. “This discovery made me realize I had better pay attention to what the camera sees rather than what I observed. It was eye-opening.”

Chao took this lesson and appreciation of the camera with him when he worked for GEO magazine and the Topeka Capital-Journal newspaper. His images, some of which appeared on the cover of The New York Times, Newsweek, Fortune and other prestigious publications, require you to look deeper, notice more, whether it’s Bill Clinton’s beaming grin or the dreamy look of a young Wounaan boy living in Panama’s remote Darien jungle.

John Chao photographed a young boy in the remote Darien Jungle in Panama in 1973, left, and Bill Clinton in 1979 when he was governor of Arkansas, above.

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“When you don’t have expectations for life, you experience beyond your expectations,” Chao says philosophically, recounting his experience with his friend Walter Ordway, who lived with Chao in Mosier for nearly a year. Ordway had biked around the world for 23 years and met countless interesting people, including the Dalai Lama. In one of their many fireside chats, Ordway told Chao, “I learned early on that life can make better decisions than you can make. Your job is to stay out of the way.”

A father and his young son walk down a road in Taiwan in 1980, left. A Chinese man in Lhasa, Tibet, grins with the Potala Palace in the background, 2018, right.

Living in the moment has enabled Chao to gather friends from all walks of life, many of whom appear in his book. His website has a section titled Friends where he has chronicled thousands of pictures of his friends and their individual stories. He writes, “They are enshrined by the blink of a camera’s eye, providing reference, a road-map and a testament to Living Art.”

Chao’s love of windsurfing lured him to settle in the Gorge. It also gave him a slot at the 1984 Olympics where he represented Taiwan. Perhaps one of the most intriguing stories relating to windsurfing is his friendship with John Kerry.

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In 1998, when Chao’s American Windsurfer magazine was headquartered in New Hampshire, Chao wanted to interview Kerry, then Senator of Massachusetts. Kerry’s press secretary allotted Chao 30 minutes for an interview at Kerry’s Nantucket home. When Chao arrived, he found Kerry lugging a windsurfer out of his garage. Chao ditched the interview. Kerry had extra equipment and they windsurfed together for days. Their friendship deepened as the two met up in other windy spots, including San Francisco, Aruba, Hood River and Maui.

Later in the year, Chao met Kerry away from the water, on the floor of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. He wrote an extensive and personal article which he published in American Windsurfer: “John Kerry: The Windsurfer who Could be President.” Chao’s intuition sparked him to publish 20,000 extra copies of the magazine. “This nearly bankrupted me, and we didn’t sell any extra copies,” Chao chuckles. But eight years later, when Kerry ran for president, Chao happily distributed the remaining copies, hoping it would help Kerry’s campaign.

As I marvel at the images and stories in Chao’s book, I think about the similarities between photography and windsurfing in that they are both transformable. John Kerry is now a kiteboarder. “Today everyone is a photographer,” Chao says, adding that the world of photojournalism has changed. He reflects on this change in his book, noting “The digital world has liberated the gods of serendipity! Images once restricted by the number of frames on a roll of film are today unfathomable in the ever-growing megabyte to gigabyte to terabyte capacity.”

So, Chao is pivoting to scriptwriting. Two years ago, he finished writing a movie script titled Hello Dalai about Walter Ordway’s rambling life and his encounter with the Dalai Lama. Turning a script into a film is no easy task, but for Chao, it’s just his next quest in a life made full through curiosity and adventure.

To learn more, and purchase the book, visit johnchao.com. A book celebration and signing are set for Sept. 25 at MoonMountain Highway in Bingen, Wash. Ruth Berkowitz lives in the moment and loves adventure. She came to the Gorge for windsurfing and when not out on her bike or the water, she is a mediator in Hood River.

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Left to right: Cathie Ward RNBSN, Gabriela Benavides CMA, Stephanie Serak Office Manager, Mendy Maccabee MD FACS FAAOA, Amanda Alvarez MA, Lisa Sponhauer NP