"Trial by Fire"

Trial by Fire

A 15-Year Old Neophyte Photographer Grows Up Quickly During A Final Spectacle in the Waning Days of Hippydom.

Article and Photos by John Elliott

The national media was buzzing and the nectar that summer of 1972 was a double dose of news practically in my back yard: the Democratic and Republican conventions in Miami Beach. Everyone in Florida seemed either excited or apprehensive about the focus to the south, just a couple of bus rides from the Coral Gables home where I lived with my parents and two sisters. I had just become interested in photography earlier that year,

and the important events seemed to me to be the perfect forge for my imperfect skills. From occasional film clips on the local news, everyone was reminded that four years earlier, the previous national conventions in Chicago triggered national outrage at the oppressive brutality of police countering anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. So I suspected there would be many interesting scenes to capture on film.

My first camera, a Miranda Sensorex 35mm, was a far cry from a pro’s Nikon or Leica, and I had just one lens. I had forsaken purchasing any additional equipment so I could invest in a decent darkroom enlarger, which I set up in my bedroom closet. Now I felt I could do it all, but my actual photography experience was minimal, consisting of exposing a few rolls with images of pets and school friends.

It had been just a few months since I had learned the science and a little more about the art of photography–as part of an architecture/drafting class in junior high school. But as a child, I had absorbed

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and enjoyed the photography of Life Magazine. I particularly appreciated a Life book we owned, The Family of Man, with its vibrant and emotional studies of people from around the world.

So, In spite of the numerous misgivings of my mother, I would set off one sun-baked morning with camera bag and just 5 rolls of black-and-white film and soon found myself deboarding my final bus and walking toward the Miami Beach Convention Center. It was my trial by fire and would be the first of two sojourns to a spectacle which would form a foundation for my romance with photography as a creative outlet and communications tool.

The vibrancy of the anti-Vietnam War movement, in all its confrontational colors, would reach its climax that summer. Nixon’s “peace with honor” plan (promoted by his administration as “Vietnamization”) had already failed, and the daily toll of scores of war casualties, media coverage of all aspects of horror, and fresh and more detailed revelations of the