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Fred Maroon Remembered: Forever the 'Amateur' By
Frank Van Riper He
was never a polished public speaker, though he spoke in public
frequently and well, and always to enthusiastic audiences.
His ideas, his
reminiscences, his own enthusiasm, always threatened to outpace his
delivery. But if Fred Maroon, who died this week at age 77 after a
long battle with cancer, minded that he did not have the stentorian
delivery of a professional talker, he never showed it.
All that proved, he might have said, is that as a speaker he was
an "amateur," just as he often described himself as an amateur
photographer.
My longtime friend and colleague, who will be remembered as one
of the finest photographers of his generation, delighted in telling
audiences that despite any renown he had achieved over half a
century he viewed himself as an amateur – and hoped he always would
be one.
Because "amateur," Fred would say, is based on the Latin word
"amare" – to love. And an amateur is someone who does something
simply for the love of it.
And oh how Fred Maroon could love: photography, his wife and
partner Suzy, his kids, his friends, good food. Life itself.
He even loved Washington, D.C., with a patriot's forgiveness of
its foibles and faults. It was no accident that of the dozen or so
books he produced during a stunningly varied career, the best
reflect life in the Capital City. Maroon on Georgetown, first
published in 1985, became an instant classic for its elegant,
sympathetic portrayal of D.C.'s most famous neighborhood.
His later books, The United States Capitol (1993),
followed by The Supreme Court of the United States (1996) –
each in its way a masterpiece of composition and lighting – were
part of a hoped-for trilogy on the three branches of government. But
the Clinton White House, not illness, thwarted Maroon's plan, never
giving him the necessary time, much less permission, to photograph
the executive mansion.
Still, Fred never was one to sit around looking for something to
do. The years he would have spent photographing The White House
were instead spent putting together what arguably was his most
important exhibition: a huge show of his Watergate-era work, first
shown in 1999 at the National Museum of American History. It was a
rare and beautiful tribute to one photographer's work. Covering one
of the most turbulent times in U.S. political history, these
pictures were published the same year in a companion volume, The
Nixon Years, (1969-1974): White House to Watergate, and give the
lie to the notion that Fred Maroon was primarily an architectural or
landscape shooter. This is black and white photojournalism at its
best, done on the fly, virtually all by available light.
It was at the Watergate hearings in 1973 that I first met Fred,
one of the several score shooters who roamed halls of the Old Senate
Office Building, where the hearings were held, or who peopled the
photographers' mosh pit at the front of the witness table.
Interestingly, Fred already had a valuable and historic photo record
completed even before the first hearings into the scandal
surrounding the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in the
Watergate Office Building. Early in the Nixon administration Maroon
had suggested to Life Magazine a behind-the-scenes story of life in
the Nixon White House and had been granted exclusive access to many
of the people who later would become household faces, as the scandal
over the break-in and the subsequent White House-financed coverup
blossomed.
"I was doing [that story] when they broke into the Watergate,"
Fred recalled. The images Fred had made in the months before the
Watergate break-in – the only ones of the white collar Watergate
conspirators at work – were eagerly sought by a number of magazines
to augment their coverage of the scandal. And all because Maroon had
taken a chance and suggested a story few had been interested in at
the time.
"I can't emphasize too much the importance of risk-taking,"
Maroon once told a high school audience. "America is, after all, a
nation of adventurers."
Fred Maroon was a Jersey boy, who grew up at the corner of Throop
and Hale in New Brunswick, N.J. He thought he would become an
architect, even graduated with a degree in architecture from
Catholic University here. Back then, photography was, at best, a
hobby.
But even if Maroon didn't realize his own talents as a shooter,
others did – and that let to the kind of chance young photographers
only dream of today: a shot at the old (and legendary) Life
Magazine, right out of college.
"I did the yearbook at Catholic University," Fred told me once
during a relaxed conversation. "I was in my senior year and they
elected me the editor. I decided to pull out all the stops and that
book, when it was on press, was on press where Life Magazine had
their engravings done. And the people there said [to Life's art
director] 'you gotta look at this book, at what these kids are doing
at this college in Washington'..."
Of course, "these kids" were basically Fred Maroon, who took
virtually all of the photographs for the book and packaged it.
Decades later, another friend showed me Fred's yearbook – as well as
one that came out the following year, after Fred was gone. The
difference is staggering. Fred's was an edgy, moody beautifully
orchestrated portrait of the school and the people in it; the other
was, well, a college yearbook.
"I got a letter about a month before graduation saying 'if you're
interested in a job, we'd like to talk to you.' That floored me! I
was planning to take my drawings and go look for an architectural
drafting job. Anyway, Life said they'd make me an editorial trainee
and that I would have this sum at my disposal. Anytime I needed
money I just drew from it whatever I wanted. It was just
fantastic..."
Maroon may have pinched himself for this good luck but he never
took it for granted. A prolific shooter, he quickly built a
reputation as someone who could photograph just about anything. In
his early magazine-shooter days, especially for the old Look
Magazine, Fred shot color fashion layouts with the best of them,
often traveling to exotic locales that had never seen a
photographer, much less a 6-foot-tall model, to produce spreads that
his editors loved.
All this is in marked contrast to today, when the conventional
wisdom is for a young shooter to develop a specialty and stick with
it. Part of the reason was the nature of the game back then. "It was
not very expensive to be a photographer," Fred reminded me. "Cameras
didn't cost that much, you didn't have all those film choices you
now have. You could operate on a shoestring... Now though, you have
to turn out a much more sophisticated product."
Still, for all of the sophistication – and gadgetry – required to
succeed as a photographer today, I prefer to remember this dear and
gentle friend with only one of his beloved Leica SLRs around his
neck, stalking a story with a bemused, if eagle-sharp, eye. To be
sure, Fred knew about elaborate lighting: For his book on the
Capitol, Maroon and his assistants regularly assembled scaffolding
with thousands of watts of illumination to light a scene.
For all that, though, I love the story Fred told me about Anwar
Sadat. Allowed to make the Egyptian president's official portrait
(one year before Sadat was assassinated), Maroon showed up with his
Leicas and very little else.
"Where's your equipment?" one of Sadat's aides asked. "This is
it," Fred said, pointing to his camera bag.
"You're going to take this big man with that little camera?"
"Right."
When it was all over, the president's office ordered 1,500
11x14s.
A memorial Service for Fred Maroon will be held next Monday,
November 12, at 11 a.m. at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in
Georgetown. The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations
be made to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, 3 Forest St.,
New Canaan, CT, 06840 [Tel: 203-972-1250]
Frank Van Riper is a Washington-based commercial and
documentary photographer and author. His latest book is Down
East Maine/A World Apart (Down East Books). He can be reached at
fvanriper@aol.com. |
©Fred J.Maroon Fred Maroon's best-known books reflect life in Washington.
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