LeRoy Woodson
A bespectacled, smiling man holds a camera
Woodson in 1976
Born1944
California, US
DiedFebruary 12, 2015 (aged 70)
Paris, France
Alma materUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison
Occupation(s)Photojournalist
author

LeRoy Woodson Jr. (1944 – February 12, 2015) was an American photojournalist. He was a staff writer and editor for National Geographic magazine in the 1970s and 1980s. He worked for many newspapers and magazines, including The Washington Post, LIFE, Fortune, and Forbes. Woodson was employed by the Environmental Protection Agency for their Documerica photography project. He has works in the collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem, wrote the book Roadside Food, and founded the website MilitaryWeek.com.

Early life and education

LeRoy Woodson was born in California in 1944. He was the son of a United States Foreign Service officer and grew up in France where he was educated at École Pascal.[1] After returning to the United States, he graduated from Florida A&M University High School in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1962. He earned a degree in French from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1966.[2]

Career

Based out of Washington, D.C., for much of his career, Woodson worked as a photographer and journalist. He was affiliated with Contact Press Images and the French photo agency Gamma. He worked for LIFE magazine, National Geographic, The Washington Post, Fortune, Forbes, Businessweek, and Geo magazine. He was a staff-writer and editor with National Geographic, working there from 1973 to 1982.[3]

A photograph from Woodson's 1972 Birmingham series

Aside from his editorial work, Woodson was hired by corporations to photograph their employees, executives and facilities. He frequently traveled abroad for photojournalism assignments and by 1982 had visited forty countries.[4] Woodson worked in Iraq and Iran. During a three-month stint in Zimbabwe he used 400 rolls of film covering a change in government. While his profession dictated the types of photography he created, he did not always agree with the publication's point of view.[4]

Woodson took a series of photographs in 1972 documenting the impacts of industrial pollution on the lives of everyday people, focusing in part on people living in residential housing near North Birmingham, Alabama's U.S. Steel plant. The series was part of Documerica, a photography project of the Environmental Protection Agency.[5] An image from the series was selected to be part of the 2013 exhibition Searching for the Seventies: The Documerica Photography Project.[6]

Woodson wrote the 1986 book Roadside Food,[7] which included photographs he had taken of roadside cafes in the United States over a yearlong period. The book has 100 photos and writings from various authors about New York hot dogs, American breakfasts, Cajun gumbo and donuts.[8] In the book he describes his dislike of McDonald's and suggests that the optimal size for a hamburger is "somewhere around five ounces."[9][10]

Subjects that Woodson captured during his career included Maine lobstermen and Nigeria's Argungu Fishing Festival. He also photographed celebrities such as fashion designer André Courrèges, Eddie Murphy for the cover of Life,[3] and Susan Sarandon.[1] His photograph of political adviser Thaddeus Garrett was used for the cover of Black Enterprise magazine in 1981.[11] He shot an October 9, 1971, photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono at her exhibition This Is Not Here at the Everson Museum of Art.[1] The black and white portrait captures the couple through the prism of a water jug.[12]

Woodson took part in the Footsteps of Champagne Charlie Challenge in 1992.[13] The contest, named after Champagne merchant Charles Heidsieck, saw Woodson paired with photographer Ana Esperanza Nance in competition against five other teams in a race around the world without flying or using self-driven vehicles.[14]

Woodson was the founder and editor of the website MilitaryWeek.com from 2003 to 2007.[2][15] As a guest columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Woodson wrote about Boeing in 2005.[16]

Woodson joined Galerie VOZ’Image in 2009.[3] His works are included in the collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem.[17]

Woodson had heart disease and died in Paris at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital on February 12, 2015.[2]

Gallery

Woodson's photographs of Birmingham
  • Smoke billows from a dozen industrial chimneys
    Smoke stacks from Birmingham's steel plants
  • A reddish brown stream cuts through a residential area
    A stream showing the effect of steel industry pollution
  • Cars travel over a highway overpass with the smog-obscured Birmingham skyline in the background
    The smog-obscured skyline
  • Three children sit on the porch of a run-down home
    Children in South Birmingham's "Little Korea"
  • Spindly plants form the foreground, with the background depicting a smoke-filled, sunset-lit sky
    Smoke from continuously operating steel plants
  • A bald physician listens with a stethoscope to the chest of an old, bare-chested man
    Examining a lung patient
  • Profile of a Black woman sitting in a church pew
    Woman attending services at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham
Photographs taken in the summer of 1972

References

  1. ^ a b c Lowry, Rachel (December 31, 2015). "In Memoriam: Remembering the Photographers We Lost in 2015". Time. Archived from the original on January 2, 2016.
  2. ^ a b c "Paris Photojournalist Leroy Woodson, 70". National Press Photographers Association. February 18, 2015. Archived from the original on March 3, 2017. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
  3. ^ a b c "Leroy Woodson" (in French). Voz Image. Archived from the original on November 25, 2020. Retrieved March 3, 2021.
  4. ^ a b Earl g. Graves, Ltd (February 1982). "The World of Commercial Photographers". Black Enterprise. p. 76. Archived from the original on March 4, 2021. Retrieved March 4, 2021. 'A lot of times' says Woodson, 'especially when I was in Jamaica in the fall of 1977 working for Geo magazine, it was very awkward. My sympathies were with the Third World countries and not in agreement with the point of view the publication was going to project. This is a very compromising position!
  5. ^ "Woodson, LeRoy, photographer: Person Authority Record". National Archives Catalog. Archived from the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
  6. ^ Ruiz, Matthew Ismael (March 7, 2013). "Searching for the Seventies: The Documerica Photography Project". Popular Photography. Archived from the original on May 20, 2015. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
  7. ^ Blake, Judith (September 3, 1986). "Fresh Today". Seattle Times. p. G3.
  8. ^ Batson, Larry (September 10, 1986). "Roadside Food // Woodson and Others turn out eatin' book verging on profound". Minneapolis Star and Tribune.
  9. ^ "Alexander Theroux's San Diego hamburger survey". San Diego Reader. July 3, 1996. Archived from the original on October 1, 2020. Retrieved March 4, 2021. There's something sinister and totalitarian about a bushel of Styrofoam-encapsulated Big Macs sitting under a heat lamp...orders filled before they are placed.
  10. ^ "Roadside Food: Good Home-Style Cooking Across America; LeRoy Woodson, Author, Jill MacNeice, Photographer Stewart, Tabori, & Chang". Publishers Weekly. August 5, 1986.
  11. ^ Earl g. Graves, Ltd (August 1981). "On our cover: Thaddeus Garrett was photographed by Leroy Woodson". Black Enterprise. p. 5. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022. Retrieved January 2, 2022.
  12. ^ L., Chris (September 7, 2010). "Événement: Une Photo Inédite de John Lennon Ressurgit du Passé!". Sortiraparis (in French). Archived from the original on November 28, 2022. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
  13. ^ Geehan, Barbara (September 9, 1992). "Adventures turn back the clock in race around world". USA Today.
  14. ^ Sheridan, Dick (September 13, 1992). "Trotting around the globe in 100 days". The Baltimore Sun. p. 4L.
  15. ^ Knickerbocker, Brad (April 28, 2005). "Lessons of Vietnam: How war shaped U.S. military, policies". Seattle Times. p. A3.
  16. ^ Woodson Jr., Woodson (June 22, 2005). "Boeing to Airbus: Bring It On". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. p. B7.
  17. ^ "Collection: Our Artists". Studio Museum in Harlem. September 10, 2020. Archived from the original on November 30, 2020. Retrieved March 3, 2021.

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