By SERIAH SARGENTON
Assistant Editor
TAKORA McINTYRE
Staff Writer
Journalists at The College of Saint Rose interviewed co-directors of “More Than Words: The Photography Of Newsman Bob Paley” Mary Paley and Jon Russell Cring on Tuesday, Feb. 26 at the Hearst Communication Center on Madison Avenue.
“More Than Words: The Photography of Newsman Bob Paley” follows the prominent photographer from Albany for the Knickerbocker News, and his journey of capturing some of the most mesmerizing photos.
The film isn’t a dedication to family or her father. It tells the chilling story of how Bob Paley’s photography changed the visual storytelling of the news industry.
“So my experiences brought me to visit my mother’s basement and there was an enormous cardboard box there filled with all these photos that were moldering,” said Mary Paley, filmmaker and Bob Paley’s daughter, “and as I began to look through them, I guess, I became reacquainted with my dad, or I came to know an aspect of him that I never paid attention to, his working and his working life was astonishing.”
Bob Paley was a photojournalist for the Albany Knickerbocker News from 1946 to 1974, during a time of social and political upheaval.
The film starts in his early days of photography in Rensselaer and moves when he served as a GI photographer for the Army Air Corp. During his time of service, he captured images of residential areas being bombed.
She said that during the era of Paley’s working life as a newsman journalists and photojournalists were truly boots on the ground. Newshounds couldn’t rely on the internet or cellphones.
Over a period, the newspaper industry underwent a transformation during the late 1950s. The Knickerbocker News hired a ‘gutsy’ managing editor from Binghamton named Robert Fichenburg who was aware of the American civil rights movements which were raging.
When arriving to Albany, Fichenburg described it as Sleepy Hollow because the city has a political atmosphere that was resistant to change. The publisher at the time, Gene Robb and Fichenburg, decided to investigate alleged incidents of police brutality which set a “World War Three” in Albany.
The Albany newspapers reflected the Albany politics and didn’t investigate. Bill Kennedy confirmed that even newspapermen were on political payroll. Newspapers began to investigate police brutality in Arbor Hill, but it was not limited to the area. The Sam Clark case of alleged police brutality featured in More Than Words took place at 111 Jefferson St. in Albany’s South End.
Paley also told the story of how her father was sent to capture the scene of a car accident. When he went to take the photo, the car door was torn off and the woman was decapitated. This photo was controversial because of its graphic nature. Cring said that he thought it felt exploitative to some people. This photo came with consequences. Many viewers felt that the images should not have been in the newspaper.
Cring said that the responsibility fell on the editor because the editors have to make the decision about what is in the public’s best interest. He said that an editor is like a director. They decide what does and doesn’t run.
Paley had a hard time when he had to take pictures that were very sentimental to him. It affected his personal life. After his trip to Letchworth Village where he shot for for 8 hours at the state-run facility for the mentally impaired, he was so exhausted that he arrived home and slept for 20 hours.
Paley didn’t only capture pictures that were tragic and historical he also captured everyday human-interest pictures.
“Bob Paley was a newspaperman, an everyday man, a countryman, and a political man,” Cring said.
Mary researched and collected content for 15 years prior to creating this full-length documentary. The film took 2 ½ years to create and five months to edit. Paley reached out to subjects in her father’s photos, many who were still living in Albany.
Paley was diagnosed with invasive cancer in 1972. He died after a long illness at the turn of the year in January 1974.
The filmmakers enjoyed the tedious process of making More Than Words. Cring and Paley didn’t do it for the money, they did it because they wanted to get his story out.
“This is something you do because you love it,” said Cring.
