Legacy and Commitment - B&H Photography Stories: The B&H Photography Podcast

02/03/2022

There are many talented people who work at B&H Photo, and the connections to photography and photo history run deep. We have welcomed many B&H staffers to the B&H Photography Podcast over the years, and today we are particularly excited to speak with two members of our team on the B&H Explora blog.

We start our conversation with Howard Gotfryd, Senior Copy Editor at Explora, and learn about the incredible photography career of his late father, Bernard Gotfryd. Gotfryd Sr. immigrated to New York after World War II and ultimately found a job as staff photographer at Newsweek magazine, a job he performed for three decades. We discuss the twists of fate and hard work that brought Gotfryd to Newsweek and talk about his most noted assignments, including photographing Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Nina Simone, and The Beatles. We also discuss his camera systems and home darkroom, and come to understand the complexities of keeping an archive of more than 10,000 negatives intact and manageable.

In the second half of our program, we speak with writer and photographer Jill Waterman. Waterman writes for the Explora blog and has also created an epic photo series about New Year’s Eve. For thirty-seven straight years, she has photographed New Year’s celebrations around the world, documenting each with her Nikon F3 camera on black-and-white 35mm film. Waterman has traveled to cities and villages in Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Europe, and throughout the United States, and she describes the various celebrations she has covered and the motivations to keep this personal documentary project alive.

Guests: Howard Gotfryd and Jill Waterman

Photograph by Bernard Gotfryd