Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

[Note:  I'm doing something totally new and different this week.  I'm bringing you a two part portrait of a man of God, Ted Jackson, Senior Photojournalist for the Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans, Louisiana.  He is renowned for his photography and work, having won two Pulitzer prizes, a Robert F. Kennedy award and many other awards.  He is a shepherd for Tammany Oaks Church of Christ and I am happy to call him my friend and fellow journalist. 

Ted's story is told by Cindy M. Brown, a divinity student at Emory University who called me to interview me recently about my friendship with Ted for a school paper she was writing.  She gave me permission to publish it here.  It didn't "transfer" perfrectly, but is well worth your time to read the measure of one man's Godly life.]

Portrait of Ted Jackson, Christian Photojournalist
by Cindy M. Brown

 Part I - Ted's Beginnings & Early Career

After Katrina, when disorder ruled in New Orleans,

photojournalist Ted Jackson used his camera to tell the story of

the suffering poor who had been left behind in the city, of the

rescue workers desperate to save the unfortunate ones, and of

the police officers whose job it was to restore order. Jackson

writes:

As chaos reigned, despair took charge. You could see it everywhere: on cops’ faces, inside the Superdome, in the eyes of refugees, at the Convention Center, in the mirror. Fellow shooter Brett Duke and I were photographing mobs of people desperate for food and water. Dead bodies lay in the medians of grand boulevards. A woman pleaded to the world through our lenses as she dropped to her knees and shrieked, ‘Help us, please!’ A short time later, fighting back tears, Brett put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. ‘Can we pray?’[1]

            Praying photojournalists – not the image most people have of the visual communicators who capture the images that are plastered across the front pages of newspapers around the country every day. Yet a good number of photojournalists consider their profession a Christian calling.[2]

Ted Jackson is one such believer.

Jackson – winner of two Pulitzer prizes, a Robert F. Kennedy award and many other major awards for this work – spent his younger years in small-town Mississippi. Born and raised by Christian parents in McComb, Mississippi, Jackson exhibited artistic talent early and his mother noticed it. She encouraged him to use his talents for the Lord.

He began his college career as an architecture major, but says his interests soon moved towards graphic arts. He was always impressed by the work of Norman Rockwell.

“I fell in love with Norman Rockwell,” says Jackson. “The reason why I loved him so much was he had an incredible way to communicate wholesomeness and to deal with issues in his art work.” Jackson says the desire to communicate, the same way he had seen Rockwell communicate, led to his interest in commercial art.[3]

While in school he was forced to consider his true calling.

I went to a class one day and we were asked by a professor to name our favorite artist. Everybody had their favorites and I piped up with Norman Rockwell. And the professor said, “You realize Norman Rockwell was not an artist; he was an illustrator -- that’s different.” And so I said “Well, ok then, I don’t want to be an artist; I want to be an illustrator.[4] 

Jackson left school before completing a degree to take a job working as a graphic designer for an aluminum window factory. It didn’t take him long to realize that this job did not provide him the opportunity to use his natural artistic talent to communicate in the way that his favorite artist – I mean illustrator – Norman Rockwell had. Jackson understood that it was the communication he was seeking; the medium didn’t matter.
A former roommate of Jackson’s, Steve Gardner, was studying photojournalism at the University of Southern Mississippi and sharing his love of the photography with Ted.

I became very dissatisfied with what I was doing with my life, especially while watching Steve use his skills … as a journalist. And I really, really felt like I could do that too if given the chance. My wife was actually the encouraging factor. She saw me miserable and encouraged me to go back to school.[5]

Ed Wheeler, photojournalism professor at the University of

Southern Mississippi at the time, recalls that Ted told him that

he and his wife Nancy had talked and prayed quite a bit about

him quitting his job to study photojournalism. Wheeler

remembers Ted telling him that his wife told him flat out, “‘you’re

going back to school and we’ll just put our faith in the Lord and

see what happens from there.’”[6] Given the fact that the

couple already had one child and a second one on the way,

Nancy’s recommendation was a tough one to make.

When Jackson graduated and got his first job at a small paper in

New Iberia, Louisiana, he knew immediately that he had found

his true calling. “I remember going back to see Ed Wheeler,”

says Jackson. “He loves to tell the story of me coming in and

jumping in the air and saying, ‘I can’t believe they’re paying me

to do something I love.’” Not only did Jackson love the job, not

only was he happy doing it, but he was relieved to find the work

he felt he had been made to do. “It seemed like that’s what God

had called me to do -- to tell stories with my pictures,” says

Ted.[7]

It didn’t take long for Jackson to impress Robert Hart, a picture

editor at the New Orleans Time Picayune. Even though New

Orleans was not the ideal place to raise a family, Jackson

jumped at the chance to work for a paper with a reputation and

circulation that would open the doors for him to communicate

with great masses.

Jackson tells a moving story of something that happened about

four months after he had started working for the

Times-Picayune. It’s a story he tells to illustrate how Christ was

helping him in his work as a photojournalist. He’s told the story

many times to large groups of people, but we’ll come back to

how he has used the story to educate others about Christianity

in a bit. First, the story in Ted’s words:

When I first starting working for the paper, I loved my walkie talkie radio. I would lay it on my kitchen counter when I got home so I could learn from the other photographers as they worked. One night it was sitting on the kitchen counter while we were eating dinner. The radio crackled with one of the photographers saying that he was out at a housing project. He had finished his assignment, but a woman was being evicted from her apartment. They were taking all of her possessions and putting them out on the sidewalk. He was asking the photo editor, “Do you have a pick up truck that I could borrow? Because I wanna help this lady. And the photo editor said, “No. You got your pictures; you need to get out of there.”

He (the photographer) said, “It’s getting dark and it’s starting to rain and there’s nobody else. This lady needs some help. Would you ask around the newsroom if anybody’s got a pickup truck.” He (the picture editor) came back and said, “Look, nobody’s got a pickup truck. Just leave.” And one last time, he (the photographer) said, “ I can’t do that. I’ve got to help this lady.” And then he made one last plea on the radio and said, “Does anybody out there have a pick up truck?”

And there was this dead silence.

I took another bite of peas, and I looked across the table at my 8-year-old son and he had tears streaming down his face. He said “Dad, what are you gonna do?”

And it made me realize that here I was being entertained by this story. I wasn’t thinking I was supposed to participate in this. But he convicted me with that. And so my brain jumped into gear. We had just moved to New Orleans and I remembered that one of the elders at our church … when I was moving in he had said, “I’ve got a pickup truck. If you ever need it, give me a call.” This was not what he was talking about. But I thought about it and I called him and he and I and David moved the lady’s furniture that night.[8]

[Next time read the Conclusion to see how God led Ted to share this significant story and others in his life's work with multitudes of others and what the stunning results were.  (And comment to let Cindy know what you think about her excellent paper.)]  

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