Nelson Mandela visits Toronto 1990

500-Weeks #21 

Nelson Mandela in Toronto, 1990 with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
The editor rejected this photo as being unusable for publication, stating that it was too close for further cropping, if required, to fit in with the text.

I was working at Share, a weekly Black and Caribbean community newspaper as a graphic artist when I started getting photo assignments from them. All of the contributors were writers who also had to take photos. Except for me, I was a photographer who had to do some writing. I had only been handling photo assignments for four months when Nelson Mandela came for a visit to Toronto on June 18, 1990.

Mandela had been a political prisoner in South Africa for 27 years during apartheid and his release was a huge deal at Share Newspaper. The managing editor – Jules Elder – informed me that he wanted me to follow and photograph him all day. This was the biggest assignment I had ever been handed and had absolutely no clue how to prepare.

Nelson Mandela in Toronto in 1990.
This was the photo the editor choose, which was cropped to a vertical for publication.

It turns out that the list of what camera equipment to bring is similar to any photo assignment; you just have to bring more of it. The differences are things I had never dealt with previously, such as media accreditation and a security pass in order to gain access to the official dinner.  When a photographer is following a dignitary around all day, when are the bathroom breaks? What about coffee or lunch? Do the media get fed at the official dinner? These are things you can only learn by doing it.  You have to make friends with the other photographers and ask one of them to watch your gear as you run to the porta-potty and I soon realized that no one is going to feed the media.

The managing editor - Jules Elder – arranged for the press passes and technical advice: Lots of film - about one roll per hour – plus spare batteries, a second camera body, a flash, a monopod and a long telephoto lens with a teleconverter for more reach.  I had the Pentax K1000 I had started with, and had also bought a Nikon FE camera and a flash by this point. One of the great things about Nikon was that you could rent lenses for it. I don’t remember any of the rental houses stocking Pentax lenses. 

Everyone wanted to rent long lenses for this visit. I managed to rent a 300mm lens, plus a 1.4x teleconverter, which mounts between lens and the camera body and magnifies what the lens sees, so in effect the 300mm has the same view as a 420mm lens. For much of the day, it wasn’t long enough. 

The paper would supply film, but then they always kept the negatives afterwards. This was one of the assignments where my brain told me to buy my own film, because I wanted to own the negatives myself.

The assignment lasted 13 hours. There were speeches at City Hall, walks in crowds, a reception and an official dinner to end it all. It’s hard to pack a camera bag full and then be able to both use the cameras and be mobile at the same time. 

The photo corps taught me a few lessons that day. When I was setting up for the dinner, there was a raised platform for the photographers at the back. I picked a spot, set up my camera on a monopod – which is a one-leg support - and spun the camera to portrait orientation. The camera controls are on the right side, so if you spin the camera counter-clockwise, your right elbow goes out. I immediately got my elbow smacked down – hard - by the photographer next to me. He told me to rotate my camera the other way, to tuck in my elbows and not take up so much space.

To this day I hold a vertical camera with my support hand at the bottom, with both elbows tucked in tight.

Nelson Mandela in Toronto 1990.
The difficulty in working among large crowds is evident here. The photographer's view is often obscured by spectators and other photographers.

Nelson Mandela in Toronto 1990.
Mr. Mandela is smiling, and my view is still blocked.

Nelson Mandela in Toronto 1990.
I got a clear view after Mr. Mandela stoped smiling.

At the end of the day, after being a long distance away from Mandela and behind telephoto lenses the whole time, he was going to have to walk though the front room to the exit. This meant I would get a chance at a photo in close.  Problem was, the room was packed with people, so how was I going to get close? The answer came from Patti Gower, a Toronto Star photographer. She looked at me as she was rotating her camera bag around her body so it hung in the front. She informed me that I could go with her, or she was going through me. I decided to follow her lead, as she then proceeded to hold a camera above her head and let the camera bag bump into people as she said “Excuse me. Excuse me, Pardon me, Excuse me” as she pushed her way through, and every person who got bumped with her bag moved aside without fuss.

I have used the bump bag technique – camera held high over my head – countless times since.

After being behind crowds and a long distance away for hours, it was at the end of the day that Mandela and then Canadian Prime Minister Mulroney walked right past me. I got the great, tight frame of the two of them with only Mandela in focus. It was at the very end of my last roll.

The resulting images were - I thought - the best I took that day, and among the best I have ever taken.  But the editor at Share disagreed, indicating that it was too close, and he could not crop it if he had to make space for the story. I argued that a photo was worth a thousand words and that he should cut the copy so the photo could run.

Nelson Mandela in Toronto, 1990
A close view at the end of the evening, after being far away all day

I lost the argument and my favourite image I took of Nelson Mandela is presented here for the first time, ever. This is also one of the first incidences of me disagreeing with an editors’ choice. Over time, that feeling culminated in my theory that, if you give an editor or client the chance to choose the wrong photo, they will, every time.

Technical stuff: Nikon FE 35mm film camera with Nikkor 85 mm f/2.0 Ai and Tamron 300 f/2.8 plus 1.4 teleconverter lenses using Kodak T-MAX 400 B&W negative film.