Damon Winter, Bill Smith, 88, Swimming. Smith, a native of Hawaii who starred at Ohio State, won two gold medals in 1948—in the 400-meter freestyle
and the 4x200-meter freestyle relay (New York Times caption).
These are marvelous, and lifted my spirits—portraits of Olympians from the last London Olympic Games, held in 1948, as they appear now. Don't miss the voice recordings—a nice touch.
They still seem like proud people, don't they?
Damon Winter (right) of Brooklyn N.Y. has been a photographer at The New York Times since 2007. Although born in New York, he was raised in the United States Virgin Islands, in St. Thomas (which always means a jazz tune to me). He holds a degree in environmental science from Columbia University. Prior to coming to the NYT he worked for a number of newspapers and agencies, including The Indianapolis Star and The Los Angeles Times. In 2005 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.
(The picture of Damon is by his colleague Fred R. Conrad.)
Mike
(Thanks to Peter Szawlowski)
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Uncle Bill!
Thanks for the heads up. I'll let my mom know about this.
Posted by: Nick | Sunday, 22 July 2012 at 07:58 PM
Wow, these are beautiful portraits of some amazing people. Damon Winter has such a great range of styles. I recently had the pleasure to take a portrait of Sándor Tarics who at 98 is the oldest living Olympian champion. He won a gold medal in '36 for the Hungarian water polo team in Munich. I hope I'll be as together as he is when I'm in my 50s. Here's his portrait http://news.3am.net/sandor-tarics
Posted by: Winni | Sunday, 22 July 2012 at 08:03 PM
Ahhh, relief. The Random Excellence posts are what hooked me on this forum way back in the beginning. Every time I click the bookmark for this site I hope to see a Random Excellence post. Thanks for making my day.
Tim
Posted by: Tim Smith | Monday, 23 July 2012 at 06:42 AM
These portraits are very Avedon, no? I assume a very intentional tribute.
Winter is a terrific portrait photographer. I always enjoy his work (and the Times publishes a lot of it).
Posted by: Joe | Monday, 23 July 2012 at 08:19 AM
Thanks for this. Terrific photos. I especially like Alice Coachman, who reminds me of my mother.
BTW, reading your post planted a Sonny Rollins ear worm in my head. Thanks for that, too. Humming "St. Thomas" isn't a bad way to start the week.
Posted by: John Edwin Mason | Monday, 23 July 2012 at 10:39 AM
When austerity began to bite and people started to question the costs of the upcoming Olympic games people looked back to last time London hosted the games and how they managed costs in 1948.
The athletes "village" was a recently abandoned prisoner of war camp. They saved money on the female athletes formal wear by sending patterns and material to them and expecting them to make their own.
The British athletes were still on rations, I think they got a small uplift during the games but one British athlete mentioned that he would hang around the Americans at lunch as they got big packed lunches and they always left something!
None of these ideas took off..
Gavin
Posted by: Gavin McLelland | Monday, 23 July 2012 at 05:22 PM