Editing for "The Vault"

I've been spending some time in the past couple weeks reviewing some images from my previous life as a newspaper photographer. I'll put some of these images on my new website (which should be live very soon) in a special section that I'm going to call "The Vault".

This is one of the photos that I rediscovered.

It is an image I made in 1988 right after the first George Bush (41) was elected president. He stands here with President Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev on Governor's Island just outside of Manhattan -- the Twin Towers are gleaming in the sunlight. The Berlin Wall was still standing, but political change was imminent across Eastern Europe and what was then the Soviet empire.

I was in the traveling press pool photographing this event (at the time I was the Chicago Tribune's staff photographer based in DC) and while I was making the image, I sensed that it had all the elements for the classic and historic photo op.

I love the way the wind blows President Bush's jacket, and President Gorbachev's gleeful smile.

Ironically, this photograph was made on December 7 (the 47th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor). And now, it is all the more striking since the Twin Towers are no longer here after the 9-11 attacks.