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remember--oh, this must have been in the 60s, maybe--maybe the 70s, I think--Gordon Parks, one of our photographers, we had a show of his pictures. And I was particularly struck by one. And at the end of the show I said to Gordon: “Could I have this beautiful one?”--it was a four-color picture print, four feet by two, something like that. And he said: “I haven't got a thing to do with it, they belong to LIFE!” So I talked to whoever was in charge of the show, and said: “Could I buy this picture?” And the person said: “Well, we don't know what we're going to do with these pictures, so why should you buy it?” and gave me that picture. Now, today that picture would be worth probably two thousand dollars! Between 1937 and today, photography has achieved what I was talking about in that memo that you read, but it was a long, slow process.

You started out a while back saying that they were a breed apart. Why don't you describe some of them? The ones that you got to know well.

Well, they were all different. Peter Stackpole was a wild man--

In what way?

Oh, I remember one time--we must have been on the beach somewhere, something like that--and somebody said: “Peter, what are all those scratches on your back?” And he laughed about it and the man said: “You're going to have trouble explaining those to your