Patrick Witty

I took this photo twenty years ago on 9/11, just as the South Tower began to collapse. I’ve identified seven people in the photo. Please help find the rest. #911Anniversary

I photographed Lindsey Graham for @thestate newspaper back in 1999. He had a great sense of humor. RIP.

@NBA @WorldPressPhoto Update: The Carter photo was taken by Jack Kightlinger who worked under five Presidents- Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. This 1969 photo of LBJ in the Cabinet Room is among my favorites of Jack’s. RIP.

@NBA This photo by Susan McElhinney (that won a @WorldPressPhoto award) certainly didn't help Carter's relationship with photographers.

On April 29, 1979, President Jimmy Carter attended Game 7 of the @NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the Atlanta Hawks and Washington Bullets. Photographer is unknown. Carter disliked photographers, and remains the only modern president who didn’t have an official White House photographer.

But Rubinger hated that photo, and it nearly ended up on the cutting room floor. He preferred this one instead. patrickwitty.substack.com/p/the-elusive-…

On June 7, 1967, David Rubinger, covering the Six-Day War for LIFE magazine, made this photo, arguably the most iconic and widely-recognized photo in Israeli history.

Gotta include this rarely-seen photo taken on June 4, 1989 by Kan Tai Wong.

I discovered this photo in 2009, when I was a photo editor at The New York Times. A never-before-seen version from ground level by Terril Jones.

These remain the greatest protest photos of all time. On June 5, 1989, six photographers captured a lone protestor facing down a column of Chinese tanks near Tiananmen Square. “Tank Man” was born. 📷: Jeff Widener

Echoes of Beto by Annie Leibovitz, or Reagan by Aaron Shikler

@TodayinHistory “It was my fifteen minutes of fame,” Lasher told me. open.substack.com/pub/patrickwit…

When Mount Saint Helens erupted 46 years ago today, nothing survived that was within 230 square miles of the explosion. Except for photographer Richard Lasher who escaped on his dirt bike after taking this shot.

Photo of @mcuban, @DrOzCMS and @POTUS by White House photographer Joyce N. Boghosian

On May 18, 1980, Richard “Dick” Lasher stopped his car on Forest Road 26 and made this photo of Mount St. Helens erupting. Seconds later, he abandoned the Pinto and escaped on his motorcycle. Lasher survived. The red Pinto did not. “It was my fifteen minutes of fame,” Lasher told me.

It was too late for Dick Lasher to turn around his Pinto, so he jumped on his Yamaha and fled the plume of ash. “By the time he unhooked his dirt bike his Pinto was on fire,” his buddy Cliff Smith told me. patrickwitty.substack.com/p/the-eruption…

Another banger from May 18, 1980: Robert Morgan’s photo of Jim Hobson water skiing as Mount St. Helens erupted behind him. “As we skied into view of the mountain and saw the eruption, we stopped the boat and sat there staring for a while,” he told @thatoregonlife

RIP Reid Blackburn, one of two photographers killed that day. Blackburn was eight miles from the eruption, fired off four frames, then took cover in his car, which was discovered four days later. This is Blackburn’s car, a 1969 Volvo 144, buried under the ash.