PETER ADAMS… ..AND A FEW OF THE LEGENDS
It’s just as well we can’t see into the future because, if we could, a great many worthy projects wouldn’t get off the ground. Too hard. Too expensive. Too risky. There’s little doubt that Peter Adams might have thought twice about A Few Of The Legends had he known it would end up taking more than 35 years to complete, cost close to $500,000 to produce, involve around 250,000 kilometres of travel (much of it overseas) and generate 42,000 film negatives (plus countless digital files).
It all began in 1983 as Peter was making the transition from cinematography to photography (at a time when the opposite was far more common) and had just completed a photography course. The celebratory lunch ended with a game of photographic trivial pursuit where the challenge was to put an author’s name to some of the most iconic photographs ever taken. Peter was surprised, as was everybody else, at how many of these famous images they all knew well, but had no idea who had taken them.
“We recalled famous photographs from the past – such as the Hindenburg Disaster, VJ Day in New York and the famous image of the Viet Cong soldier being executed in a Saigon street – and while most of us were familiar with the images, few of us could recall the names of the photographers, what they looked like or, indeed, even if they were still alive. We had consumed far too much of the amber liquid when someone – who wasn’t about to take his own advice anyway – suggested I should do a book on it and that’s essentially how A Few Of The Legends began.”
Initially, the project was only going to include around 100 photographers, mostly all interviewed during a four-week trip to California and Mexico, and with a few of the
