By JEFF HARRISON jharrison@statesboroherald.com

Among the thousands of Georgia Southern University students donning caps and gowns [...]]]> Matthew Chambers graduates from Georgia Southern, helps fund Hearts and Hands Clinic

A cancer survivor who helped a Statesboro health clinic raise more than $5,000, Matthew Chambers will graduate today from Georgia Southern University.

By JEFF HARRISON jharrison@statesboroherald.com

Among the thousands of Georgia Southern University students donning caps and gowns for commencement today is a young man who doctors claimed would never live the moment.
Despite a prognosis that Matthew Chambers would not experience even a first day of school, let alone his last, the Georgia Southern senior is concluding an undergraduate education and currently striving to help others overcome long odds of their own.
Chambers, approximately 20 years after being diagnosed with leukemia, is dedicating time, effort and money to benefit Statesboro’s Hearts and Hands Clinic.
The Atlanta-native, who will begin working towards a Master’s Degree in the fall, helped raise more than $5,000 since January for the non-profit clinic that provides free health care to Bulloch County’s uninsured.
A desire to benefit the clinic originated as a result of Chambers’ early childhood experiences.
“When I was about 2 years old, I was severely sick and doctors said it would be a miracle if I lived past the age of 5e,” he said.
But when Shriners Hospitals for Children learned of the situation, “they pretty much took over all of my medical bills and saved my life.”
With the assistance of the non-profit Shriners Hospital, Chambers was proclaimed cancer-free when 5 years old.
“When I heard about [Hearts and Hands] through my applied business management course, and had the opportunity to raise money for the clinic, I took it as a chance to give back,” he said. “I knew I would never be able to repay anybody for saving my life, but this provided an opportunity to grow as a person and help the community.”
Since the beginning of Georgia Southern’s spring semester, Chambers, through the university’s ‘Students in Free Enterprise’ program, worked to raise awareness and $5,175 for Hearts and Hands through various community and on-campus events.
“I was the CEO of a project called Project Five Stacks, which originated from our applied business management course,” he said. “I was the group leader of 14 individuals who worked throughout the semester to market and raise awareness for the clinic.”
According to Chambers, the student group partnered with Statesboro eatery 119 Chops for an event in which 10 percent of the restaurant’s single night earnings were donated to the clinic. The night drew one of the restaurant’s largest crowds ever – which included Congressman John Barrow – and collected about $1,700 for the hospital, he said.
The students also hosted a benefit concert that included various local acts, organized a carnation sell for Valentines Day, and continually sell bracelets at Gray’s College Bookstore.
The contributions made by Chambers and his classmates are invaluable to the hospital, said DeWayne Grice, president of the Board of Directors for the Hearts and Hands Clinic.
“The students raised awareness and significant, critical dollars for us throughout the community,” he said. “All of the funds they have raised will go toward providing healthcare needs to people in our community. Our estimation is that it costs us about $100 to $150 to take care of a patient, so the gift they have provided to us can help serve an additional 50 patients. It is a tremendous gift.”
Chambers said he would like to raise $60,000 through multiple projects before completing school in two years. 
“We will definitely continue to raise money over the next couple of years,” he said. “This is my way of showing thanks. It is an amazing thing for the community and I know how important it is because I have seen its impact. I feel blessed to be a part of the clinic and able to raise funds that help it succeed.”
“Matthew’s story is really amazing,” said Grice. “It is so heart-warming to have a kid that has been through what he has, to want to give back like he has. He has touched all of us at the clinic and become really special to us.”

(Note: Scott Bryant is an award-winning photojournalist who has worked at the Statesboro Herald since 2007. The following piece offers his opinion and insight into why the current exhibit of presidential images by former New York Times photographer George Tames is so important [...]]]> Photographer: We may never see images like this again

George Tames

(Note: Scott Bryant is an award-winning photojournalist who has worked at the Statesboro Herald since 2007. The following piece offers his opinion and insight into why the current exhibit of presidential images by former New York Times photographer George Tames is so important and why we may never see their like again.)

      Interested in seeing honest, revealing photographs of your American president on the job? You know – candid, un-choreographed visual records which give us glimpses of the human being occupying the most powerful office in the world?
      If those kind of images might appeal to you, then run, as fast as you can, to the Averitt Center for the Arts in downtown Statesboro. Don’t delay, because this may be your last opportunity to see photographs like this.
      The Averitt Center’s main gallery is featuring an exhibit entitled "Private Presidential Pathways," displaying photographs by former New York Times photographer George Tames. While he covered many aspects of Washington, D.C., for nearly half-a-century, Tames developed a reputation for capturing unguarded, honest moments of presidents with his camera.
      What made Tames different were his instincts and persistence for finding something visually profound – his refusal to settle for the "herd" mentality that still often plagues news photography. Tames had an ability and desire to develop easy and informal access to powerful politicians, including – especially – the president.
      Since Tames’ death in 1994, both photography and politics have changed. The implementation of digital photography in reporting the news has accelerated the notion of being the first and the fastest, over all else. George Tames, on the other hand, emphasized thoroughness and familiarity to create his images. Tames was often the last to produce an image because he stayed later and shot longer than those clinging to the "herd."
      And politicians have learned a lesson – all too well. Image is everything.

Ronald Reagan
      It started, perhaps, with Ronald Reagan. Tames daughter, Stephanie (who lives here in Statesboro), told me Wednesday that her father got frustrated with Reagan, who first made his mark as an actor in Hollywood and was quite comfortable with the traditional method of producing moving pictures, whether film or video. Television producers, editors, and their ilk seemed all-to-willing to produce multiple takes and get things "right."
      Reagan was surprisingly uncomfortable with still photography, however. Once the photographer clicked the shutter, the record was made. Period. No re-takes. The image could be published. Or not. The president and his staff had no control over that.
      Stephanie Tames related a story about an image her father made of Reagan. It was an exercise in frustration. The newly-elected president invited photographers into the Oval Office. Tames wanted a picture of Reagan at work. Reagan simply wouldn’t stop posing. Tames stayed longer than every one else. Finally fed up, he started packing up his gear. That’s when the president picked up his papers and got back to work. And that’s when Tames was able to rattle off a frame or two to get the real picture.
      You can see that remarkable photo in the Averitt exhibit.
      Today, in 2011, getting even that picture is practically impossible. Not saying that most presidents haven’t been concerned with their image, but each one since Reagan has become exponentially more guarded, especially when it comes to photography.

Obama’s spin
      Much has been made of the news media’s alleged infatuation with Barack Obama. It’s been vilified by some. Parodied by others. However, I can tell you about one group of journalists that is not enamored with our sitting president – the pool of White House press photographers representing dozens of publications from all over the world.
      It’s ironic that a president who’s election platform included a commitment to government "transparency" has become so elusive to those assigned to cover him.
      The previous administration became frustratingly adept at limiting public appearances to simple, choreographed "photo ops" where photographers were typically allowed to make as many photographs as possible while walking between the entrance and exit of a room.
      I participated in one of these events when I worked in Savannah and the G-8 conference was held in Sea Island in 2004. I got the honor of waiting hours to photograph George W. Bush and Russia’s Vladimir Putin sitting in a small room in chairs next to each other. It was like a very short rock show with all the strobe lights going off as many photographers simply laid on their shutter releases until we were ushered (herded) out. The whole thing lasted about 20 seconds. Rattle rattle, here come the cattle.
      After promising greater "transparency," the present administration has gone so far as to eliminate even the cattle call photo op. Right from the start, the photographers assigned to covering the White House were excluded from the president’s first day in the Oval Office. From the controversial "do-over" oath of office. And a month later, from a historic meeting between the president and the Dalai Lama.

One photographer only
      In all these instances, the White House preferred, instead, to allow only Official White House photographer Pete Souza to witness these events with his camera, who’s images were subsequently distributed via the Flickr photo sharing web site.  The response from photo editors everywhere was immediate … information is "more valuable to the public if you know where it’s coming from."
      Michael Oreskes, Managing Editor for U.S. News, the Associated Press
      It’s clear that the White House staff saw this as an opportunity to take advantage of the Internet. To "democratize" the process of distributing photographs by allowing anyone to download these photos from Flickr rather than letting the wire services distribute pictures to subscribing news outlets. See for yourself: here’s a link to the Flickr White House photostream. That’s good, right?
      Well, it’s also clear this was seen as an opportunity to exert greater control over the image of the president. While the credibility of Pete Souza, a veteran news photographer and educator who also served as Ronald Reagan’s personal photographer in the White House during the 1980s, is widely-respected, wire services refused to distribute these photographs based primarily on two concerns: 1) this practice eliminates the potential diversity of images available to the public, and 2) the difficulty of determining the authenticity of an image not produced by someone on their staff.
      Even in a clearly controlled situation, each photographer makes decisions about how to compose their photographs. When to click the shutter. How to interpret what they witnessed. And each publication makes a choice about which photographs to publish.
      No more. What’s the harm, you say? Well, in an era where the authenticity of every digital photograph is in question, a multitude of photographers shooting the same event helps minimize the potential for deception. Photographers, or editors, or staffers in charge of publicity, are unlikely to manipulate, digitally or otherwise, photographs or situations for their own purposes if there are a multitude of images available from different sources.
      One of the core principles that makes the news media relevant and useful is its diversity of voices and points-of-view. Information often becomes credible when a consensus is produced from many independent sources. And this principle is just as true of photography as any other medium of communication.

Is this good?
      Ultimately, the question for you, the audience, is whether or not you are satisfied with our government representatives being the only source of visual information about themselves. I’m all for breaking with tradition as long as it serves a greater good. Are you being best served by this policy?
       Before you answer, though, please go see Tames’ photographs. They will be on display until June 15.
      He left us with lasting images of our presidents. Ones that really stick in our minds, individually and collectively.
       Tames’ photographs are ones that tell us something of the human beings who occupied the office of the President of the United States – their emotions. Their personal style. Their egos. Their strengths. And sometimes their frailties.
      Why are these images so important? Why am I telling you to run – as fast as you can – to see them?
      Because we may never see their like again.

By AL HACKLE Special to the Herald

    George Tames walked into the White [...]]]> Averitt Center exhibit focuses on the remarkable work of George Tames

Statesboro resident Stephanie Tames is the daughter of New York Times photographer George Tames, who made many iconic photographs while covering the White House for the New York Times.

By AL HACKLE Special to the Herald

    George Tames walked into the White House with a 10th grade education, an ego that set him equal to every occasion, a camera and an eye for telling a story.
    Working more than 40 years as a Washington, D.C., photographer for the New York Times, Tames photographed 10 presidents, who allowed him access to private moments as well as official encounters. A selection of the images is now on display at the Averitt Center for the Arts. The “Private Presidential Pathways” exhibit opened Friday and will remain through June 15.
    Tames’ best known photograph, taken of President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office in 1961, was later entitled "The Loneliest Job in the World." Martin Sheen, as fictional President Josiah Bartlett, mimicked Kennedy’s stance for the opening sequence of "The West Wing," bracing himself on a table top with his back to the camera.
    Nearly as famous is Tames’ 1957 sequence of four shots of Lyndon Johnson, then Senate majority leader, talking to Sen. Theodore F. Green. Using his Texas stature and moving in very close, Johnson leaned forward and progressively forced the much shorter Greene to lean backward. As this series, entitled "The Johnson Treatment" demonstrates, Tames also covered Congress and knew some presidents before they were presidents.
    "George was different," said Jim Mones, director of photo archives for the New York Times. "He was a jokester, big on gossip, telling stories, a great  laugh. He would be the life of the party, and he became friends with these senators who became presidents. They all knew him and loved him, and George was able to get up close with people, the politicians, especially the presidents."
    Mones did not know Tames personally, having arrived at the Times about a year after his 1986 retirement, which was greeted with a legendary series of 14 retirement parties. But Mones first learned of Tames’ legacy while working in the newsroom, and later in filling archival requests for photos, as well as orders placed by photographers, politicians and history buffs.
    For example, the Times online store sells a framed copy of "The Johnson Treatment" for $395.
Eye for history
    Besides his personal touch, Tames had an eye for history in the making, said Mones, who further researched the man he says set "the gold standard for political photography." Mones spoke about Tames before traveling to Statesboro to take part in Friday’s grand opening of the exhibition.
    "Whether it was a visit of Churchill or Khrushchev or the ‘Dream’ civil rights march, George had a sense of history, that this is going to be big, and he had a tendency to get closer to an event and would size up a situation about where he needed to be," Mones said.
    Getting close to history was both a few small steps and one giant one for Tames. The eldest of six children of Greek immigrant parents, Tames grew up during the Great Depression in a poor neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Literally at the base of Capitol Hill, the homes in the area have long since been demolished to make room for government structures such as the Hubert H. Humphrey Building.
    Tames dropped out of school to help support  the family, and in the late 1930s took a job as an office boy in the Washington office of Time Inc. (later Time-Life), publisher of Time and Life magazines.
    Statesboro resident Stephanie Tames relates that her father learned the basics of photography at Time-Life while helping in the dark room and carrying equipment for the established photographers.

New York Times
    In the mid 1940s, he went over to the New York Times and remained to photograph every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George H.W. Bush.
    Stephanie grew up in a household where family pictures were mostly tucked away in boxes, while her father’s photos of presidents covered the walls.
    "There were so many pictures up at our house that growing up I thought I was a Kennedy," she jokes.
    But their father’s career made life interesting for the five Tames children.
     "It was really exciting having a father who had this kind of access," Stephanie said. "There were several times when he needed to make sure that there were lots of kids in a picture at the White House, and so we would get to go and stand in the crowd and be in the picture."
    Tames’ political inclinations are not hard to guess. His parents thanked Roosevelt’s policies for their family’s survival during the Depression, and young George arrived at the White House in time to meet and photograph FDR.
    "I would have to say that he probably leaned more Democratic than Republican, but he loved politicians and so it did not matter at all to him," Stephanie said. "He just loved the whole political process and really admired people who led the country and who went into politics."
    For years, her father would go directly from their home to the Capitol each morning and eat breakfast at a press table in the Senate dining room, greeting senators as they came in. But he also knew the elevator operators and the people who worked the subway.

‘Eye on Washington’
    The title of Tames’s book, "Eye on Washington: The Presidents Who’ve Known Me," published by HarperCollins in 1990, displays as much humor as ego. But his daughter observes that he was "no shrinking violet," and no less an authority on assertiveness than President Johnson affirmed it. Johnson autographed a picture of himself, "To George Tames, who taught me everything I know about modesty."
    That gem remains in Stephanie’s possession, but 27 of Tames’ photos, plus a selection of his many New York Times Magazine Sunday covers shots in miniature, are now on display at the Averitt Center. Her late mother donated some of his photographs to the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian, but the Averitt now has a larger Tames collection.
    Stephanie, a freelance writer and artist, is writing a book about her father with the working title "One Man Show." She guided the selection of photos for the exhibition, which is sponsored by Lori Grice Photography and Dr. Larry Hubbard. The Averitt Center’s main gallery in is open Tuesday-Friday from 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. and on Saturdays from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
    "I’m really just thrilled to be able to share it with the Statesboro community and surrounding area and I’m hoping too that the Averitt Center can use it to go to other galleries and museums," Stephanie said.
    Any revenue, she added, will go to benefit the arts center.
    Averitt Center officials confirmed that they are seeking to make Private Presidential Pathways a traveling exhibit.
    "We’re putting together marketing packages now and looking at communities that have arts councils, particularly in Georgia, but we’re also looking at the regional market, mostly in the Southeast," said interim gallery coordinator Sheila Stewart-Leach.
    They are also testing the interest in places frequented by presidents, such as military bases and FDR’s Little White House at Warm Springs. 

By AL HACKLE Special to [...]]]> Exhibition showcases George Tames’ iconic images

In this photo, President John F. Kennedy is shown in the Oval Office February 19, 1961. The photo is one of many famous photographs that will be on display beginning Friday as part of an exhibit at the Averitt Center for the Arts.

By AL HACKLE Special to the Herald

    George Tames snapped a single black and white photograph of John F. Kennedy that does not show his face and yet has become emblematic of the American presidency.
        That 1961 picture, later entitled “The Loneliest Job in the World,” shows Kennedy’s back as he looks out a window of the Oval Office, the weight of the world apparently on his shoulders while he braces himself on a table.
    Other photos Tames took of 10 presidents in 40 years as a Washington, D.C., correspondent for the New York Times have become nearly as iconic. An exhibition opening Friday at the Averitt Center for the Arts exemplifies Tames’ photography.
    Tames died in 1994 at age 75, leaving the New York Times and the world a wealth of historic images and his daughter memories of growing up near the center of power.
    Stephanie Tames, a Statesboro resident since 1989 and a journalist and artist herself, has undertaken the labor of cataloging her father’s work and selecting the images for display. 
    “It’s given me an opportunity to go more deeply into his work than I ever had before just growing up with it,” she said. “I’m really just thrilled to be able to share it.”
    “Private Presidential Pathways” will be on display May 6 ­— June 15. Exhibition catalogs will be available for $5, but entrance to the Averitt Center’s visual arts exhibitions is always free.
    For Friday’s debut, “Private Presidential Pathways” will be open to the public from 5:30 —
7 p.m. A children’s educational event about presidential history will be part of downtown Statesboro’s First Friday events.
    At 7 p.m., Stephanie Tames will be on hand to share her father’s stories with Averitt Center
members and their guests at the exhibition’s opening reception.
    Jim Mones, Director of Photo Archives for the New York Times will make gallery remarks. In the Emma Kelly Theater a special DVD of George Tames in a variety of interviews on National Television will be on a continuous loop.
    “Presidential Pathways” is sponsored by Lori Grice Photography and Dr. Larry Hubbard.
    The Averitt Center’s main gallery is open Tuesday-Friday from 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. and on Saturdays from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

There will be lots of other fun things planned:

GREEN [...]]]> Join us downtown for FREE FUN Facebook pictures during F1RST FRIDAY tomorrow from 5:30 to 7:30.  Downtown is the place to kick off your SPRING with GREEN!  We have partnered with Party Impressions who is providing FUN GREEN accessory items for your pictures.

There will be lots of other fun things planned:

GREEN GRITS and Much More…….

Green Card: Coke tent/Downtown Statesboro Development Authority

Green Grits: Northland Cable, Freeman Mills, and Savannah River Farms

Green Tea: Free Spirit Pottery

Green Pistaschio Pudding: Lily’s Cafe

Green Popcorn: David Corks Kettlecorn

Free Green Facebook Photo Booth: Lori Grice Photography

Kids crafts and fun activities: make your own laundry soap, decorate your own canvas grocery bag, cookie decorating, face painting, and more provided by 4-H, SAGE, and Center for Sustainability

Free Bouncy house: Party Harbor

Eco friendly exhibits: Keep Bulloch Beautiful and High Hope

Green Cars: Franklin Chevorlet and Vaden of Statesboro

Conservation Give-aways: City of Statesboro and Public Works

Biggest Looser Kick-Off: Fit 4 Life by Sheila 

Here are a few Fun FOLKS who could not wait for Friday to go GREEN!