On display in Rockefeller Hall, on the main floor of the Class of 1945 Library recently was an exhibit of 21 photographs by John Loengard, class of 1952. The exhibit included 10 photographs taken when he was a student at the Academy and worked on The Exonian and 11 photographs taken later in his career as a photographer for Life Magazine.

Reminiscing about his career, Loengard writes:

I took my first picture when I was eleven and the first one I thought was very good when I was fifteen. I thought photography was magic; I could catch a picture in a box and make copies of it forever. I was on the staff of The Exonian, where we worked quickly and what I photographed on Wednesday was public Saturday. What's more, the newspaper gave me an excuse to take pictures of what people actually did.

Schools did not teach photography then. At Harvard, I photographed for the Crimson, the student daily newspaper, and for the fortnightly Alumni Bulletin, which had good reproduction, used many photographs and hired professional photographers to do picture stories. They hired me, too.

Life Magazine saw my work and in my senior year, asked me to photograph a freighter that had been beached on Cape Cod in a storm. The pictures never ran, but the assignment kicked off a relationship with the magazine that has lasted, one way or another, for the last 50 years.

The works were on exhibit until late May.

For further information, please contact Academy Librarian Jacquelyn Thomas at (603) 777-3328.