My teacher's photos: J. Ross Baughman's "Disarmers of Terror" for Life magazine

Today, Life Magazine's web site published a set of photos, many previously unpublished, about an Israeli Bomb Squad. They were taken by my photojournalism teacher, J Ross Baughman, in 1984, a few years after I took a course with him at the New School for Social Research. I learned so much in that course!

Ross spent The images and accompanying text excerpted from Ross's new book  show his fearless approach to investigative photojournalism--an approach that cost him his leg on another assignment. 30 years later, the images are still gritty and haunting.

View Disarmers of Terror

The photojournalism class, which I took in the fall of 1980, took place on Monday nights at the New School, where we were given assignments, met with guest speakers—including GEO photo editor David Burnett—and other photographers who were working photojournalists and documentary photographers. We even had a fake press conference where Ross pretended to be a terrorist reading demands, and we were to photograph the event. The surprise element? He had one of our classmates "assasinate" him with a water pistol—to see who had the reflexes and got the shot. I did...and as soon as I can find it in my files, I'll post it here!


We shared portfolios and usually talked until the building was being closed for the night, at which point most of the class walked down 13th street to 7th Avenue, where we would continue the discussion over coffee late into the night at Blimpie's.

It was an incredible course and I feel fortunate to have had that experience.