Celebrated AP Photographer J. Walter Green takes pictures from the gut

By Robert Doherty
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

In his 43 years as a photographer with the Associated Press, J. Walter Green says he has seen it all.

This nationally known, award-winning photographer has covered Queen Elizabeth, six Olympic games, Apollo 13 and 14, and was a combat photographer in WWII. Green says he learned photography from his mother. “My mother was an amateur photographer. She taught me how to print and develop pictures. So she started me off,” he says. “I was just an amateur with pretty good equipment and the opportunity to be a part of good stories.” Green attributes his ability to get great shots to gut reaction.

The royal slip
While following Queen Elizabeth for the 150th Anniversary of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Green was on a bus ready to go to the first location as the Queen’s plane landed. “Something said to me, ‘Get off the bus,’” says Green. “I was the only photographer there and when she got off the plane the wind kept blowing her skirt up. I got a whole series of pictures. They ended up being referred to as the Royal Slip.”

Apollo 14
One of Green’s most memorable photos was when he was covering Apollo 14. “Alan Shepard was the flight commander. I was with his parents up in New Hampshire who were watching him on TV. I was photographing their faces, their reactions from the TV.”

‘People started talking’
Another shot Green is proud of is not his most famous. During WWII, Green had heard that the line of demarcation—called the Morgan Line—between the Allied Nations and the enemy nations ran through the middle of a giant Italian war cemetery. About 25,000 Italian solders were buried technically in Yugoslavia. “I went there and took the picture,” Green says. “It got a lot of coverage in Italy. People started talking about it. The boundary commission agreed there was a mistake and they moved it back. From then on, the cemetery was complete.”