Straight Man

As President Eisenhower paused while rehearsing his televised speech to the nation on the Korean war's end in 1953, New York Times Magazine Photographer George Tames noticed that Ike had taken off his glasses and, with head tilted slightly to the left, was staring thoughtfully into space. Edging past the long-lens cameras used by most other photographers in the White House TV-radio room, Timesman Tames held his Rolleiflex at waist level, aimed his flash high to the left and caught Ike's expression with one exposure null of a second at f.16). When Tames sent a print to be autographed, he learned that the brow-furrowed shot had been chosen by Eisenhower for his first "official" portrait (TIME, Feb. 15. 1954). the picture that Ike gives visitors, friends and VIPs around the world.

Last year, after White House Press Secretary Jim Hagerty confided to newsmen that the President wanted a new picture for the campaign, Photographer Tames waited for another broadcast and caught Ike in almost exactly the same mood and position. Again. Ike picked Tames's picture from hundreds of others that were submitted in the unofficial contest for the official portrait.

Last week, after press photographers had scrambled for months to provide Ike with a second-term portrait, Jim Hagerty announced the new winner: George Tames. The Timesman's entry, a third unsmiling pre-broadcast shot, was taken in February when the President was about to go on the air with his annual appeal for the American Red Cross.

Hard-working George Tames, 38, broke into newspaper photography as a 19-yearold copy boy at TIME'S Washington bureau, where he learned to click a shutter by watching LIFE photographers and asking the right questions. He became a full-fledged "head-hunter," as the trade refers to a photographer who specializes in candid head-and-shoulders shots, and joined the Times's Washington staff in 1945. Winner of more than a dozen awards in White House News Photographers' Association contests, shiny-domed Cameraman Tames shares the President's respect for straight, unretouched pictures that tell a story. The deepening groove between the eyes, the tighter lines of the mouth in each succeeding picture picked by Ike reflect the aging, deeply earnest man whom Eisenhower sees in his own mirror.

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