Joe McNally is an internationally renowned photographer whose career spans more than 30 years with assignments in about 70 counties. McNally has often been described as a generalist due to his ability to execute a variety of assignments. His career includes being a contributor to the National Geographic where he has shot several cover stories for over 25 years. His work has seen him several awards such as Pictures of the Year, World Press Photo contest, and Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Journalistic Impact. McNally’s is mostly famous for his works titled “Faces of Ground Zero” and “The Future of Flying.”
McNally’s style is that of noir with simple lights using speed lights. He loves to photograph urban areas that are difficult to reach. He has gone to extreme ends of shooting on top of antennas at the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building. McNally is best known for using gear that employs a creative lighting system and Speedlight. He has crafted his skills and is a master of photography lighting tricks. His creative use of lighting is what makes his photos stand out. The dynamism and action in his portraits make his portraits memorable and intense.
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The Future of Flying was a 32-page cover story for the National Geographic Magazine that feature the dark style. This was a photographic series published in December 2003 that featured the future aviation. This was the first all-digital shoot in the magazine as it commemorated the observance of the Wright Brothers’ flight. The digital coverage gained publicity and was deemed significant enough and became incorporated into the documentations of the Library of Congress.
Faces of Ground Zero is a project that featured the aftermath of 9/11 created using a life-sized Polaroid Camera. The project consist of 246 Giant Polaroids that are life-size (9’x4’) shot during a three-week period after the September 11, 2001 and additional images taken 2002. The photographs show the brilliance by McNally’s as a photographer and his humanity to capture everyday people in historic times. The unique portraits are of people who are icons of the families of victims, rescuers, uniformed workers and others related to the tragic event and its aftermath. The project had a massive impact and received massive coverage from the media.
Joe McNally came up with the project which travelled through 2002 to become a book. Over fifty-five thousand copies of the “Faces of Ground Zero” book have been sold. The project was able to generate about $2 million for the relief. The work is considered as one of the most import artistic endeavors from the 9/11 tragedy. The stories were remarkable in that it showed stories of victims, responders, area residents, witnesses, and survivors (McNally, 2002).
McNally has been in the photography business for more than thirty years. Throughout this time, he has worked with several high-profile publication such as Life, National Geographic, Newsweek, and Time. His photos have been dominant on the cover of Sports, Newsweek, Geo, Time, Fortune, Men’s Journal, Business week, and Life. He has won multiple awards and American Photo describes him as one of the versatile photojournalists of our current time. His legendary work has seen him become named among the 100 Most Influence people in photography. He has been honored as one of the members of the Kodak-PDN Legends and to become a Nikon ambassador where he is a Nikon Legend Behind the Lens. He was voted in the year 2010 as one of the most influential photographers in the decade (Joe McNally Photography, 2018).
Figure 1 . Faces of Ground Zero (McNally, 2002)
Figure 2 . The Future of Flying (Fowler, 2008)
Bibliography
JOE MCNALLY PHOTOGRAPHY. (2018). Portfolio.joemcnally.com. Retrieved 15 February 2018, from https://portfolio.joemcnally.com/index .
McNally, J. (2002). Faces of Ground Zero: portraits of the heroes of September 11, 2001 . Little, Brown and Company.
McNally, J. (2003). The Future of Flight . National Geographic.
