Remembering The Late Photographer Jules Alexander
/There are a couple of fine reads on the passing of photographer Jules Alexander, best known for his images of Ben Hogan seen in The Hogan Mystique.
Sam Weinman at GolfDigest.com on the iconic image that captured Hogan's style and gravitas.
The most celebrated picture in the Alexander collection is the one above of Hogan leaning against his putter on the green, head turned to the side, a cigarette in his right hand. When Alexander told the story of that photo, he recalled Hogan holding his position just long enough for the photographer to make it work.
"I sit at my desk and I can see the picture every day, and just recently I began to think, ‘Why did he stand there just long enough for me to take all these frames with three different cameras?’” Alexander said in 2006. “You can’t do that in two minutes. But he’s looking across the green at Claude Harmon. And I’m going to have the temerity to think that he posed for me by saying to himself, ‘I’m going to give this guy a shot.’ ”
Adam Schupak at Golfweek files a very personal remembrance of Alexander, who he profiled in 2007.
In August 2007, I spent the day shadowing Alexander as he photographed the third round of The Barclays at Westchester Country Club in Harrison, N.Y. But we had become friends several years earlier. He could spin a story, and I loved to listen to them. He told me that when he flew, he never checked his camera – he loved the Leica – and always booked a window seat and kept his camera on his lap, just in case he ever saw something good, “like a UFO,” he said, before adding, “I just like to have a camera in my hands.” Whenever he booked a hotel, he asked whether it had a pool so he could swim laps. That was his secret to keeping in such good shape.
That day at the tournament was a 90-90 day — 90-plus degrees, 90-plus-percent humidity — and still ranks as one of the muggiest days I’ve had to cover golf. Yet Alexander lugged his equipment like a man half his age. He said to me after we sat down for a drink at the tail end of the day, “It’s as hot as I remember, but not as hot as Okinawa.”