“Getting there is half the story”In the 1960s, the Cunard Steamship Line had an award-winning advertising slogan: “Getting there is half the fun!” It has been appropriated in part as the title for this narrative.

BEN MARTIN was hired at age 26 as TIME Magazine’s first staff photographer by Henry R. Luce, founder and Editor-in-Chief of the TIME-LIFE Empire. He went on to photograph many of the magazine’s major stories as its Senior Photographer for over 33 years

These were exciting times for a young photojournalist, and TIME was the most important and widely read of the newsmagazines. Traveling the world, Martin photographed stories as diverse as the Japanese "Zero" pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, Pope Paul’s historic first Papal trip to the Holy Land, African Safaris and an Arctic Expedition to the North Pole. He walked backwards in front of Martin Luther King for most of the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights March photographing the charismatic black leader. He was one of only two photographers allowed in the studio to cover the Kennedy-Nixon TV debates (taking the “infamous” sweaty upper-lip and 5 o’clock shadow photograph that Nixon claimed cost him the election) and three years later photographed President John F. Kennedy’s funeral, earning a glowing write-up in TIME’s Publisher’s Letter. Twenty-five years later, a contrite former-President Richard M. Nixon who, pleased with the results of a more recent photo session, asked him to “…let bygones be bygones,” and named Martin his official photographer.

As the first American photojournalist in Cuba on an officially sanctioned visit to that troubled island after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, his three weeks of travel around the country and successful interviews with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were none-the-less capped by three intense days in a Cuban prison on trumped-up charges of unauthorized photography and suspicion of being a CIA agent. The Swiss Ambassador gained his release in time for him to attend a diplomatic reception to meet Fidel’s younger brother Raul, now Cuba’s nominal leader.  He was the only photojournalist to cover both sides of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissao’s conflicts with Portugal in Africa, and was slated to be the first American photojournalist to travel to Hanoi during the Vietnam War, but was denied a promised visa when heavy USAF B-52 bombing raids on the capital changed the North Vietnamese Foreign Ministry’s attitude toward American news organizations.

He also photographed the Security Council’s Cold-War crisis debates at UN headquarters in New York, resulting in an acclaimed TIME cover of a glowering Soviet Delegation. He covered many American presidential campaigns and conventions, and traveled with the candidates throughout the nation. On one occasion during a post-election visit to the LBJ Ranch, a triumphant and ebullient newly elected President Lyndon Johnson leading a press tour of his pastures admonished Martin and his running mate Vice President: “Mind the cow pies, boys!” Martin’s photograph of them at the Democratic Convention a few months previously was a notable TIME cover. Several years later he photographed Johnson with Soviet leader Kosygin at the Glassboro Summit Meeting for another memorable cover for LIFE.

One of Martin’s most impressive assignments during this era was as lead photographer on TIME’s now famous “Swinging London” cover story which Hugh Hefner, founder and editor of PLAYBOY, called “pivotal” in defining the sensual, sexy “swinging sixties.”  For over three weeks, he roamed London from Carnaby Street to Portobello Road shooting bistros and boutiques; pubs, casinos, art galleries, Soho’s strip clubs and the disco scene.  Photographs of politicians, TV personalities, and fashion trendy schoolgirls helped Martin fill most of the eight-page color-essay.  During one photo session covering celebrities viewing an opening at Robert Fraser’s art gallery, Martin noticed one of the guests, an impeccably dressed continental, watching his every move with hawk-like eyes.  It was only later that he discovered his viewer was famed Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni doing research for his award-winning film “Blowup,” about a young photographer in contemporary “swinging London.”  A lifelong Anglophile, this assignment cemented his love for London and Britain.  Now a permanent resident of the UK, he has a second home near Marble Arch in London’s West End.

Martin has photographed world leaders as diverse as Emperor Hirohito of Japan, King Juan Carlos of Spain; Chancellors, Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Erhard, Kurt Georg Kiesinger and Willy Brandt of Germany; President Idi Amin of Uganda, King Constantine of Greece, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands; Queen Elizabeth II and British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath and Tony Blair.  He covered three British Royal Weddings; and Soviet leaders Khrushchev, Kosygin, Bresnev, Gromyko, Podgorny and others were captured in the opulence of the Kremlin or newsworthy hot spots around the world.  Golda Meir, David Ben Gurion, Indira Ghandi, Yasser Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan were only a few of the Middle East leaders he has caught on film.  He photographed German Chancellor Brandt for TIME’s Man of the Year cover story, as well as covering eight American Presidents and most of their opposing party’s candidates.  Martin also photographed many major scientific and medical stories including sexperts Masters & Johnson, pioneer cancer researcher Dr. Peyton Rous, early laser experiments at the AT&T Labs in New Jersey, and he was the first non-government photographer to photograph controlled mini-thermonuclear studies (small nuclear explosions) at the Los Alamos National Atomic Laboratory.

His more-than-a-year-long assignment on Hiroshima and the end of World War II culminated in a major cover story for TIME for which he traveled over 100,000 miles and used nearly a thousand rolls of film to capture everything from the B-29 “Enola Gay” and its crewmembers, pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee, to a contemporary birds eye view of Hiroshima taken one day at 8:16 AM, the exact instant of the original bomb blast.  Portraits of “hibakusha,” the survivors of that blast, the Manhattan Project’s Dr. Edward Teller, known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb” and Tokyo University nuclear physicist, Professor Doctor Kakihana, who was perfecting Japan’s own atomic bomb, were included in photographs taken for that special issue.

He has photographed such giants of music and dance as Bernstein, Ellington, Theolonious Monk, Arthur Rubenstein, Stravinsky, Stokowski, Sam Cooke, Dame Vera Lynne, Herbert von Karajan, Aaron Copland, Andre Previn, Roger Daltrey, Mstislav Rostropovich, Isaac Stern, Rudolph Bing, Maria Callas, Judy Collins, Andy Williams, Les Paul & Mary Ford, Mick Jagger, Perry Como, John Cage, Johnny Mercer, Dimitri Mitropolous, James Brown, Anna Moffo, Stan Kenton, Leontyne Price, George Balanchine and Nuryev & Fonteyn. Actors: Jimmy Stewart, Joan Bennett, Terrence Stamp, Samantha Eggar, Lana Turner, John Huston, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Lord Richard Attenborough, Ginger Rogers, Sir Michael Caine, Burt Lancaster, Marilyn Monroe, James Belushi, Linda Hamilton, Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Cary Grant, John Cleese and the “Monty Python” crew, Renee Russo, John Wayne, Roy Rodgers & Dale Evans and Jayne Russell; as well as Supermodels: Lisa Fonssagrives, Kathy Ireland, Mary Denham, Jean Shrimpton, China Machado and Wilhelmina. Ben Martin photographed TIME’s first Swimsuit Fashion Issue several years before Sports Illustrated appropriated the franchise and made it their annual icon.

Martin covered some of the greats of automobile racing as well as many other legendary sports figures: Sir Stirling Moss, James Hunt, John Surtees, Graham Hill, Roger Penske, Phil Hill, Carol Shelby, Mark Donohue and Lelia Lombardi.  Footballers Sam Huff, Roosevelt “Rosie” Grier, Charlie “Choo-Choo” Justice; sluggers Mantle and Maris, Yankee greats Yogi Berra and Jackie Robinson, and hoop legend Wilt Chamberlain all were captured by Martin’s lens.  His coverage of the Olympics and Pan American Games were featured in TIME and Sports Illustrated, and he has photographed his friend Arnold Palmer since the earliest days of his golfing career.  Some photos of boxer Muhammad Ali were taken in the days when the champ was known only as Cassius Clay.

Icons of art, architecture, design and cartooning he photographed are Lichtenstein, Johns, Lipshitz, le Corbusier, Rothko, Pepper, Rivers, Henry Moore, Dong Kingman, Red Grooms, Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Noguchii, Robert Graham, Marisol, Klein, Carl van Vechten, Tinguelly, Saarinnen, Gropius, Norman Jaffe, Phillip Johnson,  Peter Hurd, Max and Jimmy Ernst, Helen Frankenthaler, Duchamp, Chaim Gross, Walt Kelly, Ken Bald, Al Capp and Chester Gould.  Fashion designers St. Laurent, Mary Quant, Bill Blass, Emilio Pucci, Foal and Tuffin, John Weitz, Betsey Johnson and Giorgio Sant’Angelo were subjects.  His corporate, industrial, and executive photography encompasses many of the Fortune 500 companies and major international corporations from the USA, Great Britain, and Europe to Japan and the Far East.

Literary greats he photographed have included Cheever, Dahl, O’Hara, Burgess, Wolfe, Auden, J. P. Dunleavy, Barbara Cartland, John le Carre, Ray Bradbury, Ralph Ellison, Gunter Grass, Sheila Delaney, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, B. J. Friedman, Sloan Wilson, Leroi Jones, Karl Barth, Frank Norris, Jean Piaget, Leo Rosten, Nicholas Monsarrat, Morris West, Gore Vidal, Golding, Condon, James Jones, Harold Robbins, Arthur Miller, Kenneth Tynan, and fellow Southerners, Tennessee Williams, Harper Lee and Carson McCullers. It was McCullers, who after forming a warm friendship during a photo session, often invited him “to stop by for some mint iced tea and a chat.”

Himself a pilot, Martin’s stunningly beautiful aerial photographs range from the St. Malo dam in France to New York’s Verrazano Narrows Bridge; the snow-covered Swiss Alps to the aforementioned aerial view of Hiroshima.  His freelance clients have included major airlines and the world’s premier air charter company.  He is also a certified underwater SCUBA and rare gas deep diver and contributed to a major TIME color essay on oceanography, as well as shooting advertising campaigns for international tourist agencies and resorts.  His innovative design and photographic concepts for Ramada Hotels International’s brochures and advertising campaigns changed the look of hotel promotion worldwide, and he has done major advertising and promotional campaigns for Sheraton and Hilton as well as many other international hotel chains and resorts.

Martin is also author, photographer, and designer of the award–winning book MARCEL MARCEAU: Master of Mime (Viking-Penguin, Paddington Press,) and is photographer/co-author of A DIFFERENT WORLD: Stories and Pictures of the Great Hotels of the World (Christopher Mathew-Grosset & Dunlap, Paddington Press,) a Book of the Month Club Selection.  He is co-founder, co-owner, Vice President and Creative Director of Pomegranate Press, Ltd., a mainstream book publishing company headquartered in Los Angeles, specializing in books, audio tapes, CDs, calendars and posters about the entertainment industry.  He has contributed covers or photographic illustrations to more than fifty books by other authors and publishers including three of former President Nixon’s books.

Ben Martin has directed and photographed over a dozen industrial documentary films, including an award-winning centerpiece for the London International Boat Show at Earls Court, and has been a special stills photographer on numerous major motion pictures, television specials, The Metropolitan Opera, Broadway and London’s West End plays.  He is currently a freelance photojournalist and commercial and advertising photographer, and he lectures on photojournalism at colleges, universities and seminars in the US and Great Britain.