For Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Robin Hood (Chattanooga '66), Vietnam was more than just a detour in life; it changed the road he was on.
"It changed the direction of my career plans. Art was my major in college. My plan had been to work for an ad agency as an art director."But in Vietnam, he got "hooked"on photography.
"I was in a serious situation in Vietnam, and journalistic photography seemed to be a very serious and sincere application of an artistic form."
"The immediacy of being able to come up with an image instantaneously"captivated him.
He says having a college degree made the difference in his fate in Vietnam.
"I went as an infantry platoon leader, but because of my art/English college major they asked me to be an information officer for the 1st Air Cavalry Division."
He picked up a spare unit camera to record his personal observations, and by the time he returned to the U.S. his career plans had changed directions. He went to work for the Chattanooga News-Free Press as a photographer and was director of photography for the state of Tennessee under Governor Lamar Alexander. Since 1983 he has been a free lance photographer. He is a founding partner of Journal Communications of Franklin, Tennessee, a corporate magazine publisher. He recently co-founded Parker Hood Press, a custom book publisher.
He has a Vietnam war to thank for the photograph that won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1977.
"I made a photograph in Chattanooga at a Memorial Day parade. It was of a black Vietnam veteran in a wheelchair. He was a double amputee, a big burly muscular guy with a beard. It was raining lightly that day and he had a poncho over his Vietnam uniform and a boonie hat, a floppy green fatigue hat. I recognized that he was a Vietnam veteran and drew my own conclusion that he was wounded in the war. The thing that captivated me about his image, he was big and militant looking, but he had his small one-year-old son in his lap, clutched to his chest. He was absorbed in the parade and was biting his lip as if he were about to cry. It was that one brief moment of obvious emotion on his face that made that photograph."
Tennessee Alumnus
Summer 1995