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- <text id=91TT0036>
- <title>
- Jan. 07, 1991: From The Managing Editor
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Jan. 07, 1991 Men Of The Year:The Two George Bushes
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR, Page 15
- </hdr><body>
- <p> One man--but two Men of the Year. It was one thing for
- senior writer George J. Church to explain our unorthodox choice
- in words. George Bush, he writes in the opening essay of our
- package, "seemed almost to be two Presidents last year, turning
- to the world two faces that were not just different but also had
- few features in common." But how to convey that concept clearly
- and elegantly on the magazine's cover?
- </p>
- <p> The answer was to call on Gregory Heisler, 36, who produced
- several of our most notable photographic covers last year (John
- Sununu, David Lynch and the Dick Cheney-Colin Powell
- combination). The dual image on the cover of this issue is no
- darkroom trick, no product of digital wizardry. It is
- photography, pure if not so simple. Heisler first clicked his
- shutter as the President looked to his left; then on the same
- sheet of film he captured Bush looking the opposite way.
- </p>
- <p> The key to the success of any double exposure is getting
- the elements to match up just so. "One boo-boo," says Heisler,
- "and his ear winds up in the middle of his face." Heisler spent
- 25 hours in the studio preparing for his 15-minute session with
- the President, using a stand-in to represent Bush and
- meticulously measuring precisely where to position his cameras.
- For his part, Bush had to keep perfectly still to ensure that
- his profile lined up exactly where the photographer needed it.
- </p>
- <p> At TIME, Heisler is known as an artist "who can really take
- portraits into the beyond," as deputy art director Arthur
- Hochstein puts it. For our cover story on Sununu last May,
- Heisler had the White House chief of staff's face melting into
- an American flag. In August, he used double-exposure techniques
- to concoct an unearthly cover photo of eccentric director Lynch.
- "I told him we were going to make his face do things faces can't
- do," Heisler recalls. "He really liked that."
- </p>
- <p> These effects could have been produced by an illustrator
- instead. But the use of photography gives such works what
- Heisler calls "an undeniable realism." Says the Chicago-born
- photographer: "These images make you say, `Hey, what's going on
- here?' because you are looking not at a drawing but, in this
- case, at the President himself." All two of him, in fact.
- </p>
- <p>-- Henry Muller
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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