Fortune

In the first few years of shooting for GEO, I did stories on BMX bicycles, boxing, mobile homes, foxhunting, and the Metropolitan Opera. Shooting for a business magazine seemed like it would be dull, but I learned that I was wrong.

GEO's German parent company got to the limit of the money they were willing to spend on their American flagship, and they sold it to Knapp Communications Corporation, an American magazine publisher targeted specifically towards the very rich. Alice Rose George, the photo editor who'd given me so many assignments at GEO, fought with the new editors and designers, and she left in 1981 to be Chief Photo Editor at Fortune. She was happy to bring her photographers along with her, myself included.

Fortune was about money, and money touches everything. With Alice directing the photo department, I got to travel and photograph the F-16 and International Harvester assembly lines; traders; takeover artists; stock market con men; farmers and their tractors; au pairs in Detroit; management training classes; construction workers; gold bullion; weapons of mass destruction; Burger King. I did 150 assignments for Fortune; I traveled to all 48 of the lower states.