Photography Students Honor Teacher With Exhibit of Their Work

Warren King wondered if he should beg, or--dare he try it?--give an order to one of the world’s most powerful men.

It was an autumn morning in Paris during World War II when the 19-year-old photographer fretted about how to approach Gen. George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army’s chief of staff and the general responsible for mobilizing 8.2 million soldiers.

With his Speed Graphic camera and almost no experience, King felt his stomach churn as the plane landed and Marshall walked down the stairs toward him.

“You Sgt. King?” he asked. Without hesitation, King recited his orders and snapped a half-dozen photos of Marshall, learning a lesson that he would pass on to thousands of his students.

“When you have a camera, you are in charge,” King said, recalling that day.

For 50 years, King has taught photography to more than 16,000 students, many of whom have become professionals whose pictures have graced magazine covers and been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

King retired from teaching high school in 1986, but he continues to offer photography lessons at the Reseda Community Adult School. At 76, he has no plans to quit. “I’m having too much fun,” he said.

King’s adult school students are paying him tribute with an exhibition of their photos called “Selected Images by Friends of Warren King.” The exhibit runs through Saturday at the Valley Institute of Visual Art Gallery in Northridge.

“Warren helps you see magic,” said Sandy Kaye, 68, of Hidden Hills, who has taken King’s classes for two decades. “Warren has made me see a door, but not just the door. He shows me the texture, the knobs, the design. He helps me look beyond the ordinary.”

King said he learned to see pictures while serving three years and 13 days in the Army. He traveled through Europe with U.S. troops, documenting wartime horrors and victories. His photographs show a makeshift graveyard in an old woman’s garden, a soldier upside down in a ditch with blood pouring from his mouth, the surrender of German troops.

“I saw a lot of death. Too much,” King recalled. “I cried a lot.”

He mastered how to take a good photo even when gunpowder hung in the air and made the day dark. He learned never to back down from assignments, even the intimidating Marshall, who went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

But it was not until after the war, in 1950, that King found his true joy. He was a 25-year-old newlywed, managing a Westwood portrait studio, when his former English teacher at Fremont High School asked him why he wasn’t a teacher like his father.

King’s father, Elmer R. King, had taught print shop and journalism at Fremont. The question eventually led King to teaching.

Although King had not attended college, his photography during the war, as well as his work in commercial and portrait studios, qualified him for a teaching credential.

So in the fall of 1950, King settled into the third floor at the same school where his father had begun his teaching career, Polytechnic High, which was then near downtown Los Angeles.

King had three darkrooms, a studio and a full-time assistant. “On the first day of school, I would ask students what their fathers did for a living,” he recalled. “Whether it was medicine or police work or any field, I would show them a link to photography.”

Five years later, Polytechnic was relocated to the San Fernando Valley and King transferred to Reseda High School, which opened in September 1955. By then, students were flocking to his classes.

“I’m not looking for a good photographer,” King told prospective students. “I’m looking for people who want to learn.”

In 1973, a young photographer named Jeff Widener decided during his senior year to transfer from Cleveland High School to nearby Reseda High.

“One day, I rode my bike to Reseda High to see the student photos from King’s class, and I was just blown away,” said Widener, now a photographer for the Honolulu Advertiser. “I had never been so hyped in my entire life than on that day.”

“I had a huge ego and took my work very seriously,” Widener said, laughing. “But he was no-nonsense. He put me in my place so that I could see how to improve.”

That spring, Widener won the prestigious Kodak Scholastic Competition, one of four students in King’s classes to do so. He went on to cover the world for various newspapers and wire services. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his 1989 photo of a lone Chinese man standing before a tank in Tiananmen Square.

King revels in his students’ successes. “I feel they are a part of me,” he said. “I am so proud.”