CAPTURING STARS:

Grant Smithies talks to veteran American photographer Steve Schapiro who has spent more than 50 years behind the lens, documenting great moments in celebrity and social change

Grant Smithies talks to veteran American photojournalist Steve Schapiro.

WERE THEY striped? Covered in pale blue paisleys? Polka dots, perhaps? And what did a man as compact as Steve Schapiro look like in Robert F Kennedy’s pyjamas? We may never know. For once, the great photographer neglected to use his camera.

‘‘Yeah, well, I was pretty sick,’’ says Schapiro from a snow-bound hotel room in Chicago. Now 79, the legendary photo-journalist is recalling an assignment where he followed the Kennedy presidential campaign for a month, during which time the two men became firm friends. While they were in South America, Schapiro became ill, and Kennedy’s wife, Ethel, brought him a pair of Bobby’s pyjamas to wear. It seems an unusually intimate relationship between photographer and subject. ‘‘Yes, that’s true, but you really develop a strong closeness with some of these people. I very much loved Bobby Kennedy, who I thought was a very daring politician who could make

‘It’s about creating an atmosphere where the person feels very comfortable, so that they begin to be themselves around you.’

America better.’’

The process of making America better, or at least, highlighting some of the things that needed to change, has been an abiding fascination for Schapiro. In his breakthrough 1961 photo-essay for Life magazine, he catalogued the poverty and deprivation of migrant agricultural workers. For his next assignment, this small white man headed into the poor black part of town, bringing back images of junkies with syringes still in their arms, passed out in alleys and cars in East Harlem.

The subject of a documentary screening on Sky TV’s Arts