Interview by Leonard Lopate, New York and Company,
Aired on December 14, 1987 (Transcribed and illustrated using Joseph Papin’s work, J Papin, 2021)
Joseph Papin, F. Donald Nixon testifying at the conspiracy trial of John Mitchell and Maurice Stans, 1974
Joseph Papin’s drawing of the Mitchell Stans trial (reproduced above and drawn from his seat at floor level) was used as the cover of the exhibition brochure, Contemporary Courtroom Artists, authored by Susanne Owens, M. Jessica Rowe and Barry M. Winiker. The three year traveling show (1979-1982) was put together by Owens, Rowe and Winiker, Lowe Gallery, Syracuse University, and included the work of Anthony Accurso, Marilyn Church, Stephen Cohen, Ida Libby Dengrove, Albert Herr, Joseph Papin, Richard Tomlinson, Meryl Treatner, and Betty Wells.
Interview with Joseph Papin, by Leonard Lopate, New York and Company, December 1987
LL: “Courtroom artists have a tradition going back to the 19th century, a tradition now threatened by a new ruling which allows New York to join forty-four other states that now permit cameras in their courtrooms. We’ve invited Joe Papin, a courtroom artist for thirty years, to share some of the dramatic moments he has witnessed during that long career. Mr. Papin has covered the trials of Patty Hearst and John Gotti, among others, and is currently covering the Howard Beach trial. We’re very pleased to welcome him to New York and Company.”
LL: “Hi.”
JP: “Hello.”
LL: “Where do your drawings usually appear? We’re most used to seeing them on television.”
JP: “Yes, well true. I’m on staff at the Daily News so that’s where the drawings, if they’re selected—one offers—and if it is chosen for that day, then it appears, according to the space the story is given. It isn’t a matter of going out and—I do, of course, what I think is the scene that I’ve looked at—it’s up to the editor, he is the one who makes the ultimate decision as to whether it gets in.”
LL: “Well they often do use your drawings, your drawing of David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, that made the front page of the Daily News, your drawings of the Gotti trial pretty much dominated the inside pages of the News.”
JP: “Well it’s delightful when an artist can make a page one. I’ve been on staff for 18 years at the News and I believe I have perhaps twelve or fourteen page ones. The competition between the photography and the art, of course, is intensely keen. And now, in the last three or four weeks, there have been very few drawings appearing, I’m sure in anticipation of when the lens is going to be introduced.”
LL: “Well that must really frighten you, or there other things for you to do? What’s going to happen when the cameras are allowed in all courtrooms?”
JP: “Well of course there’s going to be a great loss for every publication that previously had used art because there is a distinction and a dramatic vibrancy to drawings that is completely lost in just one more photograph. I recall once applying for press credentials at the United Nations and the lady said, ‘I have 500 photographers, registered, what on earth do you think you can do?’ I said, ‘Madam, they are going to be up in the photo gallery. They’re all going to be confined, aren’t they.’ And she said, ‘Yes they are, with various lengths of telephoto lenses and so on.’ I said, ‘But in my mind, I can be anywhere on that floor, and by contrast alone my graphics are going to stand out.’ She said, ‘That’s good enough for me.’ And subsequently Business Week used it as a cover and five pages of drawings. So it was wonderful.”
JP: “Undoubtedly, there’s going to be a lot of people who will not have work. There will be a homogenization—on the scene, in the courtroom—by a film, which I consider one of the lowest common denominators of recognizability. But there’s also the ultimate control which shifts from the artist, his perceptions—his totality, everything he brings to his craft at that moment—shifts to a photo editor who then sifts through film—comes in a canister, is developed, presented at the desk—he decides what best illustrates the story.
“And as it was bought out in a symposium the other evening at the Players Club, given us—courtroom artists—through the courtesy of The Players Club, Tom Puccio and Chris Cornell. This man, one of the press representatives said, ‘We will argue passionately for our right to have the camera in the courtroom. The people’s right to know will be number one on our agenda.’ He said, ‘In actuality, of course, once we’re there and the producer decides that nothing is truly informative or entertaining, nothing will be shown. But we will have accomplished our goal, and too bad for the artist.’ Well it’s too bad for everyone, because the artist has so much at his command that once it is gone it will be just one more photograph.”
City of New York Proclamation on reportorial courtroom art, November 30, 1987
LL: “Well actually artists have been fighting—illustrators anyway—have been fighting a losing battle for quite a while. In the late thirties, magazine covers went from being drawn to being photographed, and little by little we have seen our ads become more and more photographs— virtually everything where the artist dominated in the past has become one kind of picture or another—usually because it’s cheaper. I don’t know how you compare with a photographer—I’d imagine that, just because of the length of time it takes you to do three or four drawings that you’ve got to be a bit more expensive than somebody who brings in six rolls of black-and-white film and just snaps away every ten seconds.”
JP: “Well, you’re probably right. What with all the motorized drives and magazines and all the rest, undoubtedly out of this will come something usable and it will be cheap and economical, which is, of course, I don’t know, it seems to me that if one wants quality, if one wants distinction, one should be willing to pay for it. On staff at the News they have a choice—they could use a drawing if they wish, or they can let it go, and nothing, ever a photograph, nothing will appear—it’s as though no story was covered.”
LL: “In the Howard Beach trial the judge has forbid photographers from coming into the courtroom (JP: “yes, thank God”), Is that going to happen a bit, do you think there’ll be that odd case where a judge will just keep them out, or in time do you think they’ll all just cave in.”
JP: “The judge initially ruled that the camera was intrusive. The way they set it up it was physically intrusive and dominated a large area directly in front of the jury box. The trial is a very tenuous thing—it’s full of emotion—and there’s all sorts of flashpoints. I think the Judge did a marvelous thing by sticking by his guns. I sent him a picture, showing him gesticulating, as he often does, in an effort to keep order in his courtroom. I said, ‘Judge, think of the boy whose finger was in the dike and stand firm, for God’s sake’ and he did.”
Joseph Papin, Daily News, December 11, 1987
JP: “But I can recall going to the von Bulow trial, the first one—and when I appeared, Judge Needham invited me back to his chambers and I said, ‘Judge, there’s certainly very little for me to do here with you having that still camera out there and the television camera.’ He said, ‘Son, any darn fool can have a photograph, get to work.’ And I loved it.”
LL: “He called you son.”
JP: “Pardon?”
LL: “He called you son.”
JP: “Yes indeed. Well I thought he was a marvelous judge, as I instantly fell in love with the woman the other day from France who was here observing the Howard Beach trial. I asked her about the issue of cameras and she said, ‘Well of course. At the Barbie trial we have cameras for the state archives, but for the people, we have artists.’”
Joseph Papin, Daily News, May 7, 1982
LL: “Well you, as the artist for the Daily News for many years, have covered all of the most famous trials. Maybe we can go to the Patty Hearst trial first, that’s the one that you described to a member of our staff as ‘six weeks of pure fantasy.’”
JP: “Eight, eight weeks.”
LL: “Eight weeks.”
JP: “Eight weeks. It was fantastic.”
LL: “Why is that?”
JP: “Well first of all it was in San Francisco. It was eight weeks free of anyone second guessing what they want, how they want it, so on and so forth. It was eight weeks relying on one’s own professional judgment. I had a little telecopier, and no drawing to be bigger than an 8 x 10 sheet of paper but I drew with superimposures—as an artist can do—telescoping those things that were going on. And every day and every night F. Lee Bailey held a press conference saying how magnificent things were going to be when Patty was free, by virtue of his own artistry.”
Patty Hearst Trial, Joseph Papin Courtroom Illustration Collection, Library of Congress # PR 13 CN 2015:128.4112 (Daily News, 2-14-1976)
JP: “The judge was old and ailing and often fell asleep about mid-morning. When awakened, by either Al Johnson, Bailey’s partner, or someone making loud noises, he would instantly say that the press had better keep quiet (chuckle) or he was going to clear the courtroom.”
LL: “It sounds like a fair trial.”
JP: “Oh it was beyond belief! Because, I didn’t really know that people could live so well—so many could live so well. Not only that, but the SLA, which turned out to be eight or nine middle class kids and one black guy, was termed at that point ‘a national army’ capable of having—when a car couldn’t be found, the FBI fellow out there said that a chop shop run by the SLA had cut it up.”
JP: “But it was so fantastic that, it was just, it marks one of the more incredible highlights, and eight weeks with only one assignment is a magnificent thing too.”
From the “Scenes of Life by Joe Papin” article, Ken Atkins, The Denton-Record Chronicle, June 1, 1979
(Text box in the photo above reads:)
“’A miracle worker’ was how one reporter [Theo Wilson] described Joe Papin’s work at the Patty Heart bank robbery trial. Patty herself was so impressed with his drawings, that she had her father, Randolph Hearst, to commission Papin to provide her with daily drawings also. In the drawing at the top right, Catherine, Randolph, Anne and Vicky Hearst look on from the gallery. In the lower right drawing, Patty refuses to answer U.S. attorney James Browning’s questions, as defense attorneys Albert Johnson and F. Lee Bailey stand by her. At left, Bailey and Browning are surrounded by cameramen and reporters at a press conference.”
Patty Hearst Trial, News Pix cover, Joseph Papin, 1976.
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