Jim Koenigsaecker: On the Journey
People on a street on the island of Lamu. Founded in the 14th century, Lamu is the oldest continuously inhabited Swahili settlement. The UNESCO World Heritage Site is threatened by a super port being built by the Chinese.
A life in pictures
Text: Mike Blanchard
Arts-y | On a beautiful sunny fall day, Jim Koenigsaecker sits at a table in front of a coffee shop in East Sacramento and enjoys an espresso. He has ridden his bike over from his house and is hefting a brand new Leica SL2 digital camera. He is one of the few photographers in the world who has managed to get hold of one of the uber-high-end cameras. He is explaining the controls and extolling the virtues of Leica cameras and lenses.
Koenigsaecker is returning to Africa in a couple days and he is excited to have a new tool to take with him. He has the air of a consummate professional mixed with the joy of a kid on Christmas morning.
Like a lot of photographers, Koenigsaecker is also into vintage vehicles. He rides a BMW /2 and a Greeves dirt bike and he can be seen around town in his vintage Land Rover.
Jim Koenigsaecker on his much loved vintage BMW. (Photo Brad Garrison)
He is a world away from his former life as a newspaper photographer, but he is still in pursuit of a good image.
Koenigsaecker, 49, was lucky enough to have worked in the newspaper business during the pre-internet golden era of the newspaper. Growing up in Davenport, Iowa, he got into the business early.
“I started delivering the Des Moines Register and also the Quad City Times; one was a morning and one was an afternoon, so I did two routes. … That led to a job as a copy boy at the Quad City Times and then I worked my way up doing just about every job you could do: photographer, reporter. This was back pre-digital; you could work in the press room on the linotype machine or whatever. I really did just everything you could do and I really had a lot of fun.
“… you could work in the press room on the linotype machine or whatever.”
“There were two guys in the photography department back then who were Leica shooters, Harry Boll and Brent Hansen, and they gave me my first (Leica) M3 to shoot when I started being a photographer there, and I have pretty much shot Leica ever since, with some Nikons thrown in for big lenses.
“From there I started stringing for the AP a lot, and that took me to Springfield, Illinois, where I ended up working at the State Journal Register, which at the time was one of the best photo publications in the world; they had some incredible people there. A photographer ended up working his way up to be the publisher there, Barry Locker. They just had an emphasis on super quality photography.”
Koenigsaecker ended up going to the highly regarded Journalism Department at Ohio University which was endowed by the Scripps newspaper syndicate. In his senior year he was recruited to work at the Scripps Washington Bureau. Scripps was affiliated with over 400 papers across the country and had an active bureau.
John Porter salutes the casket of his son Marine Corps Lance Corporal Christian Porter. Corporal Porter was killed in action during the Gulf War. Copyright 1991 AP
“I went to work in D.C., which was incredible. It had kinda been my dream when I was delivering the newspaper. The Des Moines Register had won a couple of Pulitzer Prizes right around that time and I remember looking at their coverage of the farm crisis and everything and thinking, ‘Boy, there would be nothing cooler than ending up covering the White House.’ And then I ended up doing that by about 25. It was great.
“We traveled out of that office. We covered the Olympics and wars and everything that was going on. We were the ones that were the first ones to go for that company (Scripps). Covering the White House and the Capitol Hill for a few years was a great experience.”
One of the things that have been lost with the demise of the great newspapers of the 20th Century is the system that bred great photographers.
“The thing I miss is hanging out over the light table.”
“The thing I miss is hanging out over the light table. None of my photos were run without half a dozen people looking at them. It wasn’t just picture editors and directors of photography, it was reporters and editors. It was wonderful to have that. It was about content. How that picture told a story.”
After years as a photographer, Koenigsaecker left the newspaper world and pursued a successful path in business, which has allowed him to engage in his passion for changing the world for the better. It is such a cliché (changing the world, that is) and so out of place in this suburban setting that you might be forgiven for dismissing it, but he is dead serious and he is putting his time and money where his mouth is.
Koenigsaecker is engaged in philanthropy and he’s using his photography as a vehicle for social change in the U.S. and Africa. His years in the newspaper business taught him a lesson on the power of photography as a tool for social change and gave him a deep list of contacts to help make it happen.
L .to R. Taxi stand, Edinburgh Scotland. An engineer on the Strathspey Railroad lights a cigarette after a run.
Twenty years ago he helped set up a school in Uganda that is still going strong. He has helped raise money for wildlife rangers, worked on documenting parts of Africa that are being lost to development and globalization, provided photography for charitable organizations and supported local African photographers.
“These days the thing I have been doing most is making pictures as advocacy, if you will. Trying to keep doing what we did in the newspaper business, but very few newspapers are doing that anymore, but doing it using social media and partnering with NGOs to help them tell their story. I worked with some people and we built a school in Uganda, about 20 years ago. And then I’ve been using photography to raise awareness of what’s been going on there and fundraise.
“I kind of got out of it as the technology sucked for a little while there.”
“I would say that’s arguably some of the best work I’ve done. There is a Hemingway quote that I won’t get right, something to the effect of: ‘When a man finds a place where he feels like he’s at home that’s where he should be.’ And that’s how it was for me in Africa. I get there and I was like wow! This is where I should be. So I’ve been going back a couple times a year for the last 20 years.
“I’m only recently getting back into photography. I kind of got out of it as the technology sucked for a little while there. I loved my M6 and my Kodachrome and I didn’t like all those early digital cameras at all. And the newspaper industry was going to shit. I thought, ‘This is a good time to have a family and raise two girls and support my wife while she goes to school.
“And then a couple years ago I was sort of reassessing myself. And I thought, ‘You know, the thing that made me the happiest was making pictures.’ I think I’m going to do that for the rest of my life. On this trip I’ve got a whole list of groups I’m partnering with to make pictures for them. I just love doing it. It makes me happy.
Secretary bird, El Karama Ranch, Laikipia Kenya.
“I’ve got several projects going. Some are for other groups; some are personal projects. I have one little long-term project that I’m working on, slowly, which is to photograph endangered UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Jim Koenigsaecker. (Photo Mike Blanchard)
“On my last trip I went to Lamu, which is a little island off the coast of Kenya and Somalia. Little bit dangerous; some bad things have happened there. It’s the oldest continually inhabited Swahili settlement. It’s a very ancient-feeling, isolated community of people that are probably not going to be there in a year or two because the Chinese are building a super port there. … There are 53 endangered sites that I’m trying to get to in the next couple years.
“My long-term goal would be to do an exhibit like at U.N. headquarters, maybe do a photo book. On this next trip I’m going to Lake Turkana. It’s a very remote lake in the middle of nowhere in Kenya’s upper frontier district. …The Ethiopians are damming the river that feeds Lake Turkana, and it might not be there in a couple years.”
Before cycling off back home, Koenigsaecker reflected a bit on his journey in photography.
“One of my college professors came to see me recently, Terry Eiler, who had done some work for Geographic back in the day. He had said something back when I was 20 years old that stuck with me, which was; ‘You know, you’ve got some potential. When you are maybe 40 or 50 years old you'll be ready to realize that potential.’ His point was you need to see the world. He was absolutely right.
“I see the world totally differently than I did when I was a 25-year-old kid. I’m starting to have a style and a vision … I’m trying really hard to get better at the craft. And it's mostly about seeing. That’s one of my biggest challenges at the moment, trying to make layered, complex pictures that tell a story that matters. I’m on the journey… I like the idea of taking something unseen and making it incredibly seen.”
Keep up with Jim
i: @jim_koenigsaecker
f: @jim.koenigsaecker
s: koenigsaecker.com