A Times Photographer’s Journey Home to the Winter Olympics
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Version 0 of 1. Chang W. Lee cried as he photographed the opening of the Winter Olympic Games. He had grown up in Busan, South Korea, where his parents rarely spoke about the war that cleaved his homeland in two. His mother had fled the North, leaving behind family members; his paternal uncle was never seen again after being taken prisoner by the North. In elementary school, his teachers had him draw posters and write essays against the communists. Now, in an emotional homecoming he could never have imagined, Mr. Lee has returned to cover the Winter Games for The New York Times. Even harder to believe was the sight of a unified team of women hockey players from North and South Korea as they entered the stadium. “We are the same people,” Mr. Lee said in a phone call from Korea this week. “Unification will probably not happen anytime soon but we don’t have to be literally unified to be able to communicate with our relatives on the other side and have activities together.” These are the eighth Olympics Mr. Lee has covered for The New York Times, even though he had little interest in sports when he moved to the United States after a semester of college. And even though the 1988 Summer Games were in Seoul, he didn’t have the time to watch them on television, since he was busy delivering pizzas in New Jersey to pay his way through English classes. He just knew something big was happening. “I heard people screaming from their homes,” he recalled. “But I was just delivering the pizza.” He went on to study photography at New York University and landed a photo internship at The Times in 1994 before being promoted to staff photographer a few months later. And though he started with little knowledge of many American sports, he quickly became an expert sports photographer. He covered his first Olympics in Nagano, Japan, in 1998, where the spectacle and the drama motivated him to photograph as many Olympic Games as possible ever since. “I love to cover the Olympics because it’s really about human drama,” he said. “These athletes go through extreme hardship and devote so much of their lives to compete in a short period of time that will define their career. To witness that and to be able to capture those moments is a great gift to me and a privilege to be able to do it.” His obsession with capturing the perfect moment at the Olympics at times rivals the obsession of the athletes themselves. Two thirds of his job, he said, is making sure everything is working so he can actually take the pictures the rest of the time. At these Olympics, his focus will be on figure skating and ice hockey. Mr. Lee has set up two remote cameras at the skating arena and two more at the hockey rink. He had already scouted the figure skating venue in Pyeongchang a year ago in order to familiarize himself with the location. He also went to the American figure skating trials in order to study the athletes and their routines. To successfully photograph the Olympics, he said, you have to plan, prepare and “want it more than anyone else and never give up,” two traits he knows well from his personal journey. Planning and patience may be the foundation, but once the event begins, instinct takes over. There is a purely meditative aspect to being a great sports photographer and a feeling of being solely in the moment. Anticipation is critical for capturing the moments that happen so fast. “It’s really being able to see what’s going to happen before it happens,” Mr. Lee said. “If you wait until you see it with your own eyes, many times it’s too late.” Follow @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Chang Lee is on Twitter and Instagram. You can also find Lens on Facebook and Instagram. |