Looking back on his five decades as a newspaper photographer in Louisville, Bill Luster recalls an assignment that took him to a strip club called the Toy Tiger.
The Toy Tiger was threatening to sue a nearby nursing home after some of its residents brought in an exotic dancer for a birthday party. So the nursing home thought a field trip was in order. The result of the assignment was a photo of three women from the nursing home and a much younger, shirtless man.
“This is my most fun assignment ever,” said Luster. “Because, they were just having a good time. Some of the women were a little apprehensive about it, but they enjoyed themselves.”
It’s just one of Luster’s photos currently on display at Gallery 916 in downtown Bowling Green.
Luster grew up in Glasgow and eventually took a job with the Courier-Journal in Louisville where he would work for decades, taking photos ranging from everyday people in rural Kentucky to the White House, where multiple times, he was allowed exclusive access to the most powerful man on earth.
In 2010, during President Barack Obama’s first term in office, Luster spent 12 hours photographing the president and the people who surrounded him.
“He had several meetings that day in the situation room in the basement of the White House and I couldn’t go in that room to photograph,” said Luster. “And that was okay because I didn’t want to know any of the secrets going around.”
It wasn’t the first time Luster had been granted access to the White House. He also photographed Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
“For me, the difference is, I had a lot more experience doing it when I photographed President Obama, so I knew what to anticipate more,” said Luster.
Photos of Richard Nixon and his successor Gerald Ford are on display at Gallery 916, including one of Ford aboard Air Force One.
“He invited me to come into his cabin and he was smoking his trusty pipe,” said Luster. “I was in there for about 20 minutes.”
But one photo of a man whose bid for the White House was cut short stands out. It came from the funeral of Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968. The image that Luster captured was ghostly and featured a sharp contrast between the darkness of the night and the faces of the pall bearers illuminated by a single light set up for TV cameras.
“It was scheduled to be about 3:00 in the afternoon, but it ended up being 9:00 at night,” said Luster. “Because when the train carrying his casket was coming from New York to Washington, they had several accidents along the way. So this happened at about 9:30 at night and there was hardly any light at Arlington National Cemetery. But there was one light that lit up the area.”
Throughout his career Luster has seen the transition from film to digital photography. For someone who spent much of his life shooting on film, Luster says he was compelled to change with the times.
“Well in 1998, the Courier-Journal stopped buying film,” said Luster. “They bought digital cameras and they did it for me.”
“A lot of people use digital, some people still use film, but it’s the content behind the photographs. I mean, that picture could’ve been made with film, also,” he said.
Luster says he uses the same approach, whether photographing presidents or the person next door.
“Well, I think the key for me has been…I just photograph the truth,” said Luster. “There are a lot of good people out there and there are a lot of bad people, but I think the good people outweigh the bad.”
The exhibit of Bill Luster’s work remains on display through Saturday.
