Newsman

Tim Chapman loved news, and he covered it better than just about anyone. As a photojournalist, Chapman captured the history of the world frame by frame for more than four decades. Newsman: The Photojournalism of Tim Chapman chronicles Miami’s history from the 1970s thru 2012, as well as major regional events and beyond, that have forever shaped our minds.

The exhibition, curated by HistoryMiami and Photographer Al Diaz, highlights Chapman’s storied career that started at the Miami Herald in 1972. The photographs show snapshots of four decades of covering wars, riots, waves of refugees, and hurricanes.

In 1978, Chapman was one of only four photographers to make it into Jonestown, Guyana, to document what became known as “The Jonestown Massacre,” which marked the largest loss of U.S. civilian lives in a non-natural disaster, prior to September 11th. Chapman also captured Hurricane Andrew, the Cocaine Cowboys era, and the Mariel Boatlift.

As his friend and former colleague Carl Hiaasen once wrote in the Miami Herald, “You did not send Chapman to take pictures at Art Basel… You sent him to fires and wars and plane crashes and mass suicides in Guyana. You sent him to crawl the jungles of Nicaragua with armed rebels. You sent him to shoot the guarded island mansion of a crooked prime minister (where he rented a plane and flew in low “with the sun at our backs”)…  And those of us who got to ride with him in those kick-ass days cherish every harrowing memory.”