You had to start looking from the widest spectrum and then slowly narrow it down to that one spot and one moment of the kill,” he said. “With sniping, you had to look at the lay of the land. The close observation demanded by his work is a carryover from Vietnam, where he served two tours of duty. Yet another frames the attentive compassion of an old priest adept at making those seeking his counsel feel like they have an unconditional friend. Another portrays the sadness of an AIDS-stricken gay man resigned to taking the train home to die with his family. One image captures the anxiety of a newly homeless young pregnant woman smoking a cigarette to ward off the chill and despair on a cold gray day. He’s refined this skill of sizing-up and dissecting a subject via intense study of Japanese samurai-sword traditions, part of a fascination he has with Asian culture.īecause his wartime experience forever altered his looks and the way he looks at things, it’s no surprise the images he makes are concerned with revealing primal human emotions. This knack for insinuating himself into a scene is something he learned in the Army, first as a guard protecting VIPs and later as a sniper hunting enemy targets. Despite his appearance, he has a way of melding into the background (at least until his big bass voice erupts) that makes him more spectator than spectacle. His massive head, crowned by a blond crew cut, is a heavy, sculptured rectangle that juts above his thick torso ala a Mount Rushmore relief. His collapsed right eye socket narrows into a slit from which his blue orb searches for a clear field of vision. The right side - shattered by rocket fragments and rebuilt during many operations - has the irregularity of a melted wax figure. His pale white face resembles a plaster bust with the unfinished lines, ridges and scars impressed upon it. Although he would prefer forgetting the war, the California native knows the journey he’s taken from Nam to Nebraska has shaped him into a monument of pain and whimsy. For Hendrickson, a draftee who hated the war but served his country when called, Vietnam was a crucible he survived and a counterpoint for the life he’s lived since. Perhaps it is sweet justice that the sharp eye he once trained on enemy prey is today applied in service of beauty. The Purple Heart recipient well-appreciates the irony of having gone from using a high-powered rifle for delivering death to using a high-speed camera for affirming life. Typical of his irreverent wit, he bills himself as - One Hand Clapping Productions. He is a fine artist, a wry raconteur and a serious student in the ways of the warrior. Known by some as “the one-armed photographer,” he is far more than that. His prosthetic ends in pincer-like hooks he uses to handle his camera, which he trains on subjects far removed from violence, including Japanese Butoh dancers. The Vietnam War veteran bears a prosthetic device in place of the right arm that was blown-off in a 1968 rocket attack. Originally appeared in The Reader (Combat sniper-turned-art photographer Jim Hendrickson is one of those odd Omaha Old Market denizens worth knowing. But there is a visceral, cinematic quality to Jim’s story that I think sets it apart and will be readily apparent to you as you read it.Ĭombat s niper-turned-a rt photographer Jim Hendrickson on his vagabond life and enigmatic work His story would make a good book or movie, which I can honestly say about a number of people I have profiled through the years. Another of the unforgettable characters I have met in the course of my writing life is the subject of this story for The Reader (Jim Hendrickson is a Vietnam combat vet who went from looking through the scope of a rifle as a sniper in-country to looking through the lens of a camera as an art photographer after the war.
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