Ben Martin, TIME's first New York Bureau staff photographer, covered wars, fashion, politics, arts, business and sports for TIME, Life, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated for thirty-three years. 

He walked backwards in front of Martin Luther King for most of the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights March, causing Chief U.S. Marshall, John Doar, to comment that “Martin was the best shield Dr. King could have, because he was always in front of [the black leader] photographing his every move.”

     Despite having taken the "infamous" sweaty upper lip and five-o'clock shadow photograph of Richard Nixon during the Kennedy-Nixon TV debates in 1960 (a photograph Nixon claimed cost him the election and led to Martin being ostracized by him), many year later, Nixon asked that, “we let bygones be bygones" and commissioned him to photograph his official post-presidential portrait.

He was as lead photographer on TIME’s now famous “Swinging London” cover story that Hugh Hefner, founder and editor of PLAYBOY, called “pivotal” in defining the sensual, sexy “swinging sixties.”

He photographed major cover essays on the 25th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy and 40th anniversaries of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, the Japanese "Zero" pilot, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Mozambique civil war from both the rebel and Portuguese sides, East African Safaris and an arctic expedition to the North Pole. His three-day non-stop coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s funeral led to a LIFE magazine cover, and his coverage of the first traveling pontiff, Pope Paul’s trip to the Holy Land was a cover feature in TIME.

     Born Benjamin Rush Martin III in Salisbury, North Carolina September 16, 1930, Mr. Martin became fascinated by photography at the age of eight when his father, a newspaperman, gave him a bakelite “Univex 00” miniature box camera. At age fifteen he founded the first High School News Bureau in the nation, and became a staff photographer at the local newspaper, The Salisbury Post. At age seventeen he became the youngest member of the National Press Photographers Association.

     He attended Ohio University, where he majored in journalism and photography, working his way through college cooking nights as a short-order “White Castle” hamburger chef, and as a stringer-photographer for UPI Newspictures. His photo essay on a traveling preacher published in the Columbus DISPATCH Sunday Magazine brought him to the attention of Wilson Hicks, executive picture editor of LIFE. Offered a position as a “photographic trainee/assistant photographer” on the LIFE staff after his graduation, he came to New York only to discover the magazine had eliminated the new position a week before his arrival. Not wanting to return to his hometown jobless, he accepted a position as a copyboy on TIME, coming to work every day with his Leica on his shoulder. Since TIME had no photographic staff at that time, Ben was called on to shoot last-minute assignments. After several months juggling his copyboy job with the ever-increasing photographic assignments, Henry Luce hired him as TIME’s first staff photographer in the New York Bureau.     

Mr. Martin is the author of Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime and co-author of A Different World: The Great Hotels of the World. He photographed for all divisions of Time, including Life, Fortune, People, Sports Illustrated, Money, Entertainment Weekly, Architectural Forum, House and Home, Time-Life Books and HBO.

 Mr. Martin was married to the actress Kathryn Leigh Scott (1971-1990), with whom he co-founded Pomegranate Press, a book publishing company. The two remained close friends and business partners until his death February 10, 2016 at age 86 from pulmonary fibrosis.

Ben Martin, Time Photographer Who Captured the 1960s, Dies at 86

NEW YORK TIMES obituary

By SAM ROBERTS

Ben Martin, who as a Time magazine senior photographer immortalized Richard M. Nixon’s haggard 5 o’clock shadow, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s march to Montgomery, Ala., and John F. Kennedy’s grieving widow and children — evocative images that defined the 1960s — died on Feb. 10 at his home in Salisbury, N.C. He was 86.

The cause was complications of pulmonary fibrosis, his former wife and publishing partner, the author and actress Kathryn Leigh Scott, said.

Mr. Martin’s fascination with photography began when he was 8 and his father gave him a UniveX miniature box camera. By 15, he was working for The Salisbury Post, in the city where he grew up. And by 17, he had become the youngest member of the National Press Photographers Association.

Time hired him in 1957, when he was barely 27, making him one of its first full-time staff photographers.

He worked for Time, Life magazine and most of their parent company’s other publications. He photographed Kennedy’s funeral in 1963, an expedition to the North Pole and commemorations of the 25th anniversary of the D-Day landing at Normandy and the 40th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He took the photographs for the 1966 Time cover article “London: The Swinging City.”

Nixon said that Mr. Martin’s photograph of him looking ashen in a 1960 presidential campaign debate with Kennedy cost him the election, said Cheryl Crooks, a former Time colleague.

“Ben was only one of two press photographers permitted on the set during that debate,” she wrote on her blog, Photo Prose, in November 2013 on the 50th anniversary of the assassination. “His photo showed Nixon with sweat beaded up on his forehead, his tired eyes and slightly disheveled look. Nixon, Ben remembers, ‘arrived late to the studio, refused makeup, refused to put on a clean shirt and all that. Of course, Jack had been there since 4 p.m., and the debate didn’t start until 7.’”

“Nixon hated that image,” Ms. Crooks wrote, “and for years after, deliberately turned away from Ben whenever he spotted the Time cameraman trying to photograph him.” They reconciled after Mr. Martin took a portrait in 1985 that became one of the former president’s favorites.

Jackie Kennedy, with her children Caroline and John Jr., at the funeral of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. CreditBen Martin/Time

In 1965, Mr. Martin nimbly walked backward facing Dr. King for much of the protest march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery. Ms. Scott quoted John Doar, the assistant United States attorney general who was monitoring the march, saying that Mr. Martin was “the best shield Dr. King could have.”

Mr. Martin retired from Time-Life in 1989 and later worked for corporate clients. He founded Pomegranate Press with Ms. Scott. He also wrote and illustrated the 1978 book “Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime.”

Benjamin Rush Martin III was born on Sept. 16, 1930, in Salisbury. His father worked for a newspaper and was later a lawyer and a judge. His mother, the former Margaret Elizabeth Fulk, was a bank clerk.

No immediate relatives survive.

Mr. Martin graduated with a journalism degree from Ohio University in Athens. His photo essay in The Columbus Dispatch about a traveling preacher caught the eye of a Life magazine picture editor, who offered him a job, but the position was eliminated a week before he arrived in New York.

Instead, he accepted a position as a copy boy at Time. Never forsaking his Leica camera, he also took freelance picture assignments for the magazine, which had taken on its first salaried photographer, Walter E. Bennett, only in 1952.