Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 15, 1995 TAG: 9502150044
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH HUNTLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I think it was the time my middle brother won the Massachusetts state wrestling championship. He was on the front page of the local paper," she said during a phone interview last week. "No, wait a minute, maybe my mother took that one."
She laughed. "Oh, I don't know. I truly can't remember."
Today, however, there's no mistaking Knott's work. Her photos, many of which focus on human justice issues, are poign-ant, stirring and memorable.
Knott has been honored for her year-long chronicle of a 28-year-old woman who was dying of AIDS, for her 20-picture series of the famine in Sudan, for her photos documenting the aborted elections in Haiti and for her collection of pictures from the Challenger space shuttle explosion.
Her projects have taken her all over the world, and now she's coming to Roanoke.
Janet Knott, staff photographer for the Boston Globe, will join six other female journalists on Thursday at Hollins College for a public symposium titled "Women in the Media."
The other speakers will include: Ann Compton, ABC News White House correspondent; Katha Pollitt, author and columnist for The Nation; Elizabeth Seydel Morgan, poet and screenwriter; Elizabeth Valk Long, president of Time magazine; Cynthia Tucker, syndicated columnist and editorial page editor for the Atlanta Constitution; and Mary Bishop, staff writer for The Roanoke Times & World-News.
"It will be an interesting gathering of women. I'm looking forward to it," said Knott, who majored in English and graduated from Barnard College in 1974.
Knott credits the impact of television in the 1950s and '60s for making her aware of the power of visual images. That awareness grew stronger during the turbulent years of the Vietnam War and Watergate, she said.
"It was much easier to believe the pictures than the words," she explained. "The words weren't true."
Knott began to think seriously of a career in media when anthropologist Margaret Mead spoke at her college graduation.
"She said the only way to understand the world is to understand media," Knott said.
A year after her graduation, Knott was hired to answer phones as a summer intern at the Boston Globe. When that ended, she landed a job as a darkroom technician at the newspaper.
She's moved forward at a dizzying pace since then. Some of Knott's success is the result of being in the right place at the right time.
She went to Cape Canaveral for what was expected to be a routine assignment: record the take-off of the space shuttle that was carrying the first teacher into space. That day ended up being anything but routine, and instead of joy and pride, she photographed shock and grief.
She travelled to Haiti to document the Nov. 29, 1987, elections. They turned out to be anything but democratic. Despite being shot at outside a polling place, she captured the turmoil and the aggression on film.
"When I went to Haiti I had no idea that people would get killed when they tried to vote," she said, "but they did."
Most of Knott's success, though, is the result of talent and compassion.
"If you believe in what you are trying to convey, if you believe in the overwhelming issues and the conflict in which people aren't receiving help, that drives you," she said.
Knott said she is troubled by the lack of media's commitment to social issues.
"The tendency in our country now is to take what you see on television and hear on talk radio as the news," she said. "The human rights stories tend to get lost."
Since 1992, Knott has taught a second-year photojournalism course at the New England School of Photography.
Each year her students participate in a class project chronicling the work of a nonprofit group. Her class' photographs of the Boston Living Center, a social program that services people with AIDS and their families, have been featured in state and national exhibitions.
"We're at a time when doing as much as we can for our country is important," Knott said. "That's my slant as a journalist and as a citizen. That's what I pass on when I teach."
Both Janet Knott and Cynthia Tucker will lead workshops on their crafts during Thursday's day-long event at Hollins College. A panel discussion, a luncheon and a candlelight dinner have also been scheduled.
The "Women in Media" symposium is a part of Hollins College's commemoration of Founder's Day.
``Women in the Media'': Thursday, Hollins College. Kickoff luncheon with ABC\ News White House correspondent Ann Compton, 1 p.m., $6. Panel discussion, 7:30 p.m. 362-6451.
by CNB