All Over Albany

More Than Words: The Photography of Newsman Bob Paley

Bob Paley was an award-winning photographer for the Knickerbocker News for almost three decades, capturing both historical moments and the little details of everyday life.

There's a new documentary this year about his work: More Than Words: The Photography of Newsman Bob Paley. And the NYS Writers Institute will be showing it at UAlbany November 16. Blurbage:

For more than a decade [Paley] also earned national renown as a stringer for the Time-Life stable of magazines with Times Union colleague, John Maguire. Often with a single photo, he captured the mood, moment and meaning of the forces that rocked mid-20th century America.

In this new documentary, Paley's daughter Mary presents the startling and beautiful images of his singular career.

MORE THAN WORDS (co-directed by Mary Paley and Jon Russell Cring) tells the story of how a small city in upstate New York coped with the powerful forces that were unleashed as America came of age in the years following World War II. The film is truly a newspaper story; a tribute to the tireless crusaders of America's fact-based media.

Mary Paley will be at the screening for a panel discussion following. (You might remember that Mary Paley co-directed The Neighborhood That Disappeared, about the Empire State Plaza.)

It's Friday, November 16 in Page Hall on the downtown campus (135 Western Ave). It's free.

The old Knickerbocker News
The Fulton History trove of old upstate newspapers includes the Knickerbocker News, so you can browse through old pages of the paper and see some of Paley's work. (The image quality is, admittedly, not great.) In just a few minutes, you can come across photos of the Empire State Plaza construction, George Wallace's visit to Albany (and the resulting protests) in 1968, and fun photos of the day.