just a reminder as soon as the session is over mr. reid will be signing books and a portion of all proceeds will go to the public library foundation. so to avoid any confusion there are at least two public figures named eli reed. one is the journalist is with us today and the other is a talented singer that goes by the name of eli paperboy agreed. [laughter] so if you came here this afternoon expecting to hear this guy we have the real eli reed. and we are in the presence of a great artist and a great storyteller and a great conscience if you can understand how he could interpret the joy of the people, if you can appreciate how he could sketch the range of emotions with the pen, then you know how he is able to capture and deserved the deserve the essence of our humanity with his camera. during his time with such publication is national geographic people, "newsweek," the "washington post," spurs illustrated, you get the picture he covered the war in beirut lebanon which he covered between 1983 and 1987 the military action in panama on and the upheaval she's done photography work for such films as poetic justice, higher learning rosewood, a beautiful mind and a smile. since 2005 committees on the school of journalism at the university of texas at austin. in beirut the city. his newest collection of photographs a long walk home and he's also a gifted writer. this is from the preface of his new book. my personal journey on the long road is what it means to be a human being. and i try to capture the reality of life in a visual form. the families of man councilman and the child are the reason they are in mortal and i keep listening, hoping and learning. i hope they will inspire the continuing movement in the circle. i continue the search and live and breathe and wonder. mr. eli reed. [applause] the one question i want to ask the one part that i didn't read was the impact of the seven years that he spent as the hospital orderly. >> i went to art school and i started working night classes as the orderly and i couldn't get into the day school. so they had me on the floor that she worked on which i didn't get at first and they were like the other family. so, all that began to help me see life in a different way. eventually i was working at school at night and that was the start of something looking at the patients and the people i worked with. it's why things work and why people do the things they do and also growing up and doing a lot of the things going on in the civil rights movement that were happening. imagine of the 60s and what's going on just so many things happening. if think of the wonderful people you meet, sometimes the terrible people can meet that are responsible and yet. i was driving past the church of my driver. it's in the places that you least expect. it's one of the things that keeps me going. thinking about the possibilities thomas more, the second story, anyway, what happened is i know that a long time ago and i remember seeing it came from both loving him in aiding him and gave and david is a complicated kind of thing and sets in motion may be how you see things and your perception of what is good and what is evil i love kids. i don't have any of my own but they are the immortality. i'm not a pollyanna but i believe everything is possible if you want to do it and to find out if it's possible you should be able to show it to people who can see things. like i said, not pollyanna but until you can go someplace you have to deal with what is at present which could be some bad stuff. that's took a stand the stand at one point and decided to do a simple thing like a friend is going through a hard time. that's what i tried to do. basically they can tell what you are thinking to different kinds of intelligence. a kid walks in on me. how is it going. i wonder what he is going to do with that kid that he was interested and curious. and it's not difficult because there is so much stuff out here. so many people that do interesting things that i want to see it all. i just want to be able to move it into a moving picture now but still that's the thing that sticks in your head that you can't get out of your head and you should be able to remember. a friend of mine who grew up in new york and i sort of hoped get him a job. he was the unofficial mayor of new york like we would go eat breakfast and at the table but malcolm x.. it's all about the history also. the present past and future and we would just go along and take pictures. walk and talk. i can barely remember but i took it and just because it was something of a recognized they may not be the ones that you expect to see or know about so that walking me towards something so at 45 years of photography and it's been a long block. so i grabbed a whole bunch of stuff because i wasn't sure if i had all the pictures so that is my ego. i have a lot of stuff here all over the place and i should start thinking about the retrospective some point. i've never said anything to anybody. so i go into his office and shake hands and throw all this stuff on the table obviously a. so i kept seeing good things coming out of people when you least expect it so that's how that book came about because being egotistical i don't want to put it in one place and is as the result. [inaudible] like to see if i push the right button. this is my hometown. my former boss. i don't know how it came about that as he came to new york and we would visit friends and take some pictures anyway, they get the idea maybe we should do a story on your hometown and he played on the basketball team and we were in contact so he wrote the words and so this is one of the pictures. the reason i like this picture is that she is near the high school that i got to and i said what is she seeing, what is the possibility. i don't know where the light tower. [laughter] so a lot of times we goes looking. you can't take pictures necessarily from a car. now there is a picture where they jerked me crazy at this recreational center in my hometown the previous year. i thought about driving to woodstock from new jersey. i realized there was only one policeman not in a good mood. it was like doing the internship and getting a chance on the assignment. i'm sure that he had been there and was just shallowly say relaxed. while all around him were straight which was amazing. i just want to note i don't give have a lot of favorite pictures. i like this because the figure on the right and the sporting event that's in the old football stadium with the san francisco 49ers and where they used to play. these are the two kids that drove me casey on the first of the af woodstock that i didn't go. they broke through stuff and i went to my car -- my best friend talked me into. i went to the car trying to recover from these and all of a sudden i see these hands going across so i try not to move too quickly to scare them off and this is my final revenge. it's really amazing. i wonder where they are now. i hope it freaks them out when they see the picture. [laughter] >> this is a woman and her children homeless because her husband was a better and so i was working with a minister larry rice and in st. louis to work with the homeless, he was absolutely anything and i just spent some time with him and that was one of the pictures. also working on a book called homeless in america which a lot of people didn't realize how big problem it was. it helps because they will work at it. it might take a long time. the right people can make it right hopefully. this was taken in san francisco on the project pink palace which was the housing project by -- this was not a good place to live. there was one gentleman eight blocks from city hall and there was a television station who went to their innovative and do a very good job. they didn't prepare )-right-paren your into the governor jerry brown spent two nights there to show how everything would change but it didn't change. so the examiner got myself and the reporter to spend about a month. the reason these pictures -- i don't know if i even saw the great america because it was like a shame or something going on. but they aren't playing. are playing. it's for self defense. i asked how effective is that. you have to be fast. most of them were like this and i said okay i get it. the good thing about that experience is that because the newspaper published a big splash but then continued every week to check in on the place and everything was made right. that's what a good newspaper would do. public service. let people know what's going on to make intelligent choices. the examiner is good at doing that projects like this because it was a good project. it wasn't some little thing seeped into this story that you don't sleep very much and i find myself driven by even when i didn't have to be because of what was going on. things started to change again so if no one says something about writing or maybe the wrong time then things would change so you have the responsibility to do something about it and sometimes the most important thing you can do is help your kids get educated in the right way this is the story about the effect of poverty in the united states. it's a documentary working with scott fraser who is now working for abc or cbs morning show for a number of years as the director and the producer. it ran at five or 6:00 in the morning but he decided to use the photographs so they came to the core of the documentary and so the sound that was the shot was to take you from place to place so it was one of the most satisfying works i've ever done because it did have a good impact and even today people have seen the documentary and this was a show in a long time ago now. they will come up and ask about some of the people and what they are doing and this is one of the pictures area to their families had some problems. this was mine 11. i was in new york when added. there were 11 photographers in the city because of a meeting tonight before so everyone covered what was going on and on the 12th it was going to be the 23rd year. normally it was in riverside. anyway what happened is that one of the students at the workshop called me up and asked if there was anything to help photograph. and i said yes. he was a tactical police officer and joined the coast guard. he tried to be reasonable because he was married to a wonderful woman and didn't want to drag her crazy. they were a great pair. and a lot of things happened before i took this picture and it made it possible because you started getting into people's lives. in leavenworth county. based on the world trade center and it was relating with him and another fireman who came and drove in because he came all night to get there and by the time she was exhausted and a stunned at what had happened but you feel like you are photographing evidence of everything that happened but also history. so that is from the hometown that i used to go. that's what got me there. the one on the left it's their 25th wedding anniversary. this is at the front they did a good job on the pictures. that was an extraordinary thing. i was working a lot of movies and one that i worked with asked me if i would be interested in going through the documentary which became. but things do change and they don't happen immediately so this is the camp in tanzania and this is on a bad day in beirut i saw it coming because i warned that my driver would pay attention so i worried if he doesn't follow direction you will get into a situation he doesn't know and so sure enough the next day i was the only one because i was expecting something. and something happened. i had to tell everybody okay that's how bad it got. he was responsible for having people taken out and killed because they voted the wrong way in the area in guatemala on the countryside. .. >> i go so many different places that guys who are younger than me turn out to be my father. oops. this -- well, this is from run dmc. this is goldie hawn in her first movie. jimmy stewart, dearborn michigan. amazing gentleman. tyra banks and jon singleton. she asked me to shoot some stuff. i wanted to do her do a picture of her and jon who were going out at the time and didn't want to interfere and then jon came and said let's do some pictures. this is one of my favorite pictures. the kid's dennis the menace, but he could be president someday. [laughter] and this is coming back, you know from iraq, marines. this is the honor guard in new york. and this is, this lady's 104 years old. i'll end it with this one. her son is 64, something like that, and she went by she pinched him on the butt. and he says, mama, i told you about that. and she says, telling don't mean anything. okay, so questions i guess. [applause] >> we have time for some questions. wait for the mic. >> hello. um, i just want to say that i really enjoy your work. >> thank you. >> and my question for you is how do you, how do you kind of balance these different aspects of photo making where you're obviously an artist, but also a teller of stories of individual stories and then also, you know kind of, kind of controlling the technical aspect of your photo making? there's a lot to jumble around and i'm just wondering how you, how you've come -- overcome all these different things when you're making photographs. >> that's pretty simple, there's a question that's asked of somebody if you're asking -- somebody in new york city how do you get to carnegie hall, and the answer is practice. [laughter] that's the only way you can do it. i always have -- excuse me. i always have a camera close by, and you're always learning. going from still to digital to film making. i worked on a number of movies where i learned a lot of stuff. you have to do it. you can't -- there's no way around it. it doesn't -- there's this thinking today that is unfortunate, i think that everybody is equal and, you know, when you get awards or whatever for playing baseball or sports. that's not true. some are going to be better than others. but people rise up and get better and maybe accomplish more than, you know, what the -- maybe somebody who has more talent does. i see that all the time with teaching. the people who seem to go the farthest are people who have the desire and passion for something. and that means you really work at it. part of taking pictures is getting used to your equipment where you don't have to think about it. you make pictures where that's almost like -- it should be like breathing in and breathing out. and if you can get to that state of zen, you can make the pictures under trying situations. i braced myself a few times when i thought i was going to get shot, and i just had to forget about it focus on getting the picture because it was that important, you know? so that's it. [laughter] >> nip else? anyone else? right here. when you see a subject that you want to shoot, do you just take the photo or do you ask per in addition i'm curious, especially that -- permission? i'm curious especially that photo of the homeless family in st. louis in the car. >> it depends. a lot of people you have a communication. there's some situations where maybe you lock eyes with somebody or the situation's happening if you start a conversation, the situation left town, you know? but then i don't run away especially if somebody's what was that, you know? i introduce myself and explain. if -- one of those situations where somebody doesn't feel comfortable getting photographed but they're interesting people. so if i can, you know, you have time for a little talk or cup of coffee, something like that. it really depends. there's no hard rules on it. in france you can get sued for taking pictures on the street. it's gotten really silly because the city of light is losing their light. they made their reputation on beautiful images and beautiful moments in paris and france, but it's really -- you have to be a human being first. it always comes down to that. because you want to take a picture, it doesn't mean you have the right to take a picture. but if something's going on, you should photograph it. if you call yourself a photographer. but also be reasonable, you know? there's all kinds of -- there's no set rules except to be, to be nice. that's not difficult no matter what the circumstances are, you know? you can sleep with that, you know, that you did the right thing for the right reasons. does that help? >> [inaudible] >> thank you. >> when you're taking a photo, okay, you're on this side of the camera, your subject is on the other side of the camera. >> uh-huh. >> what happens between that in that distance that makes, that distinguishes between an average picture and art? what makes it art? >> first of all, have you seen "interstellar"? do you know about physics? [laughter] i'm just kidding. no it's -- first of all, the human condition is endlessly fascinating. and i came out of the art experience, you know and i mean the table -- this bottle, the camera all designed by artists, people who are creative. so i don't enter into it thinking that i'm making art you know? i get, you know, newspaper art gets bent a little bit. art? what is this nonsense, you know? i think what an artist does is that the world is like chaos right? and an artist tries to make sense of that chaos in some kind of form, whether it's music, whether it's writing beautiful you know, words like poetry, painting or making photographs. so it's like i try to make it, again, seamless. i try to enjoy the experience when that's possible. i try to understand the experience which is in some ways much more difficult. but i'm not going to sort of worry. yesterday a student was making pictures of me for this news photo magazine. i suggested to them that he, you know he be allowed to make the photograph. he's a great guy wonderful person, and i wanted to loosen him up. so i was trying -- a normal person would have been driven crazy by a photographer telling you what to do or suggesting this or suggesting that, but he's a great guy. he understood. he felt like he was getting a personal workshop, you know? and showing him the various things why this makes a difference, how to cut into the core of what the picture really is. and, i mean, that was great because i felt good because he's such a wonderful person and he's going to do wonderful work. he's doing wonderful work now. and that's part of the game, the endless game. you don't really, i don't really distinguish between art and -- i take pictures of friends sometimes, it's like for friends, you know? and i take pictures of something shadowed. and the movie higher learning, i mean i don't work like a lot of movie photographers work, still photographers. which i'm not doing now. well i'm doing stuff for my movies, that's another story. anyway, what happens is i'm looking at this guy who's a skinhead for a scene at night and i'm looking in the shadows, and i approach it the way i would do portfolioing, so i took some -- photographing, so i took some pictures of shadows. ended up with a big ad. i had 14 pictures or so in "the new york times" thing but that's the fun part, you know? it's all fun in a way until it's trammingic, and then it's like you -- tragic, and then you go to sleep with that too. whatever picture you take, they don't just leave your head unless you're not being a human being. they stay with you and they could give you nightmares, which i get sometimes. but, you know, you work at it, you work at it. i probably went all over the place and -- >> no you answered the question. thank you very much for your work, thank you very much for your art in the average photos, and he will be signing his book up on the second floor right after this is over to. ladies and gentlemen please give eli reed -- the eli reed -- [laughter] a round of applause. >> thank you. [applause] thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv is on twitter. follow us to get publishing news scheduling updates author information and to talk directly with authors during our live programs. twitter.com/booktv. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. this weekend we're visiting topeka kansas, with the help of our local cable partner cox communicationings. next we visit university of kansas professor donald hater markel co-editor of transgender rights and politics which explores issues important to the transgender community. >> traditionally, when you think about lgbt rights and think about, say, laws that ban sexual orientation discrimination, what has -- as these laws have been considered at the state level and the national level often times to include language like jebder identity -- gender identity, many people believed that would simply be a kind of poison pill addition to legislation, that it would kill a bill or any chances that that bill could pass if you attached terms like gender identity to it. whether or not that was entirely true isn't clear, but certainly it meant that most of the time that language was not included, or it failed to be