Preston Hart sitting on a cannon overlooking the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Hart Preston/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

Preston Hart sitting on a cannon overlooking the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Hart Preston/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

“Management said we were the best photographers in the world,” Hart Preston (1910-2009) once said, “but actually I think they looked upon us as very highly skilled clowns.” This Stanford grad, however, considered himself a “photo reporter,” a sort of raconteur with a camera. “They were ‘stories,'” he said. “They had a beginning and a middle and an end, as you would have with written journalism.” He barely survived the malaria he caught in South Africa, and went on to run Time’s Rio de Janeiro news bureau, where he switched to the other side: writing.

Adapted from The Great LIFE Photographers

25-year-old Shah of Iran with visiting American Wendell Willkie during the Shah's stopover on a world tour aboard his plane the Gulliver. (Photo by Hart Preston/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

25-year-old Shah of Iran with visiting American Wendell Willkie during the Shah’s stopover on a world tour aboard his plane the Gulliver. (Photo by Hart Preston/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

American movie producer, artist, and animator Walt Disney and fellow artist and animator Mary Blair sit on a balcony and draw on sketch pads while in South America. (Photo by Hart Preston/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

American movie producer, artist, and animator Walt Disney and fellow artist and animator Mary Blair sit on a balcony and draw on sketch pads while in South America. (Photo by Hart Preston/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

More Like This

Deer antlers hanging in domed ceiling of Gordon Castle. (Photo by William J. Sumits/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

William J. Sumits

Huge crowd gathered in the surf and amp; at the beach in front of Coney Island Amusement Park. (Photo by Marie Hansen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Marie Hansen

Drawing room at Notre-Dame-de-Vie withPortraits of Picasso and wife Jacqueline taken by David Douglas Duncan (Photo by Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

David Douglas Duncan

Charlie Chaplin on the set of his film "Limelight," 1952. (Photo by W. Eugene Smith/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

W. Eugene Smith

President Harry S. Truman waving his hat as he holds up a king salmon while fishing with others on Puget Sound. (Photo by George Skadding/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

George Skadding

American sailors on shore leave sit in a pedicab while their buddy takes their picture, Shanghai, China, December 1945. (Photo by George Lacks/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

George Lacks