Ed Reinke
2022
Ed Reinke had a vision, a vision he projected through his camera lens for nearly 40 years, a vision that captured decisive moments in some of the biggest stories of the era.
Big stories like:
• Queen Elizabeth II and President Reagan toasting each other as she visited the United States;
• Pete Rose putting bat on ball to record his 3,000th hit;
• Eleven people dying after a surging crowd at a Who concert in Cincinnati crushed concert-goers;
• Al Gore and George W. Bush debating in their presidential campaign;
• An Indianapolis Colts lineman celebrating in a confetti shower after his team beat the New England Patriots to move on to the Super Bowl;
• Sarah Palin giving that mama grizzly look;
• Home run record-seeker Mark McGwire going to the plate amid a stadium full of camera flashes caught in time lapse.
Reinke’s vision also captured smaller but appealing moments:
• Voters lining up pre-dawn at a general store in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky;
• A fashionable lady showing off her Kentucky Derby hat;
• And, perhaps most iconic, a spider intricately building a web on a farm fence, as a horse fed in the background on a dewy Kentucky morning.
If you ask colleagues who knew him — from his early photography days at the Indiana Daily Student at Indiana University through his final days at the Associated Press — you’ll hear them call Reinke an inspiration, a teacher, a mentor who freely shared his knowledge and watched over his charges, a loyal friend and an exemplary journalist.
Reinke’s eye for photos that connected with viewers undoubtedly was a product of his raising in rural Indiana. “Ed was of those people,” former roommate and Daily Student colleague Dale Eisman says, “the people of the earth, the people of manual labor, the people who worked long hours, the people who didn’t have much except each other. From them, Ed learned to respect everyone, to appreciate the little things, to marvel at animals, nature and crops.”
Edward Joseph Reinke was born June 4, 1951, to Ervin and Margaret Reinke. He grew up in tiny Galveston (pronounced Gal-VEST-un) in Cass County, Indiana, amid farmers and factory workers, bibbed overalls and blue collars. He would graduate from Northwestern High School, where he was senior class president, in 1969.
By 1972, Reinke had exchanged a plan to play football at IU for what would be his life’s work.
Brian Horton, Daily Student photo editor and later a distinguished Associated Press photojournalist, hired Reinke, who soon stood out, even amid a stable of uber-talented student photojournalists.
That summer, Reinke landed an internship at the Cincinnati Enquirer, returning to campus that fall with a photo he made of Pete Rose soaring in midair, like Superman, toward home plate at Riverfront Stadium.
A few academic credit hours short of his degree, Reinke left IU in spring 1973 to take a full-time job at the Enquirer. Reinke would restart his college education some 25 years later, earning a degree in business by taking correspondence courses and making long drives back to Bloomington for classes.
Horton’s association with Reinke would continue throughout both of their careers. After working as competitors, one at the paper, the other at the wire service, Horton stole Reinke away from the Enquirer, he says, to take his place as AP’s Cincinnati photographer. Over the next 30 or more years, Reinke and Horton were AP colleagues and close friends.
Two of the biggest events Reinke covered while at the Enquirer took place less than a block from each other.
Cincinnati’s hometown hero, Pete Rose, singled for his 3,000th hit on May 5, 1978, in a game at Riverfront Stadium. Rose’s final push for that career milestone spanned several games, and Reinke was tasked to shoot every pitch to Rose to ensure he had the hit. When it finally happened, Reinke was the only photographer in the stadium who actually got the ball on the barrel of the bat. The picture wound up in the Baseball Hall of Fame, enshrined despite Rose’s lifetime ban.
In December 1978, Reinke heard police scanner traffic about an incident at Riverfront Coliseum, next door to the baseball stadium. He went to the scene and found police and fire personnel pulling bodies — some dead, some injured — away from the building. Concert-goers, rushing to get in, had surged forward, trapping those in front against the glass and suffocating several. Eleven people died.
In 1980, Reinke moved from the Enquirer to the Cincinnati AP bureau. In 1982, he was transferred to the AP’s Washington bureau where he covered the Reagan administration. After tiring of Washington, Reinke returned to the Enquirer and in 1984 became its director of photography. In 1987, he became the wire service’s first Louisville staff photographer in 25 years. He remained there until his death.
There, he shot Kentucky sports, spot news, politics and features. From 1998 through 2011, he headed AP’s photo coverage of the Kentucky Derby. He knew every inch of the Churchill Downs track, stables and grounds. He secured credentials, recruited messengers and brainstormed a new angle each year.
AP also called on Reinke to shoot the Olympics (both summer and winter), the World Series, Super Bowls, the Masters, the PGA golf tournament, the Indianapolis 500 and Indianapolis Colts football.
Death came to Reinke on Oct. 18, 2011. On assignment for AP on Oct. 2, 2011, he fell while at an auto race at the Kentucky Speedway in Sparta. A brain injury proved fatal. He was 60, survived by his wife, Tori; his sons, Wilson and Graham; and his mother, who has since passed. Reinke left his body to science, donated to the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
Almost immediately after his death, a “To Ed Reinke” Facebook page arose. Still, photographers at news and sports events around the world toast “To Ed,” often with Kentucky bourbon.
And then there’s the ancient red plaid jacket that Reinke wore to football and basketball games, Kentucky Derby workouts and races — and also to clean out the barn back home. He took a lot of ribbing about that plaid, but when he died, the plaid became a symbol of colleagues’ regard for him. Freelance photographer Tim Easley made up stickers, with Reinke’s name on the plaid background, stickers that still mark lenses, camera bags, jackets and at least one wheelchair.
Ten years after his death, Reinke’s influence remains alive.
Says Easley: “… Every job I do, every assignment I cover, every time I pick up a camera, he is there. … There isn’t a photojournalist that he worked with that didn’t come away a better photographer or a better person for working with him.”
Says former AP colleague Amy Sancetta: “He was driven to tell the story with his camera and his thoughtful, gentle eye. He always had time to encourage and support his fellow photographers. He was the one you wanted to have on your team when covering any event, large or small.”
Today’s college students also are benefitting from Reinke’s influence.
At Indiana University, donations from Reinke’s family, friends and admirers have created the Edward Reinke Scholarship in Photojournalism. And in Berry, Kentucky, family and photojournalists from across the country have created the Reinke Grant for Visual Storytelling, an annual award that brings two students to Boyd’s Station, an artists’ colony, to spend a summer honing their skills as photojournalists.
Among those skills is vision, the kind of vision Reinke exhibited, the kind of vision Horton describes when he says: “[Ed] saw what others didn’t see. He and I could walk down the same stretch of road for miles. He would come up with a dozen beautiful photographs; I’d come up with sore feet.”