A Lens on an Era

A Just-Closed D.C. Photo Developer Documented The Turbulent March From Camelot to Watergate

Barry Asman sits among images his family's photo business printed over the years. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

The black-and-white photographs scattered on tables and in boxes throughout the Capitol Hill photo shop tell of a time long gone.

There's the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., hands folded under his chin; the young Beatles in Washington with the Capitol in the distance; President Lyndon B. Johnson, smiling broadly from atop a horse at his Texas ranch; and President John F. Kennedy, in shadow from behind, leaning on his desk toward the light -- the famous George Tames shot dubbed "The Loneliest Job in the World."

In an era when Washington was the epicenter of explosive politics and social change, George Asman was the go-to guy for the legions of Capitol Hill photographers documenting the era, the man who froze these and other historic moments on film. His shop -- Asman Custom Photo, 924 Pennsylvania Ave. SE -- delivered to the world some of Washington's most famous images from the Kennedy years, the civil rights movement and the Nixon tumult.

But the lab, a victim of changing technology, closed its doors last month after nearly five decades. And as if he were too much a part of the business to go on, Asman died Sunday, on his 84th birthday.

"It's the end of a good life," said Dennis Brack, a freelance photographer who was one of Asman's original customers. "It's sad to lose a friend. All I can do is look back and think of the guy behind the counter. He saved my professional life, and he did it for decades."

George Asman was a darkroom technician when he moved to Washington in 1959 to establish Life magazine's photo lab. But when Life closed that operation two years later, "they talked him into starting a lab and gave him some equipment," said Barry Asman, 42, Asman's son, who had run the family business the past five years. "He got some friends to pool some money, and as things progressed, he bought them out."

From the start, the business had a built-in clientele among the Hill's professional photographers. And Asman counted several federal agencies, including the Library of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, among them.

Brack, who worked for the New York-based Black Star photo publishing agency, said he dashed in and out of the shop practically every day with eight to 10 rolls of film -- one time after capturing four young Brits on the Hill just after their first appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show." The Beatles had caught the train from New York to Washington and were holding a news conference at the Northeast ice skating rink, where they were scheduled to perform. A British photographer, unable to squeeze into the sole Cadillac that held the entourage, asked Brack for a ride and let him in on a secret: The Fab Four planned to stop on Capitol Hill for photos.

With Brack trailing, the Cadillac stopped at the Capitol.

"They jumped out," Brack recalled, "and threw a few snowballs at each other" and . . . click, click, click.

Another of the early customers was Roland Freeman, 70, who has published several books and exhibited his work, which mainly documents black culture, around the world.

"It broke my heart when I heard they would close," Freeman said. "It hit me out of left field because I'm a dinosaur. I still use film when everyone else does digital."