The Heart of Matter: Love by Barbara Villet

In the spring of 1965, my husband, Grey Villet, was given a Life Magazine assignment to photograph the Lovings, an interracial married couple then embroiled in legal tangles after their arrest for miscegenation in Virginia. Grey did not concern himself with those entanglements. He chose, as he did in every essay we ever worked on together, to seek out the literal heart of the matter: a love story. 

Emotional content always mattered most to Grey in his work and pursuit of images “as real as real could get.” It’s what gives his take on the Loving family its intimacy and strength. Grey was a purist in his approach to every essay he shot. Quiet as a cat, he seemed almost to disappear as he worked. Unlike many other celebrated photographers, he avoided posing his subjects, refused to manipulate the action and simply waited patiently for telling moments to emerge, in the belief that reality would supply more truth than any imposition of his own ego. READ THE REST