Creativity was key for photographer Vic Condiotty

There aren't many photographers who could get away with posing Bob Hope prone on the ground with a teed-up golf ball between his teeth while a trained ape took aim with a club.

Or ordering a caterer to crawl out to the edge of the unfinished Space Needle and smile for the camera while tossing a salad 500 feet above the ground.

People who knew him still laugh when they tell stories like that about Vic Condiotty, who used a combination of brass and creativity to get such photos on the front page of The Seattle Times.

Mr. Condiotty died yesterday (April 24) after a stroke and a long struggle with Parkinson's disease. He was 78.

Mr. Condiotty was one of a vanishing breed of photographers who didn't hesitate to stage-manage a subject, use props or touch up a photo for the best effect. When he retired in 1988, an article in The Times noted that his peers called him "the Cecil B. DeMille of journalism," after the great Hollywood director.

Such choreography is anathema to today's news photographers, but it was the way photographers worked a generation ago, before rapid-fire 35-mm cameras took over from clunky Speed Graphics and bulky flashbulbs.

Mr. Condiotty was a master at getting the shot he imagined.

"Hey, Guv, move over," he'd command during a governor's news conference, jabbing a finger in whatever direction would give him the best shot. And the governor would move.

Once Mr. Condiotty managed to get between the Secret Service and President Kennedy, who was in Seattle to make a foreign-policy address at the University of Washington. "My dad was so close that Kennedy told him, `All you're going to get is my nose,' " said his son Steve Condiotty.

"Leave it to me, Mr. President," Mr. Condiotty reportedly answered.

"Vic was one of the great characters who worked back then," said Greg Gilbert, a Times photographer. "Everybody knew who Vic was. Every coach, every hydroplane driver, every politician. If he didn't know them, he'd pretend he did, and they'd remember him."

One time, Mr. Condiotty lashed himself to the bow of a hydroplane so he could take pictures of the driver's face, Gilbert said. "It wasn't during a race, but he got some great shots."

Mr. Condiotty began working for The Times in 1947, after his first newspaper, the Seattle Star, folded.

He won numerous awards for a photograph of a blind woman, kneeling at the curb over the body of her guide dog, which had just been killed by a vehicle. A policeman stood over her.

Most reporters who worked with Mr. Condiotty over the years remember his great love for coffee. He called it "my plasma," and every assignment began and ended with a trip to a coffee shop, even if the poor reporter with him was on deadline.

Mr. Condiotty grew up in Seattle's Central Area, a member of the city's Sephardic Jewish community. When he graduated from Garfield High School in 1940, he went to work at Todd Shipyards.

During World War II, Mr. Condiotty joined the Coast Guard and was assigned to photograph a series of Marine invasions in the Pacific. He lost his equipment when a Japanese mine exploded under his landing barge. He was fished out of the water.

Mr. Condiotty's wife, Sara, his high-school sweetheart from Garfield, died in 1996, after 50 years of marriage. Soon afterward, he moved into the Kline Galland Home, a Seattle nursing home offering care for Jewish patients.

"When she passed, part of him was gone," said Rabbi Simon Benzaquen of the Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation. "He was really lost without his Sara. She brought out the best part of him."

Mr. Condiotty is survived by his sons, Steve (and his wife, Linda), Bruce, Paul (and his wife, Honi) and Jeff (and his wife, Sandy); a sister, Rose DeLeon; and six grandchildren, Sara, Robert, Victor, Geana, Allegra and Caroline Condiotty. All live in the Seattle area.

Services will be at 1 p.m. today at Bonney-Watson Funeral Home, 1732 Broadway.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests remembrances to the Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, 6500 52nd Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118; or the Kline Galland Home, 7500 Seward Park Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118.

Sally Macdonald's phone message number is 206-464-2248. Her e-mail address is smacdonald@seattletimes.com