Some of the best shots snapped by Gordon Grant reflected his humor, panoramic observation and an ability to look a second in time straight in the eye and click, making him a versatile, award-winning photographer.
During a court case, for example, he photographed television cameras on the floor of the press area as the only soul around, a sketch artist, walked past the lenses with a poster board drawing of the courtroom drama.
His picture of a Santa Claus frolicking in icy waters captured the shivering humor of a polar plunge.
One of Grant’s favorite photos landed on the Oct. 6, 1997, cover of Time magazine, showing a man deep in prayer among the million-plus attendees at The Promise Keepers manhood rally in Washington, D.C. He was 25 at the time.
Pat Sullivan, of East Hampton, in a photo taken by Grant during the Hurricane Swim Team’s Polar Bear Plunge at Main Beach in East Hampton on Jan. 1, 2023. Credit: Gordon M. Grant
“He was so insightful, and he was so good at putting people at ease,” said longtime friend Kammy Wolf. “He captured the essence of what was happening. He would take a shot, maybe at an angle, something I think an average person wouldn’t take.”
The freelance photographer, who worked for Newsday, The New York Times and several other publications for decades, died Friday of cancer. The East Hampton resident was 53.
Grant humbly kept quiet all the times his photos made splashes or won awards, such as the 1997 winner of the National Press Photographers Association for top sports photo, those who knew him said.
Grant could do it all — U.S. presidents, entertainers like Billy Joel, Buffalo Bills and other sports teams, weddings, real estate, East End parties and even took paparazzi-type shots, lucrative assignments that he dropped after a while because it wasn’t his style, colleagues, family and friends said.
At Newsday, he played a major role in documenting storms and Long Island’s vulnerable shoreline, said John Keating, the director of multimedia news gathering.
“When there was a storm approaching, I would hire him to document the preparation, the landfall and the aftermath,” Keating said. “One of my favorite images came from Superstorm Sandy. It shows a woman sitting in the passenger window of a car looking out at a flooded Napeague Meadow Road in Amagansett. The picture captured the ominous feeling that many had for weeks after.”
A photo taken by Gordon Grant on Oct. 29, 2012, shows floodwaters from Napeague Harbor pushed up onto Napeague Meadow Road in Amagansett by Superstorm Sandy. Credit: Gordon M. Grant
Grant picked up a camera in high school after a knee injury playing soccer sidelined him, recalled his sister, Meghan Barton, of Phoenix, Maryland. He didn’t cover just school events, but dashed to fire and police scenes by asking his mother to drive him there, earning money from local papers, she said.
He was a photography major at the Rochester Institute of Technology but never graduated because he was hired to shoot for The Independent, a startup newspaper in East Hampton, family members said. He soon began running the photo department, and as a partner in the South Fork Photography Agency he sold stock images of the East End to major publications around the world.
Daily, for most of his adult life, he would drive around for hours, listening to police and fire scanners and looking for fantastic shots while waiting for freelance assignments.
In setting his own schedule, Grant picked out political and world events he was passionate about documenting, and two of these trips touched his psyche.
Shortly out of college, he traveled to Belfast in Northern Ireland to document the violent clashes between Protestants and Catholics and could not forget the vulnerability of children who could be innocent victims at any moment, said his wife, Michelle Grant, of East Hampton.
At the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Grant felt the rawness of parents’ anguish, knowing it could easily have happened in a similar community — his own, she said.
“That’s the hard part for somebody like Gordon,” his wife said. “He wasn’t a big sharer of emotions. I think that’s part of the reason why he really tried to appreciate the small moments in life.”
Friends said Grant was happiest as a husband and father of two daughters. He attended all their special days and school events. and taught them to drive the lawn mower, hit a baseball, throw a basketball and fish.
On many days at home, he was there for his daughters and their friends, ready to be the chauffeur or helpful parent when he would get an assignment, prompting the younger generation to wonder, at least early on, if he was working for the CIA, Michelle Grant recounted.
“He would literally get a phone call or text and just be like, ‘I gotta go,’ “ she said. “They would always be, where is he going? What is he doing?’ And then he wouldn’t talk about it afterward.”
The couple joked that he was like a surgeon on call but without the money.
Grant and his future wife had known each other most of their lives as lifelong East Hampton residents.
Grant never complained about all the surgeries in the seven years since the diagnosis of his colon cancer, which had spread.
“There was just a lot of gratitude for each other,” Grant’s wife said. “We just felt so lucky.”
Grant is also survived by his daughters, Bailey Grant and Jameson Grant; his father, Gary Grant; and brother, John Grant, all of East Hampton.
A wake will take place 4 to 7 p.m. Friday at the Yardley & Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton, followed by a service at 11 a.m. at the First Presbyterian Church of East Hampton and private burial.
CORRECTION: Catholics in Northern Ireland have traditionally supported a unified Irish republic. An earlier version of this story inaccurately described their position.