About David Woo

At the young age of 11, David was sitting in the middle seat of a 1964 Dodge Dart station wagon on a family vacation when he noticed his father’s Leica camera. He knew this was his father’s pride and joy, but he waited for his older sister to fall asleep and sneakily unzipped the shinny leather camera case. He had observed his father take many photographs of his family on birthdays and on family vacations and was curious about the camera. He carefully took the camera out and slowly raised the camera to his face and while looking through the viewfinder he started taking pictures through the rolled-up window.

The Leica is known for having a shutter that was almost silent when you took a photograph.  Within a few minutes his father looked in the rearview mirror and noticed his young son was intrigued with the camera. On the next stop, his father showed him how to hold the camera and to focus and let him take his first photograph of the family at a national park in Virginia. That what the moment he remembers how fascinated he was with the small camera.

Before graduating from high school in Port Arthur, Texas, David applied for a job at Frank Cricchio’s studio. David had been shooting photos as a hobby and for his church and worked for the school’s newspaper and yearbook. Frank gave him a job, mostly out of pity. Frank later said. “David has such charisma and he seemed to have a wonderful passion for my work and photography, I decided to give him a chance”.

Within a few months, Frank allowed David to be his assistant at the local high school to shoot Friday night football. The local newspaper could not handle the technology of color, so they hired Frank to shoot the games. Frank would shoot the game, process the film and make a color separation, and deliver the images to the newspaper on deadline.

Frank surprised David one Friday evening and he chose his photo over his own. The next morning when the Port Arthur News was delivered to David’s home; he saw his image on the front page with his photo credit.

That was the decisive moment in David’s early photography career.

David enrolled at Lamar University about 18 miles from his home in Port Arthur, Texas. He wanted to study art and photography while working for the University’s newspaper and for the University’s Photographic Services. After two years of hard work and working for the Kansas City Southern City Railroad laying track for a summer job, David was able to attend the University of Texas in Austin and major in Photojournalism in the fall of 1973.

He was hired to work as a staff photographer for the Daily Texan, one of the top college newspapers’ in the country. David was freelancing for the AP, the Dallas Morning News, Newsweek, Time and many other local and state publications.

David also took a fine art photography class under the direction of the world-renowned New York Street photographer, Gary Winogrand. Winogrand was an American street photographer from the Bronx, New York, known for his portrayal of U.S. life and its social issues, in the mid-20th century. Though he photographed in Los Angeles and elsewhere, Winogrand was essentially a New York photographer.

In late December of 1975, David was planning on graduating with a 4.0 GPA in his major of photojournalism when the Dean told him he would need one credit in a foreign language to graduate. A few days later, the Dallas Morning News offered David a full-time position as a staff photographer in January 1976.

David accepted the job after asking the newspaper if they would allow him to take one semester in Spanish to finish his requirements so he could graduate in May, 1976.

Over the next 42 and ½ years, David would shoot about 29,000 assignments, covering news on a local, state, national and international level. David has photographed every President from Nixon to Obama.