Concealed Weapons

For photographers covering the Republican National Committee meeting in Chicago last week, the news was bad; from its meeting to consider disputed delegates, the committee had barred workers for "paraphernalia media" (GOPatter for radio and TV men and photographers). While everyone else was protesting, LIFE Photographer Francis Miller, 46, a veteran of 25 years as a newsman, went quietly to work to cover the meeting in his own way. Miller, who has often snapped pictures where photographers were banned, is an old hand at concealing the weapons of his trade. (Three years ago, armed with a proxy and a hidden camera, he took 36 pictures of Sewell Avery at a closed Montgomery Ward stockholders' meeting.) At the first committee meeting, Miller turned up with no paraphernalia in sight. But it was there just the same.

Peering inconspicuously through a small hole in his tie was the tiny lens of a Robot camera which Miller had hung around his neck under his shirt. With it, he took 108 pictures of the meeting. Next day he had an addition. He picked up two copies of a fat book (The World's Greatest Doers-- The Story of Lions, by Robert Casey and W.A.S. Douglas), hollowed them out, stuck them together, and fitted a Contax camera into them. With this contraption, Miller snapped most of a roll of film before the camera was spotted by a sergeant-at-arms. Cameraman Miller was waved out.

Returning, apparently cameraless this time, he had hidden a small Japanese Nikon camera in the centerfold of a thick report that one of the delegates had passed out. Keeping the report on his lap, he aimed the camera with his knees. Later he inadvertently got help from a rival photographer. Hidden behind a piano, the photographer tried to take a flashlight shot. While one guard chased after him and the others were preoccupied with the hearing, Miller stood up and shot the rest of his film, giving LIFE all the pictures it wanted of the meetings that had been "closed" to photographers.

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