Portsmouth photo legend’s work lives on at Athenaeum

Photojournalist Jane Tyska has traveled to 85 countries in her decades-long career, but her heart — and many of her images — have never left the Seacoast.

At least 136 pictures she took for the Portsmouth Press from 1990-1992 reside in the Athenaeum’s online archives. When she retires, she plans to spend summers in town scanning hundreds more.

Tyska has worked for the Bay Area News Group since 1997. Based in Oakland, California, she has covered major wildfires, earthquakes, flooding, and blizzards (“I’m kind of like Captain Disaster”) as well as thousands of homicides, refugee camps in Bhutan and political tumult in Eastern Europe.

“During Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, I’d work with the National Guard during the day, and jam at nights,” said Tyska, who plays the bass and drums and performs with her blues band The Mighty Neptunes.

“I covered the Paradise fire in Northern California,” she said of the 2018 Camp Fire, in which 85 died and 150,000-plus acres were burned over 17 days. “People trust me at scenes. I watched archaeology students sifting through ash to find bone fragments to help identify the dead.

“After shooting something like that, I think, ‘Can I please shoot a baseball game?'”

In this May 17, 1992 photo by Jane Tyska for the Portsmouth Press, Linda Fish of Portsmouth attempts her first jump at Boomerangs at the Malt Exchange House plaza between Chevrolet Avenue and Brewery Lane. USA Today Network

To balance the tough assignments, she also loves photographing professional sports and has covered five NBA finals, three World Series and two Super Bowls. Tyska also shoots and edits video, including drone work, produces multimedia for online journalism, and is a photo editor and writer.

“I call it multi-Tysk-ing,” she said with a laugh.

Tyska has won many awards for her work, including a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for breaking news for her part in the East Bay Times’ coverage of the “Ghost Ship fire” in Oakland that took 36 lives. She was a finalist in the breaking news category for her coverage of the Camp Fire.

She began her photography career as a 5-year-old on a field trip to the Bronx Zoo with her New Jersey classmates. Tyska still has a photo of her kindergarten self beaming, with a Brownie camera around her neck.

She received her formal training in photography at White Pines College in Chester, N.H. On her first visit to Portsmouth, it was love at first sight as she rode her bicycle across the Memorial Bridge. the sunlight shimmering on the Piscataqua River.

She decided then and there to move from Manchester, where she had been living after graduating.

“At the time, Portsmouth was kindergarten for adults,” she said. “I learned how to do everything I do now.”

She not only bartended at Port City restaurants, but delivered pizza, drove taxis, learned to sail and became a regular at the open mic at Rosa’s and many other musical venues. Press Room founder Jay Smith was a mentor to her.

On Jan. 3, 1991, then-Mayor Larry Agran, of Irvine, CA, gets a touch-up from his aide Mike Kasper in between shooting a television spot for his New Hampshire presidential primary campaign. The photo was taken along Court Street for the Portsmouth Press by Jane Tyska. USA Today Network

Tyska spent much of this summer in the Seacoast helping another longtime mentor, photographer Joe Stevens, known the world over for his images of bands and musicians including David Bowie, with whom he became close friends.

Sadly, after a slow decline in health, Stevens died at 87 on Aug. 26 with Tyska at his bedside. She organized a well-attended celebration of life and musical tribute for Stevens at the Press Room on Sept. 6. It featured an exhibition of his work, along with some of his rock ‘n roll memorabilia.

“He encouraged me to apply for my first newspaper job at the Portsmouth Press, and I owe my entire career to him,” she said.

At 63, Tyska has no intention of slowing down, though she is thinking of spending some time to review and preserve her life’s work, which also includes travel photography from the many countries she’s visited over the years.

“I have a scanner and I’ve been chipping away at it,” she said.

Journalist Bob Tis, who now lives in the Virgin Islands, worked with Tyska at the Portsmouth Press.

“Often Jane and I would have coffee at Ceres Bakery and try and dream up what kind of fun we could have or trouble we could get into that day,” Tis wrote in a Facebook message. “Then we would go do it and make a story out of it. Fortunately it usually went over pretty well and was in the paper the next day.”

Sam Corbin paints the North Church steeple in Portsmouth in this photo taken Aug. 21, 1990, by Jane Tyska for the Portsmouth Press. USA Today Network

Athenaeum Photographic Collections Manager James Smith would like to see more newspaper photos preserved in the Athenaeum archives.

“Our local photojournalists capture professional shots of not only the breaking news of the day,” he said, “but they also capture the story of the day-to-day life of Seacoast events and residents. If these newspaper images are archived, those stories will be available for generations to come.”

The Portsmouth Athenaeum, 9 Market Square, is a nonprofit membership library founded in 1817. It has 40,000-plus volumes, and an archive of local history materials. The photographic collection contains over 36,000 images available for viewing at http://www.portsmouthathenaeum.org. The Shaw Research Library and Randall Gallery are open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 1-4 p.m. For more information, go to the website or call 603-431-2538.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald. Reporting by Sherry Wood / Portsmouth Herald