Jay Cochrane, The Prince of the Air, stepped into history as one of the greatest performers of his generation.
2025 marks the 30th anniversary of his specatcular walk in the sky over Qutang Gorge.
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October 28, 1995. Thirty years ago today. The day of The Great China Skywalk. Jay and I flew together in a Chinese military helicopter to the finish site where I would stay for his saunter across Qutang Gorge.
“I’ll see you in an hour,” he said.
He walked a 3/4-inch cable for 2,098-feet at a height of 1,350-feet in just 53 minutes.
When I was first asked if I was interested in photographing the The Great China Skywalk, I had no idea what they were talking about. What was a Skywalk?
According to Jay Cochrane, a skywalk was at great heights and lengths between tall structures, like skyscrapers, mega-stadiums or canyon walls, ie. Qutang Gorge, China.
Jay would traverse the high-wire over China’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon and it would be the greatest high-wire walk in history. This moment, watching him slowly glide out on the wire, was an epiphany for me. This man was one of the greatest athletes I have ever witnessed at the height of his career.
Of course i knew about Philippe Petit’s high wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Center which took place on August 7, 1974, long before I moved to New York City. I met Greg O’Connell in Red Hook, Brooklyn, who was one of the detectives involved after Petit was arrested for the illegal and daring performance. I heard many a story of the “crazy man” who kept walking back and forth between the towers.
So I decided to take the gig and travel to China with no idea of what any of the images might be. And it wasn’t an easy journey. Just getting the visa was difficult. I wasn’t traveling as a journalist, I was traveling as a member of Team Cochrane. I still have the jacket to prove it.
First there was the flight to Beijing where I met up with the other members of Jay’s entourage. Hai Ping Ge and Mike Wilson were the representatives from International Special Attractions, our liaison with the Chinese officials. Mike brought along his ten-year-old son, Matt. Steve Sless worked for the Trump organization in Atlantic City and hoped to find a way to bring Jay’s talents back to Jersey. Rik Paulsen was the owner of Paulsen Wire Rope, who ironically provided the cable for both Jay and Philippe.
I was not traveling light. I brought a Nikon 600mm f4 lens that alone weighed 15 pounds with the metal case for transport. My inventory recorded 2 Nikon F3 bodies, 20mm 2.8, 35mm 2.8, 55mm macro 2.8, 105mm 1.8, 180mm 2.8, 300mm 2.8, 1.4x extender, 2x extender, 2 Nikon flash units, 40 rolls of Fuji Slide film (various, mainly Velvia), 20 rolls of Fuji Color negative film (various, mainly ASA 200), tripod, monopod, and Domke Bag. Because every photographer in that time period carried a Domke bag.
We traveled by train from Beijing to Yichong, taking over 24 hours, with a sleeping car that leaked onto the top bunk, which, of course, was the one I choose. The latrine was just that. The dining car was actually the most fun. The instant food was ok and the blaring music in a language I didn’t understand was invigorating. Especially after my wet night of not sleeping.
In Yichong, we boarded a ferry to take us to the city of Fengjie, locate on the other side of the Three Gorges Dam, under construction just upriver from our departure. Jay’s skywalk was the brainchild of the Chinese government to bring attention to the Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydroelectric project ever, creating a lake covering over 400 square miles.
When I passed the dam under construction on the Yangtze River, my Chinese handler told me “no photographs” until we were past. It was fine taking scenic pictures before and after, but no to anything that showed why we were there. But then we passed the dam construction and I saw what would be lost, I was devastated. This was the Grand Canyon of China. Fengjie, the place that became our home, was in its path. In the end, over a million people would be displaced, with Fengjie and many other towns, forcibly relocated. The hotel we stayed in is now below the surface.
The entire city was built on the riverbank climbing a mountain side, all accessed by the longest, widest staircase looming from the dock and seeming to rise straight up. We were met by a party of workers who grabbed every item we had, and climbed with no effort. My first time was thrilling. The next – and every other time – it was strenuous as hell. That is gone as well.
We stayed in the city’s only 3-star hotel and had our own chef, brought in especially for Jay and his staff. That first night in Fengjie was surreal. I met Jay in the mini-museum set up in the hotel’s ballroom, presenting a history of his life as a high-wire walker. His walks were different, his were called skywalks, between tall buildings or in this case, between the walls of Qutang Gorge.
He was flamboyant, to say the least. He talked about Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist who illegally strung a cable between the World Trade Center’s twin towers, and said, “I do all my skywalks legally.” This cable over the Yangtze River was both higher and longer than Petite’s and Jay wanted the world to know. That was why I was there.
It was my job to digitally transmit images from Fengjie to the world. No on had done it before. This time I was not just counting on Compuserve, the earliest email service, I had arranged a peer-to-peer transfer with Agence France Presse’s (AFP) Beijing office as a backup. Staff photographer Robyn Beck was someone I had met on Long Island through my friend, Dennis Kiewra, a photo editor at the Associated Press in Rockefeller Center. At times, it felt like everyone knew everyone in our industry. Robyn was not allowed a travel visa from Beijing to Fengjie, so it was up to me to capture an image that would captivate the viewing public.It would have been terrifying if I had thought that way at the time. I took it in stride. Over the years, I had been in that position many times before.
During the ten days of set up that began my experience, the realization hit of what I was witnessing. This was an engineering marvel created with nothing but manual labor. There were few power tools because there was no power. The trails to the top of the gorge where the wire was anchored were created for this event.
All the equipment was carried on backs or in carts up the mountain. Rick Paulson, the owner of Paulson Wire Rope, was part of Team Cochrane, Jay’s entourage in Fengjie, and the proud manufacturer of the cable that stretched across Qutang Gorge. The one-inch thick wire stretched 2,098 feet between moorings atop the mountainsides, a distance that morning fog made even more frightening with the wire fading away to nothingness. Rik became a lifelong friend and confidante, but on this trip, he was the guy willing to try anything, if he hadn’t done it before. We commiserated on the fact of how scary the whole thing was. Could he do this?
On my first trip to the wire with Jay, we rode a flat bottomed boat across the swift Yangtze River to the base of the Chalk Wall. Qutang Gorge from a boat on the river was cavernous, with current so swift that maneuvering to shore was a battle. Carved into the northern mountainside, 300 feet high, is the Plank Road, built around 300 AD to improve travel and communication when flooding or storms prevented travel on the river. The Chalk Wall, several hundred meters wide and several dozen meters high, is a canvas completely covered with carved inscriptions dating from as far back as the Song Dynasty, 1,000 years ago. Two characters named “Qutang Gorge” were carved by Zhang Boxiang of the Qing Dynasty over 400 years ago, each measuring 1.70 meters in width.
All of this would be lost under the waters of the new lake created by the Three Gorges Dam.
Life here was so different from New York City. It was feet or boat for travel. Nothing else was there. When a Chinese military helicopter landed in the Fengjie school’s playground to carry Jay to the start of his skywalk, hundreds lined its edges to witness its arrival.
Jay’s demeanor showed how relaxed and prepared he was. The day before, as Jay had taken his first steps on the wire, I had never been so scared for another person. But Jay had said to me, “The only time I have any peace is on the wire.”
He walked out ten feet on the wire, did a one-foot stand, pirouetted and walked back. 72 frames of film, roughly ten minutes of time. But he was a different person on the wire. Focused; Determined; The Prince of the Air.
As we flew over Fengjie and Qutang Gorge, thousands of people could be seen walking and standing along the paths to the top of the gorge walls. There was no way to accurately measure the number of people who had traveled to this location to witness Jay walking across the sky. Cruise ships were moored along the banks of the Yangtze, with prime viewing platforms as Jay crossed the sky directly above.
Landing at the finish atop the Chalk Wall, I left the helicopter to photograph his journey, telling Jay I would see him soon. As it flew to the northern side of the Yangtze and Jay’s starting point, I stood at the edge of a cliff looking at a cable which vanished from sight before reaching the other side.
Jay’s protege, Clinton Randall, stood with me, as we anxiously awaited Jay’s first step. Jay’s voice crackled over Clinton’s handheld radio, “It’s time to make the donuts!” And with that his skywalk was underway.
The sight of Jay’s white balancing pole, held in a specially designed shoulder harness designed to give him more stability, was the only way to spot him as he began his traverse. Watching from a half a mile away through an extreme telephoto lens, he moved steadily across the void. I had chosen a location beneath the finish point on a craggy point with a 1,000 foot drop from its edge, but from the vantage point, the wire was just above my head. As I switched from telephoto to wide angle lenses, the immense gorge plunged beneath me. I felt like I joined Jay in his solitude on the wire.
I understood his comment about “peace on the wire.”
He seemed to float across the sky towards me, growing larger in my field of vision. As he came within 20 yards of the outcropping, he spoke in a calm tone as he continued to watch the wire and glide forward, “I’m going to stop and take my sunglasses off, and then do a salute to the crowd.”
He hadn’t mentioned this at all. He removed his glasses while holding the 30-foot balancing pole with one hand, pocketed them, lifted his left foot to his right knee, and raised his left arm up in an open palm gesture, all while grinning broadly. He was in his element, with the mighty Yangtze River beneath his skywire. He seemed to tower over Qutang Gorge, like a conqueror in the sky.
Finally Jay said, “Do you have enough?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or actually tell him to put his damn foot down.
As he approached the end of the wire, cheers rose from every direction, carried on the wind within the walls of Qutang Gorge. As he stepped back onto the earth in a mere 53 minutes, Jay Cochrane turned and waved again to the cameras. ChinaTV had broadcast the skywalk live throughout the country. His triumph was viewed by millions.
I had four rolls of film. I did shoot more than that, but I could only hand develop in a four-roll tank. The developing chemicals and equipment came all the way from America in Jay’s shipping container. I’m still amazed that I hand developed color film in a hotel bathroom in Fengjie. I had to order tea from room service to get hot enough water.
My friend and public relations expert, Jeff Blumenfeld, represented Jay in the United States and was responsible for my hiring. Jeff told me that I always got the “money shot”, the one image that tells the whole story. I knew I had that with Jay’s salute from the high wire with the Yangtze River far beneath.
Now came the technological nightmare. Using an Apple Powerbook duo, and an Nikon Coolscan, I digitized the negative and prepared it for transmission. This was the age of 14,400 modems and copper phone lines. And the phone lines were antiquated and lacking in quality. In my tests prior to the event, I successfully connected with Compuserve in Hong Kong. On event day, I could not get through.
Thank you Robyn Beck. She and I persevered through multiple dropped connections but finally managed to transfer three images from Fengjie to Beijing and then to the world. Three pictures of the greatest high wire walk by a Canadian taken by an American photographer in China.
Jay’s photograph standing on the wire, one foot raised to his knee and one arm raised in salute, smiling, with Qutang Gorge beneath him, is a testament to his ability and showmanship.
Jay Cochrane, was the The Prince of the Air on October 28, 1995, making his way into history as one of the greatest performers of his generation.
