Rangefinder Magazine
June 2006

David Hume Kennerly by Lou Jacobs Jr.
Photojournalist Plus

Top. Navy hats on parade: Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., Jan. 16, 2005, U.S. Navy sailors practice for the inaugural parade for George W. Bush, to take place on January 20. Bottom. (l-r) Presidents George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon during the Ronald Reagan Library dedication Nov. 4, 1991, in Simi Valley, CA. (Credit: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)

David Hume Kennerly, recently named one of “the 100 Most Important People in Photography” by American Photo magazine, has been interpreting the people and events of history for four decades.

His career began in 1962 at the age of 15; his first pictures were published in the school newspaper in Roseburg, Oregon. Within the year he was a staff photographer for the Oregon Journal, then the Oregonian. Kennerly left college early to work on the newspaper, which led to a position with United Press International. His on-the-job training in photojournalism took place between 1966 and 1971.

Top. Jerry Seinfeld during the last episode of his TV show Seinfeld, April 1998. Bottom Left. Miles Davis (on trumpet), Richard Davis (on bass) and Herbie Hancock (on piano, back to camera) performing at the Oriental Theater in Portland, OR. (Credit: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images) Bottom Right. 2000 Republican National Convention, final night, August 3, 2000, in Philadelphia, PA. (for Photo Du Jour book by David Hume Kennerly)

In 1971, UPI sent Kennerly to Vietnam, where he ranged widely covering the war. A year later he became Saigon Photo Bureau chief. That same year he won the Pulitzer for pictures that “showed the loneliness and desolation of war.” He was subsequently hired as a contract photographer by Time and Life. “It was an arrangement that benefited both magazines, but particularly me,” he says. “Life folded a month after my contract started, but I was still retained by Time.” Over the years he shot more than 25 Time covers. When asked about memorable assignments in the war zone, he says, ”My biggest Life story was driving from the southern tip of Vietnam to the DMZ, a dangerous and exciting adventure; but ironically, the magazine went under before the pictures could be printed.”

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visiting Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq, May, 13, 2004.

After the war Kennerly returned to the U.S. and in mid-1973, he threw himself into domestic political battles raging in Washington, D.C. The Watergate story was huge, and Kennerly’s photos of former heavyweights of the Nixon administration showed how far the powerful had fallen. After Richard Nixon resigned, Kennerly’s photograph of Nixon’s wave goodbye became part of history. Kennerly was only 27 at the time, and this image is one of hundreds he has taken that have helped define American photojournalism.

When Vice President Agnew resigned and Gerald R. Ford became vice president, Kennerly was assigned by Time to cover the former minority leader of the House. The two became friends. “When Ford became president,” Kennerly says, “he asked me to serve as his White House photographer, a role that gave me the opportunity to shoot some of the most important people of the 20th century up close, such as Emperor Hirohito of Japan, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco, Philippines’ President Ferdinand Marcos, Yugoslavia’s President Josip Broz Tito, China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, and Queen Elizabeth, who celebrated the overthrow of British forces 200 years earlier by appearing at a state dinner at the White House in 1976. “Gerald Ford was the boss from heaven,” Kennerly recalls. “He allowed me to do my job while he did his. A typical day might include a top-secret session of the National Security Council and a trip to the barbershop. There was nothing that I was excluded from shooting, and the President had remarkably little vanity.”

Photographer Ansel Adams in Carmel, CA, in 1979 with his large-format camera during a photo shoot for Time magazine.

One picture that underscores that statement shows the president in striped pajamas and a plaid bathrobe talking with three of his dark-suited aides, one of whom was Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, who would go on to become secretary of defense for Ford and later for the second President Bush. The day after President Ford lost the 1976 election, Kennerly recorded the first family in the oval office looking disconsolate, but as always he was welcome.

After the Ford presidency ended in January 1977, Time called Kennerly back into action. “John Durniak, Time’s director of photography, knew I was having a tough time back in freelancing and assigned me to photograph the main Middle Eastern leaders,” Kennerly says. “For almost three months I traveled to Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, where I was given access behind the scenes with the royal family.” Kennerly also visited Fidel Castro in Cuba and in November 1978. He documented the horrors of mass suicide and murders of over 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana. His Jonestown image showing a vat of purple poison surrounded by dead bodies is one of the most powerful images to ever appear on Time’s cover.

50th Anniversary of People’s Republic of China parade in Tiananmen Square, October 1, 1999, in Beijing, China. (Credit: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)

During Ronald Reagan’s first term, Kennerly and Dirck Halstead rotated month-to-month covering the President for Time. Kennerly had a major scoop in 1985 when he was the only outside photographer at Reagan’s first meeting with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva, Switzerland. Kennerly received the Overseas Press Club’s Olivier Rebbot Award for “Best Reporting with Still Camera from Overseas” for his exclusive coverage of that event.

In 1985–86 Kennerly attended the American Film Institute School in Los Angeles as a directing fellow. He went on to produce two movies for NBC. The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story (1988) was about a terrorist hijacking of a TWA plane and gained him an Best Picture Emmy nomination. Kennerly wrote and co-produced Shooter, a film based on his experiences in Vietnam. The film was shot on location in Thailand and received an Emmy for Best Cinematography.

Robert F. Kennedy during a speech made in 1966 in Portland, OR. (Credit: David Hume Kennerly/ Getty Images)

Since 1996 Kennerly has been a contributing photographer at Newsweek and frequently commutes from his home in Santa Monica, California, to the magazine’s Washington, D.C., bureau to shoot national political stories. As an example, he covered the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. He has also made several visits to Iraq and Afghanistan for Newsweek, some to cover Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s visits there, with the most dramatic being a visit to Abu Ghraib prison. Kennerly figures that his photo of Rumsfeld, lips pursed, walking between barbed wire fences there (shown page 74), “got more play in the newspapers than any picture I nailed since Ali getting knocked on his rear by Joe Frazier in Madison Square Garden in 1971.”

Kennerly’s first book, Shooter (1979), is an autobiography illustrated with his photos. Photo Op followed in 1995, also with his text and photographs of events that shaped our times. In 1998, an assignment for Newsweek to document the final episode of Seinfeld turned into the book, Sein Off: The Final Days of Seinfeld, with text by the cast. In 2002 Photo du Jour: A Picturea- day Journey Through the First Year of the New Millennium was published. Kennerly explains, “I shot the project entirely with the medium-format Mamiya 7II, one 43mm lens and Tri-X film because I wanted to separate that project from my 35mm Canon work. It became an obsession; I couldn’t skip a day. I learned that in order to grow, you have to personally challenge yourself.”

On quite a different, more recent, project, Kennerly voyaged to several American cities shooting documentary pictures of personnel working for Washington Mutual Bank. He used Canon DSLRs (the 1Ds Mark II and the 20D), for the yearlong project to illustrate employees and executives interacting with and serving the communities where they work. He adds, “My pictures will be the main artwork displayed as large murals and big prints in the new WaMu headquarters building opening in Seattle in 2006.”

Asked whether he prefers black and white or color, Kennerly observes, “It depends on the story. I used to favor black and white, but now I’m open to either. The digital era encourages me to think twice about how I want to show a subject, and I’ve found myself leaning toward color.”

Images from Kennerly’s books and his behind-the-scenes political photography have been exhibited at various galleries around the world. The Hotel Lucia in Portland, Oregon, features several hundred of his pictures in every room and corridor, and the main dining room at Nathan’s Restaurant in the heart of Georgetown in Washington, D.C., displays two dozen original political prints.

At www.kennerly.com it is noted that Kennerly’s archive, spanning over 35 years, includes more than a million images, including the Washington Mutual projects, the last Presidential campaign, the prisons of Abu Ghraib, President Reagan’s funeral, and images of his old friend, the late Eddie Adams. Requests are filled through emails to pix@kennerly.com.

Kennerly is presently represented for stock and assignments by Getty Images in New York. Howard Fineman, Newsweek’s chief political correspondent, refers to Kennerly as a “political photographer, which is true as far as it goes, but it’s like calling Matthew Brady a ‘war photographer,’ or Thomas Elkins as a ‘portrait painter.’ Kennerly is as good as it gets in a craft he defined.”

Lou Jacobs Jr. is the author of 30 how-to photography books, the latest of which is How to Start and Operate a Digital Portrait Photography Studio (Amherst Media). He has taught at UCLA and Brooks, is a former president of ASMP national, and has written and illustrated numerous books for children. He enjoys shooting stock during his travels in the U.S. and abroad.