David Hume Kennerly
“Kennerly modestly refers to himself as a ‘political photographer.” That’s true, as far as it goes. But it’s like calling Matthew Brady a ‘war photographer’ or Thomas Eakins a ‘Philadelphia portrait painter.” Kennerly is as good as it gets in a craft he defined.”
HOWARD FINEMAN
Chief Political Correspondent,
Newsweek Magazine
“David Kennerly once said to me, ‘In photography everything can be taught, except how to see.’ In his photographs… we see people and historical events through the keen, alert eye of an eminent camera artist.”
HERMAN WOUK,
Author of “The Winds of War”
“David Hume Kennerly is like Forrest Gump, except he was really there.”
James Earl Jones
David Hume Kennerly has been on the front lines of history for four decades and has covered everything from the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy, to the war in Vietnam, the resignation of a president and vice president, his subsequent role as the chief White House photographer for President Ford, Reagan’s Fireside Summit with Gorbachev, right through the Inauguration of Barack Obama and much more. James Earle Jones said that, “Kennerly is like Forrest Gump, except that he was really there.”
David Hume Kennerly won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for his photos of the Vietnam War. Two years later was appointed President Gerald R. Ford’s personal photographer. He was recently named, “One of the Most 100 Most Important People in Photography” by American Photo Magazine. He was a contributing editor for Newsweek, and a contributing photographer for Time and Life magazines. Kennerly has published several books of his work, Shooter, Photo Op, Seinoff: The Final Days of Seinfeld, Photo du Jour, and most recently, Extraordinary Circumstances: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. He is a producer and one of the principle photographers of Barack Obama: The Official Inaugural Book.
Kennerly received a Primetime Emmy Best Picture nomination as executive producer of, “The Taking of Flight 943: The Uli Derickson Story,” and a documentary he executive produced, “Portraits of a Lady,” made the short list of documentary films considered for the 2008 Academy Awards. Kennerly is on the Board of Trustees of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, and the Atlanta Board of Visitors of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). His archive is housed at the Center for American History at the University of Texas, Austin.
He recently directed a commercial starring former mayor Ed Koch shot for New York Presbyterian Hospital.
For more information and images about David Hume Kennerly, please visit his website, or you can watch and listen as he discusses some of his images in the video below.
