David Hume Kennerly

"
David Hume Kennerly
Photo Credit: Karen Ballard

David Hume Kennerly has been photographing history for four decades. Contributing Editor for Newsweek Magazine, Kennerly continues to travel the globe to produce insightful images of important historic events.

His career began in Roseburg, Oregon, where he published his first picture in the high school paper when he was just 15 years old. His first official photographer jobs--as a staff photographer for the Oregon Journal and then the Portland Oregonian--led him in to a position with United Press International (UPI).

Kennerly won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1972 for his remarkable photographs of the Vietnam war. After the war, Kennerly returned to the United States for Time Magazine, and in mid-1973 and threw himself into the domestic battles then raging in Washington. After Richard Nixon resigned, Kennerly was on the South Lawn of the White House as the soon-to-be ex-President departed. His historic photo of Nixon’s wave goodbye, taken when Kennerly was just 27 years old, is one of the dozens of his images that have helped define American photojournalism.

Nixon’s successor, President Gerald Ford, asked Kennerly to serve as his White House Photographer, a role that resulted in some of the most personal political pictures of his career. During Ford’s tenure, Kennerly photographed world leaders including Emperor Hirohito in Japan, Leonid Brezhnev in the USSR, Franco in Spain, Ceausescu in Romania, Marcos in the Philippines, Tito in Yugoslavia, Suharto in Indonesia, Deng Xiao Ping in the People’s Republic of China, and Queen Elizabeth during the bicentennial celebration at the White House.

When the Ford Presidency ended, Time swiftly called the 29-year-old Kennerly back to action, sending him to photograph Fidel Castro in Cuba, President Anwar Sadat in Egypt, and the horrors of Jonestown in Guyana, among many other assignments. He went on to major projects for Newsweek, LIFE, ABC Good Morning America Sunday, and George Magazine. Kennerly has photographed more than 35 covers for Time and Newsweek, covered assignments in more than 130 countries, and counts more than one million images in his photographic archive.

Kennerly serves as National Program Chair for Washington Mutual’s forward-thinking “Home of the Free™ Student Photojournalism Project”. Home of the Free gives 7th- and 8th -grade students the opportunity to learn how photography is used in news reporting about government, while creating photos of public servants in their own communities.

In the year 2000, Kennerly traveled more than 250,000 miles to 38 states and seven countries for his fourth book, Photo du Jour: A Picture-A-Day Journey through the First Year of the New Millennium, published in October 2002 by the University of Texas Press. A companion exhibition of fine art prints from Photo du Jour appeared at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arts and Industries Building from October 1, 2002-December 29, 2002, and at the Houston Center for Photography April 30 – June 12, 2004."



Review of David Kennerly

No current galleries, however past galleries include:
USC
Modernbook Gallery

www.kennerly.com