David Hume Kennerly Oral History

Object number2016.001.0100

Date09/21/2016

ClassificationsOral Histories

Oral history interview subject David Hume Kennerly

Oral history interviewer Stephen Fagin

ObjectOral history

Credit LineOral History Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

MediumBorn digital (.m2ts file)

DimensionsDuration: 51 Minutes

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DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with David Hume Kennerly. A photojournalist for more than half a century, Kennerly won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his images of the Vietnam War. Previously, he had covered Senator Robert F. Kennedy and was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968 when Kennedy was shot. Interview conducted at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on September 21, 2016 by Stephen Fagin. The interview is fifty-one minutes long.

Curatorial Commentary

Kennerly was attending high school in Roseburg, Oregon during the Kennedy years. His first published photograph appeared in his high school newspaper in 1962. After graduation, he worked for Oregon newspapers until joining United Press International in 1967. He ultimately became UPI's photo bureau chief in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War before leaving UPI to become a contract photographer for Time-Life. Notably, Kennerly has photographed every U.S. president since Lyndon Johnson.

The same day this oral history was recorded, Kennerly joined six other Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers for a panel discussion, "Illusion and Disillusion," co-presented by The Sixth Floor Museum at the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff. The full program may be viewed on the Museum's YouTube channel: Illusion & Disillusion: A Panel Conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning Photographers - YouTube. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator