Interview with David Hume Kennerly

Kennerly, David Hume, 1947- ; McKiernan, Stephen

David Hume Kennerly is a Pulitzer Prize winnig photographer and photojournalist. His portfolio includes photographs taken of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971. Kennerly photographed every American president since Richard Nixon.

2010-07-10

In Copyright

2017-03-01

McKiernan Interviews

237:33

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: David Hume Kennerly
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 7 October 2010
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:04):
Testing one, two. Step two. I know some people I have interviewed have been on the cell phone and then their cell phone starts to go and then they go on the landline. So anyway.

DK (00:00:15):
This works. I hear you fine.

SM (00:00:19):
Okay. First question I always ask and I really want to ask you is the beginning, how you really became a photographer as a young man or a young kid. Your early years, the influence of your parents and your teachers, your high school years, where your love for photography first began.

DK (00:00:41):
Well, I am a native of Roseburg, Oregon, which is a really small town. It was called the timber capital of the nation, right in the middle of the forest in Douglas County. And I grew up in a place that I really wanted to get out of. I do not know, I had that feeling from way back when, I do not know exactly when it started. But my dad was a traveling salesman and so I would go around with him every now and then, particularly up to Portland, nothing exotic. But I got to look at the big city after my little town of 10,000 people in the whole area or something like that, I realized that there was a big world out there. And I had taken an early interest in photography, and when I worked on the student newspaper called The Orange 'R, my first photo published was in 1963, and I think I was a sophomore in high school then. And that really made an impact on me, seeing the work I had done. It was not a very good picture, but as I recall, it was a baseball player coming across home place. And on the scale of good photos, it was about a one on a one-to-ten scale. But what it did was it really got me excited about photography, and I learned how to shoot and process. I learned with a Speed Graphic camera. Actually, it was probably a Crown Graphic 4x5, and you only had a holder, it was two frames. And so, I can see why the old-style photographers were so good at getting the moment because they had to get it, you could not just turn the motor drive on and take a lot of pictures. So I learned the business the old-fashioned way, which was one shot at a time and you better get it right. And I started getting better at it. Then we moved from Roseburg up to West Linn, which is a suburb of Portland, in midway my junior year. And a lot of people would have really been terrified, angry, resentful about having their parents uproot them at that point, but I was deliriously happy about leaving this little town. And I convinced the people who were running the newspaper at West Linn High School that I should be on the staff and all that. And I pretty well sold myself as a much better photographer than I was.

SM (00:03:52):
[Inaudible].

DK (00:03:54):
But at that point, because I was close to Portland, I had a lot more access to bigger stories and things were happening. And to shorthand it all, my senior year in high school, I was working on two local newspapers, small papers, one on Lake Oswego and the other in Oregon City. And my big score was I had a picture of a fire in Lake Oswego that was on the front page of the Oregon Journal, which was the big afternoon paper in Portland, and that really did it. I was fiercely determined to become a professional photographer probably from the time I was a junior in high school. And certainly by the time I was a senior, I was actually getting paid to take pictures for a local paper. It was not much. And when I graduated, I had a full scholarship to Portland State College, now University, and it was a working scholarship to take pictures for the paper. And that did not last too long. I had my eyes set on right down the street, literally two blocks, on the Oregonian and Journal. After I graduated from high school, I worked in a flower mill to get enough money to buy good cameras, and that had two effects. One, to help me buy the cameras. And the second was I knew I was not cut out for common labor, so I have great respect for those who do it, but it was not for me. And that fall, I started college but I was already trying to get into the Oregon Journal. And so later that year I was, I would have to think about this precisely... I was hired by the journal. I was a part-timer when I was 18 years old and while I was still going to school. I left school. I went to school for about a half hour and if it was dog years, because I had got a staff job on the Oregon's Journal, which was a huge thing. And I think the youngest photographer was probably 50 years old. So I worked and at that point, my career took off. I mean, there was no question about it. And I took a leave in (19)67, to go six months in the active duty as a National Guard. So I went to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for basic training, then Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis after that, and then came back. And when I returned, I got a job on the Oregonian, which remains to this day as a very good newspaper. And then I was offered a job by UPI to work in Los Angeles in November in (19)67. I remember this because I had pulled up stakes and moved down to LA for UPI. And at that point, I was 20 years old and was really, I think probably ahead of almost anybody else my age in terms of working in the newspaper business. But all this is leading up to why I went to Vietnam. I mean, I was in UPI through (19)68 in Los Angeles. I was at the Ambassador Hotel the night Robert Kennedy was shot. And then I was offered a chance to move back to New York early (19)69, and I covered the World Series with the Mets that year and a lot of local news. I mean, working in New York is just the best place on earth for a news photographer. It's just [inaudible] and it was very exciting to me. And plus, it is the big leagues of photography. You had all these local newspaper guys [inaudible]. And it was still getting toward the last of the good old days of photography, certainly being digital by a long shot. And I mean the big innovation of photography was really going from the 4x5 to the 45 millimeter. That was as important a revolution I think, as going from film to digital. I mean, the digital's probably had a much bigger impact overall. But when you think about it, that small little image, which was poo pooed by the old guys. But when you look back at the Erich Salomon's back into the (19)30s, was shooting with that and it gave them much more versatility and discretion in their photography. So, I had already migrated to 35 millimeter as a senior in high school. And so, I went to New York and then I was offered a position at UPI in Washington DC, which was really the prime bureau for the wire service because of the White House, [inaudible]. The center of the power of the Earth was really Washington DC, and it was a very big deal. And I just saw it the other day, a certificate. I had my first ride on Air Force One when I was 23 years old as a member of the White House travel pool.

SM (00:10:42):
David, I want you to stop right there because I am going to go into some questions on that period in a couple minutes, but I want to go back to a second question. You are a-

DK (00:10:56):
Let me back up just a touch too.

SM (00:10:57):
Uh-huh.

DK (00:10:58):
Part of my job at UPI, because it was 1967, (19)68, there were a lot of anti-war protests going on. And even earlier than that, up in Portland, I was covering that side of things. Not as much as I probably would have liked, just because State College particularly was a high college. That had a lot to do with the anti-war movement. And the student body was very divided in terms of conservative, liberal. But I was right, because it started from the middle of that, so I was seeing a lot of the big protests. And then particularly when I got to Washington DC and that is where you can ask me questions, but I moved there and early (19)70, I believe. That sounds about right, or maybe in late (19)69. It was probably late (19)69, I do not remember precisely. And obviously Richard Nixon had just become president and it was a whole new ball game from the LBJ time, and of course the anti-war protests were building and building. And that was the home front of connection to Vietnam, certainly at that point.

SM (00:12:33):
You are a frontline Boomer. And when I say that, you were born in (19)47, and the frontline Boomers are really those born between (19)46 and (19)56. Because the Boomer generation's defined as the-

DK (00:12:45):
It's even more. I would say (19)46 to early (19)50, even (19)51, (19)52, because we were the ones looking down the barrels of this Vietnam War. Having graduated (19)65, which is a key date, (19)64. So, the Clinton, Bush, Gore guys were all born in (19)46, and they all dodged the draft essentially. No, Al Gore did. Strike that comment.

SM (00:13:20):
Yeah, he went to Vietnam.

DK (00:13:21):
Bush went in the National Guard and was a pilot, Clinton dodged the draft, and Gore went over to Vietnam, even though just for not a long time, but I always respected him for doing it. His dad definitely could have gotten out of that. And he was not a fighter, but he was like, "So what?" He went over, and I do not think he was there very long. But that group, me and the two years afterwards, I mean the crucible was the ones that graduated (19)64, (19)65, (19)66, (19)67, pretty much those four. Maybe even (19)68, although it was starting to draw back a little bit. But it was a five-year sweet spot, for getting your ass at Vietnam as a soldier. And part of my rationale in going into the National Guard was, I have always had a difficulty with authority and people telling me what to do. And so, I think I got into the National Guard, I was not opposed to war or anything like that. I was not even afraid of going to Vietnam per se, I just did not want to go as an army guy. And as a result of my being in the newspaper business, I had met Tom McCall, who was the Governor of Oregon at the Lime. Very colorful, interesting character. And just as luck would have it, I was over at covering something that he was doing visiting the Portland National Guard headquarters. And I had known McCall just by, he was really friendly with the press. And so I asked him to introduce me to the general who's in charge. And then later I went back over to Steve and said, "I am really interested in going into the National Guard, could I get my name on the list?" And so I had no family input at all. I mean, I looked at the Dan Flails and the other people who manage some family connections they get... And also, I do not even think it was a big waiting list there. It probably could have just happened [inaudible]. But I did, in my own way, I probably pulled strings for myself. And so, I got into the National Guard, went off and did my thing for the six months and then post for two weeks [inaudible]. The bigger problem I had then was getting out of the Army in order to go to the war, and that happened when I was in Washington DC. Do you have some questions? I will tell you what my motivation was. Do you have another question?

SM (00:16:32):
Yeah. Did you identify yourself as a member of the Boomer generation, and do you like that term?

DK (00:16:39):
I do not really care about the term one way or the other. No, I do not think any of us did. It's funny, one of my late close friends was Jeff MacNelly, the Cartoonist. And when I did a book, well I have done a few, but one of them was called Photo Op. And Jeff did the introduction to the book, Photo Op and he called it The Adventures of Baby Boomer: a Self-Centered Generation Comes of Age and Usually has the Name for it. To answer your question, no, I never thought of it enough. What was important to me, there were two things that I obviously I knew, I was 1-A in the draft and then I went to school. I think I got a student permit, but I did not want to stay in school. So being 1-A, and then I could be drafted. But my sole focus really was to become a news photographer, and that is what I was doing. And so really getting drafted to me, would have had a serious impact on that and I would not have been guaranteed to get a, although I probably would have become very prominent outside of the Army or whatever. In one way or another, I would have ended up in Vietnam no doubt, which did not bother me. But there was no guarantee I would get what I wanted. And so that is why I went the route of getting in the National Guard. Now the National Guard, it is almost a certain, with all those units being called up though, there is no hedge against going off to several tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, whatever. But back then it was, if you got in the National Guard or the Reserves, the chances are you were not going to go to Vietnam. So I did that. I was always calculated. Everything I have done in my career has been really about the career. Obviously, I was not afraid to go to Vietnam. So when I moved to Washington, what was happening at that point, and I can even go back and give you a single image that changed my life. Well, there is one other thing that happened in (19)66 when I was on the Oregon Journal, Robert Kennedy came to town campaigning for the local Democratic Congressional candidate. In fact, I think Edith Green was a member of Congress then, and one of the few women that had been in Congress. And I met Bill Eppridge and Steve Shapiro, two really great photographers. Bill was a LIFE photographer. And I was subjected to one of the great politicians of all time was Robert Kennedy, and it had not been that long ago that his brother had been killed. I think was in Roseburg then, I must have been. But I so vividly recall that, and I had never seen John F. Kennedy. I never saw him. So there was Robert Kennedy, and I had a really good spot. [inaudible] the LIFE guy showed me where to go, and it was very nice. But it is an image I will never forget. But that whole entourage, all the people and the two photographers and some national guys were with him. And this little makeshift motorcade went out to the airport. And back in those days, just go out onto the ramp, onto the field. So Kennedy went on. But what really struck me was these two photographers got on the plane and the door closed, then the plane backs out. It was like the final scene in Casablanca, where I am standing alone and the plane goes off into the far. And I wanted to be on that plane. I had such a visceral reaction to that. And here I was, I have never really been a small-town guy mentally. I mean, I think I am in terms of how I look at things, but I always wanted a bigger picture. And I think because of that moment, it really then made me to follow the path of covering politics. Of course, politics, was very closely aligned with war because the people, politicians sitting in a room somewhere [inaudible]. That is just how it goes. And that is a fascinating thing to know and to see, and very few people have seen it. When was the decision made to go to war here or to end the war there. But then the year before that, and I am skipping around here but now I am just thinking about, there was a story, a photo essay by Larry Burrows at LIFE magazine, and it was called Yankee Papa 13. And it was the story of a young sergeant Marine. It was really a day in the life, following this guy around. And the first images of them were sitting on the helicopter with his machine gun, and he has a huge smile on his face and all that. And what happened during the course of that day was that they went into rescue another chopper that is been shot down, so one of the crew people was killed. And the cover picture was this guy, the sergeant who a dead Marine laying in the foreground. It is just a very dramatic photo. But the most compelling image from that whole photographs, that still remains one of the great photo essays of war, was a very happy sergeant at the beginning. The last frame in the story was him in a little warehouse or something, crying with his head down, and was just all alone. It was just one image, even more than the cover image, this is considered a great photograph by me and others, but I think the more poignant on it was the one that got me. And between Robert Kennedy and Larry Burrows pictures, those two roads intersected for me.

SM (00:24:07):
And you were labeled, and I think I read that people call you a political photographer too. And you are proud of that fact, are not you?

DK (00:24:15):
Well, I do not mind that. I mean, the one term I just do not like really is journalist because it feels like changing janitors to sanitation engineers. It is the same thing to me. I am a photographer, I am a wired guy essentially. I mean, it really means you are the utility outfielder. You can cover anything, anytime, anywhere, whatever. Does not make any difference. "This is a food picture? Okay, I can do that."

SM (00:24:47):
I interviewed another photographer, a video maker a couple days ago who said she considered her camera a weapon because the pictures taken are an eyewitness account of what really happened on a particular day at a particular time for history's sake. No government can hide the truth. And as she said, "Pictures verify the truth so that nobody can say it did not happen." Do you consider your camera a weapon?

DK (00:25:19):
No, I do not think so. I mean, there is a great documentary which you must see called An Unlikely Weapon. Which is about Eddie Adams, the guy who took the picture of the General Loan shooting a DC in the head.

SM (00:25:42):
Oh, yes.

DK (00:25:44):
That documentary is an essential viewing for you, and it's called An Unlikely Weapon. I mean, maybe Eddie would have agreed to that. I do not look at it that way. I am not an activist. She's more of an activist, obviously. I am old-fashioned news guy, brought up in the business to be an objective observer as much as that is possible by people who really believed in that stuff. Nowadays, the lines have been so horribly blurred by comments like that, this weapon thing. I mean, I get it. And I have always thought that the power of photography is shedding the light and the corners that you would not otherwise see, and I am all for it. I mean, that is what journalism is really, or it should be. But it's not an activist weapon for me. I have never been that, I do not know, [inaudible].

SM (00:26:47):
Yeah. Well, this person was an activist too.

DK (00:26:52):
Right. And that is fine. Everybody does it for their own reason. I mean, Jim Nachtwey is an activist, but he is a great photographer and he would be the first to admit that his camera could influence social change. And there have been a lot of great photographers, and that was their mission. Eugene Richard. Unabashedly so, I am just not like that. That is all. I mean, I am criticized for being who I am because I do not take a more political view of things. But I had it drummed into me. In fact, when I am asked if I am a Democrat or Republican, I say I am a photographer.

SM (00:27:34):
Very good. I love that response.

DK (00:27:39):
But that is very fouled out. I mean, I am no different now than I was before. And I worked in a Republican administration, but I honestly, I would have that same relationship with a Democrat who became president. I would have worked for him. It did not matter. In fact, let us fast you forward. By the way, the President Ford one. I had been working for him for three or four months. We're alone in the Oval Office talking about how he had been a good Republican all of his career and all he wanted was to be Speaker of the House. And there he was in the Oval Office and he looked at me and said, "I have never asked you. Are you a Republican or a Democrat?" Then he said, "Do not answer that." He did not give a shit. But that was our relationship. It was a human relationship, not a political relationship. And I think one of the problems now is that everything is so political. And even if you declare anything. If you say, "I am for Jerry Brown," or, "Meg Whitman," just say here in California now, it's like, "How can you do that? You're such a dumb shit." Whatever point of view you had, it just would not make any difference. And so I do think pictures speak for themselves, and this idea of the camera as a weapon, I think is contradictory to be honest with you, from my point of view anyway. But that is someone else's point of view. That is what they said, that is fine. We all do our own thing and I am all for it. So back to my path to Vietnam because I can remember, and there's another movie analogy here which is equally old-fashioned. But because I was the Baby-Boomer generation without even thinking of it that way, all I knew was that kids that I had gone to high school with and graduated, now were going to Vietnam and getting killed. And I also saw the photographs, and arching back to Larry Burrows, 1965 was early on in the war, but already these striking images are being made by great photographers. From Robert Capa, who was the first photographer killed in Vietnam 1954, released in that conflict, I guess where you would put a pin in that somehow. But I am seeing Eddie Adams' photographs of General Loan shooting the guy. I am seeing John Olson's pictures of the fighting [inaudible]. Catherine Leroy's photographs, and Sawada's picture of UPI, won a Pulitzer of the woman with her family coming across the river. And Toshio Sakai's picture won a Pulitzer for UPI. [inaudible 00:30:52] won the Pulitzer. Malcolm Browne for Burning Monk. And all these fabulous, probably a bad word, but these fantastic, yes, amazing photographs are being taken off to his war. And I am on the sidelines and the people fighting the war were my age. And basically, the photographers, I think for the most part were a little bit older. Although John Olson and I are the same age. He was with Stars and Stripes at the time. But all of a sudden, I started feeling like, and you will understand this analogy, although no one else does. I gave a lecture at USC the other day, they had no idea what I was talking about. But I was like, "I felt like Mr. Roberts on the supply ship watching the destroyers sail into battle."

SM (00:31:48):
I know that feeling.

DK (00:31:49):
"On the supply ship in the backwater and wanted, as a naval officer, to be on a destroyer, to be in the action, to be on the front line of what was happening." And so, I had this rather profound moment where I felt like I am going to miss the biggest story of my life and it is my generation's story. And if I do not go, I will never forgive myself. And I know that is how I felt about it. It was not to go out there for the glory of being a combat photographer. So, I started lobbying the guys in New York. And here I was, I already was doing a job that most people would go to a war in order to try to get something like this, to cover the White House, which I found boring. And it was also restricting [inaudible]. And I quite frankly hated it. And so, I just felt that I had to go to Vietnam, and so I convinced UPI to send me. And now this was late (19)70, and then I was going to be then going over early (19)71. And things were drawing down, the American involvement was being cut back, but there was still a lot of action. So they decided to send me over there. I was being such a pain in the ass about it that it was better for them to send me over than to listen to all my bullshit all the time. And so, the last assignment I had covered before I left for Vietnam was the Ali, Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden in March 8th, 1971. And what is ironic about that fight is that the next day was my birthday, March 9th, and I had the front page of New York...

DK (00:34:03):
I had the front page of New York Times, New York Daily News, practically every paper in the country. I was the only photographer that got the photo of Ali in mid-air, getting knocked down on the 15th round.

SM (00:34:11):
Wow.

DK (00:34:12):
What's funny is that picture is also part of my Pulitzer Prize portfolio, which was for photography. It was not just Vietnam, it was the whole year of 1971. It was coverage from that year. The centerpiece was Vietnam, but I also covered the India-Pakistan war, and I was in Cambodia. Then that fight too, which would be my outgoing thing. What happened before I got over there was that my photo hero, whom I had never met, along with Kent Potter of UPI, whom I was going to be replacing in Vietnam, and Henri Huet of AP and Japanese photographer, Shimamoto, I think his name was, of Newsweek, were on a helicopter that was shot down over Laos in the Lam Son 719 strike invasion, and were all killed. I got to be honest with you, that scared the shit out of me.

SM (00:35:16):
Yeah.

DK (00:35:18):
That all of a sudden, even though I did not know Burrows, I was going to replace Kent Potter, Larry Burrows was really my motivation or his photos were the foundation of my interest and respect for war photography. All of a sudden, all these guys are dead. Henri Huet was one of the great survivors, AP guy, French Vietnamese guy. All of a sudden, I did not have second thoughts, but it really scared me. I was like, wow. It increased my resolve to do it. It was not like I was not going to do it, but it really made it... It was not just a pedestrian thing at that point. It was really now a serious matter. Pedestrian is not the right word. It was something that I had not thought about that much. Yes, you can get killed. I knew that conceptually, but when I really saw it happen, then that was a different deal. I ended up in Vietnam and probably got there the end of March, 1971, stayed for a little over two years.

SM (00:36:40):
Yeah, you were right in the combat zone. I have seen your pictures. I have the book, I think it is Shooter. [inaudible].

DK (00:36:48):
Shooter was the first one. Yeah, Shooter, and then there was a photo op for those cartoons of McNally are in there.

SM (00:36:56):
Right. You took some unbelievable shots. I am asking, do you remember the exact moment? You probably do. You took a lot of pictures, but the single soldier on the hill, which was an unbelievable shot. You took another shot of, it was kind of a jungle, and you could see through the jungle, the guy walking through there.

DK (00:37:17):
That was a different place. Actually, those pictures, they are a good combination because one of them just shows the lush area in which we were operating sometimes, or just a blown away hillside. The guy walking over the hillside was the photograph singled out from my portfolio, showing the loneliness, desolation of war. That was a good picture. I remember the day I shot it because it was so dangerous up there. That is the contradictory part of it, is you do not really see that many good combat action pictures because everybody's down. It is really aftermath or either the prequel or the sequel. It is never the main act usually.

SM (00:38:18):
You were right out there with them, and they accepted you. In that particular war, photographers could go right with the guys. I know Joe Galloway got on a helicopter for the Ia Drang valley when he was a reporter. You ate the same food, you had the same risks. Did you ever feel that you had, like Joe did, that you had to pick up a gun to save your life? Ever have that experience?

DK (00:38:44):
Yeah, I did. I did. It was really just ... As a kid in Oregon, I grew up shooting, hunting, everything from pheasants to quail, occasionally deer, which I never liked doing that much, but I was a good shot. In fact, I had an expert ... When I was in the army, I was an expert rifleman because I knew how to shoot. It was no big deal to me, just a different kind of a gun or weapon, I should say. Get your ass kicked the saying gun. Anyway, I have never been pacifist in that regard at all. I liked the hunt. I used to, I do not now. Nothing against it. One night I was at a place that was going to be overrun by a Vietcong attack, and somebody shoved a gun into my hand, and I was shooting back because it was nighttime. During the day, I would not have done it because I could have been taking pictures. But at night, if we were overrun, I was going to die. Self-preservation takes the priority over any other item really.

SM (00:40:06):
What were some of your other favorite shots in Vietnam?

DK (00:40:10):
That was unusual. Before, apparently, there were some photographers who would carry guns with them. I never did that. I thought that was a mistake.

SM (00:40:19):
Were there other favorite shots that you took in Vietnam that stick out?

DK (00:40:24):
Another one ... The only reason I know what photos are in the Pulitzer portfolios ... I was in Vietnam when they announced that award, and I had not even known I had been nominated for it. You can imagine the shock. There was definitely no anxiety because if I had not won, I never would have known I had been entered. They entered the editors at UPI, Larry DeSantis and Bob Schnitzlein were the two guys that did it. When I heard about it, then I was being asked all these questions about the pictures. I had no idea. I did not know. It was only about three years ago, I went up to Columbia where they had the Pulitzer archives and everything, and they had the box there with my entry in it. I went into the box, and I looked at it. Half the pictures. I did not even realize were in the portfolio. I mean you could just as easily say the photo of Ali won the Pulitzer prize, but the one they picked out, the picture of the guy going over the hillside was the one. That got published widely because of that. The citation said the pictures show the loneliness, the desperation of war. There were all these other pictures in there. One of them was a combat action picture of these two soldiers evacuating, carrying a wounded comrade off the battlefield. Another picture I always liked was near Khe Sanh, although Khe Sanh was [inaudible] as we knew it, but it was still a dicey area up there. The soldier bent over a machine gun with a cross dangling from his neck, and that was a good visual. It was symbolic too. The guy, the lone soldier, it was another lone soldier really. Much has been written about combat is 99 percent boredom and 1 percent sheer terror. That is not the quote, and that is it. You sit around, and you're anxious and tired and nervous about what might happen, and sometimes it does. To me, many times the anticipation of what might happen was worse than what really did. Not always, but sometimes. The cover picture of Shooter was during a very serious firefight and Dirck Halstead took that picture. He's another guy you should talk to by the way.

SM (00:43:44):
Yeah, I saw that. Do you think he would respond to talk to me?

DK (00:43:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hehas been teaching down at UT. He would be a great guy for you to talk to because he was there when the Marines landed in [inaudible]. Eddie Adams was there too. So Dirck can give you ... He was there when the war ended. Perfect guy. He is very articulate about it too. A good storyteller and has a really interesting point of view about it. He is an old-fashioned photographer like me, former wire guy. He and I worked together at UPI. He is the godfather of my eldest son and really was my mentor. I will give you his contact info. I am sure he will be happy to talk to you. I would do it ... Dirck's probably 10 years older than me, but he has got a ... You have guy who was there when the Marines landed and was there when they lifted off from the embassy.

SM (00:44:46):
In 1975, yeah.

DK (00:44:53):
All that and everything in between. Dirck shot that picture of me, and that was one of those occasions where we almost did not get out there alive. Galloway, Joe's an old friend and his Ia Drang experiences, I cannot imagine anything more terrifying than that. Everybody had their own war. It is like if you talk to a hundred people, you get a hundred different stories and points of view. If you walked down the street in a village, and you took a right turn instead of a left turn, you went into a different story than if you had gone the other way. It is like everybody's story was personal. When people write about the big picture ... There are some writers who have done good works that were not there because they ... It is like being a political cartoonist. You do not have to be there to put it into perspective necessarily, but the people who were there, like Bernard Fall, still to this day, one of the best books on Vietnam, Hell is a Very Small Place, and guys like ... It goes on and on, Halverson and other people.

SM (00:46:16):
Neil Sheehan.

DK (00:46:19):
Sheehan is another former UPI guy. The book he wrote, A Bright Shining Lie, that is one of the good [inaudible].

SM (00:46:31):
Stanley Karnow's Vietnam, too, was another great one.

DK (00:46:34):
What is that?

SM (00:46:35):
Stanley Karnow's Vietnam.

DK (00:46:42):
There are just tons of good ones. To me, the best ones are by the people who were there, of course because it is like being a good photographer somewhere, where you can translate what you see, and a good writer can do it with words. Rarely do the two come together. I see writing as ... It is so difficult, but I wrote Shooter. Everything I have ever done, I have written myself. It's the good news and the bad news probably.

SM (00:47:16):
What was-

DK (00:47:18):
Observations are really ... The marriage of those two is really great. Or you will take a good photo like Phillip Jones Griffith, who did Vietnam Inc I think it was, but writing ruined a really good bunch of pictures to me because it was so biased. It detracted from the photos. Sometimes you just should let the pictures tell the story and stand out of the way.

SM (00:47:52):
Good point.

DK (00:47:52):
By interjecting opinions, Philip, who was a really good photographer, did that. You should look at that book and see what I mean.

SM (00:48:05):
One question I have here is, and last one really on Vietnam, was what was Vietnam like when you were there? Did you see the divisions that were taking place in America between black and white, the issue of the drug culture, soldiers questioning their leaders and their strategy, believing that the war was a mistake while they were fighting it? What did you see and hear on the bases and in combat? Was what was happening in America happening there? Were the troops also aware of the student protests and even the Vietnam veterans against the war became a very big topic.

DK (00:48:44):
Yeah, but when you boiled it down, those kind of ... Number one, I got there ... This is kind of a funny story, but Eddie Adams, who was a prime competitor of mine because he was AP, I was UPI, before I left for Vietnam, he told me that I was too late, all the good pictures had been taken. One of my highest possessions is that after I won the Pulitzer Prize, that Eddie sent me a cable that said, "I guess I was wrong. Congratulations."

SM (00:49:35):
Well, that is an anecdote.

DK (00:49:35):
For him to do that was a very begrudging act too. I will say it. I did not see it so much. I was on fire base for now, but again, they were drawing down Americans there at that point. It was not the (19)69, (19)70, that was really (19)67, (19)68, (19)69, were probably the three biggest years, and then they started pulling them back in. The Americans were becoming more in an advisory role, not so much frontline combat, a little bit. I mainly covered the Vietnamese side, so I do not recall really ... You would see guys wearing peace symbols and all that to some degree. The black soldiers in my estimation got along fine with their white...

SM (00:50:45):
What is really amazing, you have this on your website, and it is the quote from James Earl Jones, and said that, "David Hume Kennerly is like Forrest Gump, except he was really there." You seem to be everywhere. You start out in those early years, taking pictures of musical entertainers like the Rolling Stones and The Supremes and Miles Davis, unbelievable stuff. Those are icons of the Boomer Generation.

DK (00:51:20):
I know, but you know what, I never ... this is kind of bizarre actually. I once had a ... By the way, I think James was just being funny. It was a funny quote that ... I appreciate it obviously, but I think I would be more of a [inaudible] thing surely. This little remote voice, the guy in the background, that it is always critical events that I have a camera with me. It could have gone a lot of different ways for me because I worked nights at the Oregon Journal. I guess if I were ... The Rolling Stones' first trip to America, The Supremes, they got all the big acts at the Portland Coliseum. Igor Stravinsky, Miles Davis. Some of the pictures I did in (19)66 were just these ... Not that they were the greatest shots, but they were good pictures, but nothing better. I could very well have taken that Rolling Stone magazine route, that if I really had an interest in rock and roll and music and that whole lifestyle and everything, I could have gone down a different road just like the left or the right in Vietnam. Just depends on the fate would have it. I was so concentrated on me, more important things, it was not sports photography. I was pretty good at that too. It was not rock and roll or certainly not entertainers or movie stars. Did not interest me. The conversations I had with politicians were always much more interesting than movie stars. When I look through my photos and my experiences with photographing like a film celebrity of some kind, or a Robert Kennedy or a Bill Clinton or whomever, that the best stories I have almost always had something to do with substantive matters, not with the illusory Ones.0 when I photographed celebrities, it turns out to be an empty box of memories usually, outside of a few good pictures of them, because I just do not recall anything that interesting about them. That is not to be critical, but itis why I never did the showbiz route or the rock and roll route. It would have been more fun than getting shot at in Vietnam or slogging through a rice paddy or being dehydrated in India-Pakistan war, almost getting killed. Anything. Would have been more fun than that, but that is what I wanted to do.

SM (00:54:15):
A couple things, you covered the POWs when the last POWs were coming home from the war. I think that was (19)73. You went to Hanoi I believe.

DK (00:54:28):
That right, and that was the last...

SM (00:54:29):
That is a major, major happening, and then that picture that you took in Cambodia, the little girl. We knew what was happening with the Khmer Rouge. I think it is really ... When you state underneath your picture you do not know if she even survived the onslaught of the Khmer Rouge. That is an unbelievable picture.

DK (00:54:54):
That one also won a World Press contest. That won portrait division of World Press in (19)76. It was taken in (19)75, right before Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, with the dog tag and all that. I have no idea what happened, but I will tell you that picture in the haunting image category, that probably ... I think about that picture probably more than anything else I have done.

SM (00:55:29):
It is her eyes. It is her face.

DK (00:55:35):
It is really about the wars. It is not about the soldiers, the politicians, but really when these things happen, it is the kids and the innocents who suffer the most and have no idea what's going on or why all this is happening. It really is a brutal existence. I think that is why that picture has some resonance.

SM (00:56:02):
Did you fly to Hanoi? How did you get the Hanoi to cover and take pictures of the POWs?

DK (00:56:09):
Well, they had let in actually ... That was two weeks after John McCain and that early group of POWs had been released. There was a prisoner of war facility called the Plantation. It was not the Hanoi Hilton, which had been downtown, an old French jail. That last group were some B-52 crew that had been shot down like six months earlier. They basically had been well treated compared to McCain and those other guys because the war was kind of grinding to a halt. They let a few select people in, and I flew in on a chartered Air WOW plane from Dien Bien into Hanoi. It was Walter Cronkite and his crew and a couple of other photographers, and they took us over and let us take pictures of these guys behind bars. Then they later bused them out to the military airport in Hanoi and released them. I got that, and yeah, it is a shocking situation to see these fellow Americans in their rice pajamas behind bars. I felt kind of self-conscious about taking pictures of them, but that was my job.

SM (00:57:45):
David, let me switch my tape here. I got to turn it over here. Hold on a second. Okay, let me see here. Hold on a second. All right. When I look at that quote from James Earl Jones, I kind of wrote down... Okay, I saw the movie Forrest Gump, and I saw Forest Gump in Vietnam and saw him with Richard Nixon, so I put down some of these, what I consider some of the major things that you did and the events you were at to take pictures. I know you have already talked about Bobby Kennedy, but the first one I wrote down here was when you took those pictures of Bobby at the Ambassador Hotel and all the atmosphere, the happiness. I saw it on TV. You were taking those pictures, but you did not go back into that area where he was shot, I guess, or did you?

DK (00:58:47):
Well, no. What happened was ... It is funny. It was sort of like the Ali-Frazier fight. The reason there are not any other pictures of him doing that V sign, he just raised his hand up and put it down. It was so fast, which I did not even realize until many years later when I saw the film. There was another photographer there from UPI, and we flipped a coin to see who would be up on the podium, and then follow him because he was going to another event. It was an overflow ballroom [inaudible] there. I lost the flip, so my friend Ron Bennett went back with him. That is normally how you cover stuff, somebody's on the riser, somebody's closer in, or I would have been back there with him, and I have no idea what would have happened if I would have gotten the pictures. I have no idea. The one thing I knew was I always had a flash. Again, going back to that be prepared news shooter thing. Anyway, he went back. Then when I heard what had happened, just all of a sudden everything changed, and someone said a shooting had happened and all the rumors. I went out in the back, and the ambulance was there, and I got a picture of Ethel in the back of the ambulance because the instinct is just go right toward the action, whatever it is. Try to get it. It really was a horrible night. It was actually someone that I had ... I had been upstairs with him. I have a picture of me and Bobby Kennedy that was taken less than an hour before he was shot. Upstairs, I was invited up because I knew Bill Etheridge was there. That goes back two years. He was there with him. They had that incredibly haunting photo they took in there of the ... That was a TV light and just that guy, the waiter bending over him.

SM (01:01:04):
Yes-yes.

DK (01:01:07):
I think it was so personal, really, that somebody I would met and talked to had now been shot. That was the [inaudible].

SM (01:01:15):
Did you hear the bullets?

DK (01:01:17):
No. No.

SM (01:01:18):
Okay.

DK (01:01:18):
I did not. Big crowd there, a lot of people there.

SM (01:01:24):
Yeah. The second one that I brought up was, you mentioned it, was the coverage of the New York Mets and everybody, from last to first. Being an Atlanta Braves fan and them knocking off my Atlanta Braves in the, I think it was the best of five series at Shea Stadium. Covering that event, here it is in the 19(19)60s with all the problems, and here you have got this team who was atrocious, and then all of a sudden, the next year they become world champs. What a story.

DK (01:01:59):
The amazing Mets.

SM (01:02:02):
Did you get to know all the players?

DK (01:02:04):
I covered them all year. As part of a UPI photographer, sports was always one of the main things you had to shoot. Yeah, I had the first base dugout position during the World Series and-

SM (01:02:19):
Oh my gosh.

DK (01:02:20):
I was only 23 years old. I was sitting there next to Sports Illustrated guys. It was not like now, where you have 10 jillion photographers. Then it was like AP, UPI, New York Times, the Daily News, Sports Illustrated at that point. There were not that many. There Was third base dugout, first base dugout, these positions right next, so there were designated spots, but those were the best. You could not have a better place to see the ballgame, but all I am worried about is the pictures of it. To me, it's like, okay, it is the World Series. That ramps up the intensity of the moment, but I have always responded well to that. The pressure never got in the way of a good picture.

SM (01:03:19):
When I saw that you had taken pictures, I was just doing flashbacks of (19)69 because the Cubs were doing so well, and then they overtook the Cubs, and then they beat the Braves, and they beat the Orioles in the World, Series. When you have like Gil Hodges, and then you had Seaver, Koosman, Ryan, Mays, Charles, Kranepool, Jones, Agee, Swoboda, Weis, Grote, and JC Martin, Gentry. I will never forget Wayne Garrett. He was on the team, and he hit a home run off Pat Jarvis in the Braves Series.

DK (01:03:53):
I have a baseball signed by all those guys you just mentioned.

SM (01:03:57):
Wow.

DK (01:03:58):
At the time, including Gil Hodges and Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Yogi Berra was their coach. They had Donn Clendenon.

SM (01:04:11):
Oh, first base, yes.

DK (01:04:15):
Right. I had a lot of really good pictures, and one of the best was after the whole thing was over with. I have a picture of Tom Seaver, and I think it was Gary Gentry. They came out after everybody left, and the field had been torn up. There were just these pieces of sod everywhere. People were just crazy. He's still got his uniform on, his shirt out, and he's like standing on the pitcher's mound, looking down. I was the only person that was out there. That picture stands out in my mind, the aftermath of it all, in a real unusual situation, which has been emblematic of my kind of photography. I have always been attracted to sort of the Pulitzer thing, loneliness, desolation. My book, Photo du Jour, you see a lot of that in there, picture a day in the year 2000. That is all part of it.

SM (01:05:20):
Yeah. Then you covered the resignation of Spiro Agnew, and then of course, the selection of Gerald Ford to be the VP. Your experience of taking that picture with Time Magazine, and you began your close relationship with President Ford. Could you talk about covering Agnew's and then of course that whole period of Nixon leaving?

DK (01:05:45):
When I came back from Vietnam, Watergate was the big story. I came back in, not sure exactly when, but I think it was like June, July, somewhere. I made a detour. I left Vietnam, although I kept going back. I lived for a while in Hong Kong, a while in Bangkok and then Paris and then back to the States and really, right into the full-frontal hurricane that was Watergate. Agnew was part of that story, although he was not really related to Watergate per se, but it was all part of the trouble that was brewing. Time Magazine assigned me to go follow him around, which was not easy because he hated the press for one thing. Those nattering nabobs of negativism.

SM (01:06:51):
Yes.

DK (01:06:51):
You know who wrote that?

SM (01:06:53):
Pat Buchanan?

DK (01:06:53):
Yep.

SM (01:06:54):
Yeah, I figured. Yep.

DK (01:06:57):
Actually, Agnew, it was impressive he could even say that. That is not [inaudible]. Anyway, I cannot say it. Then he resigned, and my classic photo of him was really the day after he resigned, in the back of the limo. It was up in Maryland. It was actually a funeral, might have been for his mother or something. That picture ran in Time. I cannot remember how much after that, not too long after, Nixon designated Ford. As I recall, it was like a Friday afternoon. I went up to take his picture up at the House. He was minority leader of the House and very friendly. Let me come in, said you're wasting your time. I took this picture with window light. That night, Nixon announced him- And then that night Nixon announced Tim, and then my picture was the cover of the magazine, the new number two, at which point Time assigned me full-time to cover Ford, which really the glory days of magazine journalism because nowadays Time Magazine does not even cover overseas presidential trips. The budgeting has gotten so bad. There are a lot of pictures not being taken as we speak every minute, every hour, because of budgetary problems in the business. Newsweek is going under us. US News is really more about lists of big colleges or hospitals. Time still remains number one, but there's no way... And somebody commented on this recently, that looking back through all my photographs, everything from Vietnam to the Middle East to Jonestown to whatever it is, that there is no way that a publication would send people off to cover stories like that anymore. As an individual [inaudible], there is no way. They cannot afford it and they do not even think about it, and honestly, I think everybody is settling for a lot less now in terms of photographic quality. And it's being replaced by somebody with a flip camera or a camera phone, snap, and that is good enough. And that is really part of the deterioration of... It does not mean there are less good photographers out there, it is just they are not traveling into the center of big stories the way they used to.

SM (01:09:56):
You became so close to President Ford and his family because he picked you as his personal photographer. And I love the terms that you gave them before you took that position, is that he would report directly to him, which was I think very important in that relationship. When you look at the time that he became president, the boomer generation, it is maybe the most historic time in their lives because of Watergate and the pressure that President Ford had to be under after Nixon left. And when you look at all of these things, not only the resignation, but then he pardoned him and he had to go before Congress. He separated the United States from Vietnam on April 30th of (19)75. And then of course he lost to Jimmy Carter, and then there was the whole Ford Carter debate. I remember living in San Francisco at the time when he had that blunder about Eastern Europe, and then a lot of people made fun of him because he golfed and he would hit a golf ball into the yard. There is a lot of things during that timeframe, but what was it like being every day around this president with these such historic events happening right around you?

DK (01:11:16):
Well, going back to my initial conversation, I lecture all the time about... My latest, one of the lectures I gave, I did it over at the Aspen Institute, and this year was the presidential [inaudible] from Lincolnville [inaudible]. But I was only the third civilian chief White House photographer, and the first was Yoichi Okamoto with Lyndon Johnson who had great access that was really the standard by all of us who followed him. Well, maybe not all, but most of us had looked to Ollie or rather Yoichi as the gold standard in presidential photography. He was the godfather of White House photography for me. And then he was followed by Ollie Atkins, who had frankly no access and a really difficult period. It was like, "Okay Ollie, that is enough. A couple pictures and then you are out." And I knew this because I covered the Nixon White House at 27 years old, and as someone who would just come back from Vietnam and [inaudible] there, et cetera, et cetera. The White House photographer job did not mean that much to me to get it, just to sit around and have somebody tell me when I can go in and out of the Oval Office. The night that Ford became president sitting over in his house with Alexandria, just the two of us after he had a few family friends come by and he had asked me, invited me over and asked me to stay after everybody left. And we had this conversation in his living room, and he said, "Well, you were going to be White House photographer. How do you see that job?" And knowing what frustrations Ollie had, I said very directly to him that I would do it on two conditions. And that one is that I worked directly for him, meaning not for the press secretary or the chief of staff, that I report directly to him, and that I have total access to everything going on, whether it's national security, any kind of... Anything. I said, otherwise I was not interested just because why would I want to do that? I love working for Time Magazine, traveling around the world and taking pictures of interesting things. But he was looking at me while I said that and puffing on his pipe, and he said, "You do not want Air Force One on the weekends?' So that was it and the deal was done, really. And that was the atmosphere in which I worked for two and a half years, and I had access to everything, whether it was top secret meetings about the Soviet Union or whatever, and including... Which was a full circle for me, was being in the room when he pulled the plug on American involvement in Vietnam. And that was in the Roosevelt Room under a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt. It's one of the most important things that I took there, and you can imagine how highly classified that was because of the security of getting out the people that wanted to get out. And it was a very decisive moment, and just having been over there, I was there only a month earlier. In March I went with General Fred Weyand, who was looking to see if there's any way they could stem the tide of the advancing North Vietnamese. And so, I had been in Cambodia and Vietnam on a presidential mission really, and that was a hard one. I had a lot of friends over there, and after the fact I sponsored more than 20 Vietnamese, getting them out of camps after they had escaped from Vietnam and all of that. So, I had always been emotionally attached to Vietnam, but having said that, I have not been... I do not think, anyway, living in the Vietnam past, and I know a lot of people who have. It was both soldiers certainly, and a lot of news people who were there, photographer who were there, and just cannot seem to shake it loose. I mean, I literally moved on. When I was out of Vietnam, that was that. Not that I did not think about it. I did think about it, but to this day, I do not look at it as the greatest story I ever covered. It was certainly one of the most important. But I have been very fortunate that I have not lived in the Vietnam past. I know a lot of people who still do, and I feel bad for them.

SM (01:16:55):
Yeah. You were there, again, those three things he took over at the time of the resignation, the pardon, having to go before Congress, his commentaries there, and of course the separation from Vietnam, those were all just major happenings. Do you think history has been fair to President Ford in terms of when they talk about the boomer presidents, we talk about Eisenhower in the (19)50s, and we talk about John Kennedy and then we talk about LBJ and Nixon? And then some people will say, well, then we had the lightweight Gerald Ford, then we go to Carter who was a disaster, and then we get to the powerful Ronald Reagan and then Bill Clinton in the 90s and George... So just your thoughts on whether history has treated him fairly?

DK (01:17:45):
I think so. I think it is treating him more fairly every day that goes by. And I think where the turnaround came was ironically with he had Kennedy giving him that profile [inaudible] for the pardoning of Richard Nixon, and Kennedy basically admitting that he was wrong in his criticism of Ford at the time, that it really did to help killed the nation, that it put Watergate behind us, but people were so mad that it cost Ford the election. I mean, he really was sacrificed on that altar of bad feelings against Nixon. And people's thought there was a deal or whatever. I mean, nobody... And everybody wanted to get rid of him, and what we ended up with was Jimmy Carter. And Carter almost lost. I mean, the more Carter was out there talking, the less people liked him, and if that election a week later, Ford probably would have beat him. And the Poland thing, you can look at anything that threw off that momentum, which Poland did. And if Ford has just said, "The spirit of the Polish people are not dominated by the Soviet Union," slam dunk, home run as opposed to "They're not dominated by the Soviet Union." That was a mistake and one that he begrudgingly admitted later, believe me. It was getting bloody, man. Most people were trying to get him to go out and clarify that. Trust me, I was one of them. But anyway-

SM (01:19:31):
You were also the person who took two historic pictures of five presidents at two different times. The first picture was Nixon, Carter, Bush, Reagan, and Ford, and the second was Bush one and two, Clinton, Obama and Carter. That is historic in my opinion.

DK (01:19:48):
No, actually that was the last one, which was early January of last year, (20)09. It was the fifth time that five presidents been together, but only the second time where they posed for a picture because the Reagan library was the first time, and then there was the Nixon funeral, and then there was the 9/11 memorial at the National Cathedral, and then there was Reagan's funeral. Might have been, actually... No, that is right. It would have been Reagan's funeral, and then president-elect Obama with the other four and that was that. It is kind of interesting there is only been two baby boomer presidents, Clinton and Bush, and now Obama is the first president of my lifetime that has been younger than me.

SM (01:20:58):
And actually, he is actually the last two years of what is defined as boomers, (19)46 to (19)60. Was not he born in (19)62?

DK (01:21:07):
I cannot remember.

SM (01:21:08):
So he was two years old.

DK (01:21:11):
Yeah, I definitely would not put him in that category, I suppose.

SM (01:21:18):
It must have been quite an honor for you to be picked as the photographer for these occasions.

DK (01:21:24):
Well, no, I was not picked. There were a lot of other photographers there. I just happened to get... By design, I got an angle where I took a chance at the Reagan library where I got off to the side and there was a little... I should admit to some premeditation there, because one of the Advanced people before called me up from Bush.... No, actually somebody doing the Reagan event and wanted me to come out, because I lived in LA here at that time, to give them some advice on what would be a good picture. And so, I had a hand in setting that up. And because I knew what they were going to do, either were going to walk out together and then stand in this one spot, and photographer were like locusts. They all gather around one place usually. And so I assumed that the head on pictures is what everybody's going to go for, but I knew the best shot would be off to the side, that Mount Rushmore type configuration. And it would not have been as good a picture if Reagan then looked over to where I was, and that is why that picture was so good. And if you see the other pictures from head on, they looked like cardboard cutouts. It's all flat lighting and I never would have taken that picture. And then the last time, because it was the Bush White House and I was not working for any news organization, but I had to get in there. So, I called Dick Cheney up, whom I am still on friendly terms with, and I told him that, I said, "Do you still have any influence over there at the White House? I got to get in and take that picture." I said, " The press office will not return my calls. I am getting no help from them." And about two minutes later, the press secretary called me up and said, "Oh yeah, sure, we would love to have you come in for that."

SM (01:23:41):
Wow.

DK (01:23:43):
But there were other photographers there, but it was not a big group, but there were others. They had like three waves of photographers. But I knew when I came in the door, that was the shot right then and there, bang-bang. It was very quick, but I had a good angle there.

SM (01:23:59):
You knew that... I think you had over 50 front covers on magazines, and 35 I think in that time period length of some of the (19)60s and (19)70s stuff. What are the front covers that stand out for you? What year and what was the picture?

DK (01:24:19):
Well, I think obviously the Ford cover was my first Time magazine cover. And then it was the... I am trying to think. Well, the other huge one was the December 4th (19)78 cover of Time Magazine, Jonestown.

SM (01:24:47):
Oh yes.

DK (01:24:48):
That was huge. And then there was Ansel Adams on the cover of Time, the only cover... September (19)79, Ansel was called the master eye, and it was him on the cover of Time. To this date, the only photographer that is ever been on the cover of Time. In October '86, Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik, and it was no deal, and we transmitted that picture on a Sunday night. Early technology victory over the opposition. And I nailed the picture of Reagan kind of looking disappointed and Gorbachev, and the headline was "No Deal". Those are four covers that have all been significant, and the President Ford cover was another portrait. And the President Ford cover and Jonestown are two of the biggest selling covers in Times history, I think to this day actually, and really important events. I mean, there have been others. I have had other covers, but...

SM (01:26:06):
What was the most important event that you covered? You said Vietnam was not the one. What was the most important event?

DK (01:26:12):
It is hard to say that really, I know I said it, but I would say Sadat going to Israel was right up there. Jonestown was right up there. Reagan Gorbachev Geneva Summit was right up there. In terms of events that have profoundly impacted the world, obviously Vietnam, Reagan, Gorbachev, Jonestown would not be in the major historical importance, but in terms of drama and horror, Jonestown... I mean Vietnam affected so many people, 50,000 plus Americans being killed there during the war, hard to overlook that one. And it scared a generation of people in one way or another, at least impacted them. And I missed out [inaudible].

SM (01:27:16):
I lived in the Bay Area when Jonestown happened.

DK (01:27:19):
Oh yeah, well that was-

SM (01:27:21):
Because so much was happening at that time, not only Harvey Milk being murdered in Moscone, but Jonestown. So you flew there, took the... I have that magazine. You flew there and took all those pictures. So, when you first got to that site, it must have been... You had been to Vietnam and seen death.

DK (01:27:46):
Well, but we did not know, and that was not even the point really. I was doing another story. I was down... The story of Shooter is a good story. [inaudible] recollect because it happened so soon [inaudible]. I think it was one of the last stories, and that is a good story. That tells you what happened. But until when we first circled over Jonestown in that plane, we just heard rumors that, oh, there were a lot of kids there, that we thought maybe they were still holding out against the Guyanese army, and we just did not know. And when we circled over there in the plane, I saw those people. I thought, well, look at all these people down there. And so, they must, it is not as bad as we thought. And as we got closer, realized that all the people were dead. And that was shocking. I mean, I cannot even begin to tell you what that was like. That is probably the most difficult thing I have ever had to deal with psychologically is to see that. And I think that was... Because at least in a war, you got some sense of why people are doing it. And in this case, there was no reality spread there. There was nothing that a sane person could understand why that would have happened. And to this day, I am perplexed as anybody, why they did that?

SM (01:29:29):
And you were right down on the ground there eventually?

DK (01:29:33):
Yeah, then we got on the ground. I was one of those few people ever to be there, fortunately for everybody else who was not.

SM (01:29:40):
Did you have to wear masks? Because the stench must have been really intense.

DK (01:29:43):
It was bad. Yeah. It was like two, three days later.

SM (01:29:46):
Wow.

DK (01:29:47):
Not good.

SM (01:29:49):
Why did we lose the Vietnam War, in your opinion?

DK (01:29:54):
Well, I do not know. The historians are still fighting about that war. I think we, well ultimately, if you take it all the way back to Eisenhower era that we backed the wrong horse. I think that is what happened. I am really curious what would have happened if you looked at Ho Chi Minh as a nationalist and not a communist, if you looked at him in a different way, could there have been a decision that would have sided with Ho Chi Minh? I do not know. I mean, the resolve was there in the north, and in the south, there was so much corruption. I mean, you read all the stories.

SM (01:30:48):
Yes.

DK (01:30:49):
I am probably the last person you should ask that question of just because I have no idea. You look at the place today, it is still a communist country, but they are big time into capitalism. So, I am just wonder what was lost other than obviously all those lives. But if I were a family who lost somebody in Vietnam, I would be pretty pissed off, quite frankly.

SM (01:31:21):
Did you ever have a chance to talk to President Ford about his position on the Warren Commission? About the single bullet theory? And of course, he and all-

DK (01:31:33):
He was emphatic that he agreed with the rest of the commission, that there were no... That it was not a conspiracy.

SM (01:31:39):
When you saw the wall-

DK (01:31:42):
To this day, by the way, I have seen nothing that would prove differently. And I know it is one of ongoing fascinations that some people have, the obsession with that whole thing. It is almost like you can... It kind of goes to the category of the United States was a co-conspirator in the 9/11 Twin Towers attack.

SM (01:32:17):
Yeah, there is some that think that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, they were all connected in some way, conspiracy.

DK (01:32:29):
It is just I cannot... It is so hard to... It is like Jones telling to me. I do not understand that kind of thinking. So, I do not know.

SM (01:32:35):
When you saw the wall, the Vietnam Memorial for the first time, what was your reaction and thinking in 1982 when all the veterans came back and since? You're the person who won the Pulitzer Prize for pictures on the war in Vietnam and experienced combat firsthand. And then of course, the decision that President Ford, to depart in 1975 after 58,290 died and 3 million Vietnamese died. What was your thought when you first saw that wall?

DK (01:33:07):
I cried. It was the single most powerful thing I have ever seen in my life as a monument. To see those names, many of whom I knew. They were guys I went to high school with were or had met. And I thought it was... I was overcome with emotional when I saw it. And I went down there on my own to see it. I did not know what to expect. And I know it was really criticized by a lot of veterans groups and people, but I think it's emerged as probably the single most powerful vision of what that war was, because it boils down to all those people were killed. And guess what? That does not even... The names of the people who were severely injured are not on there, so you could add another 100,000-

SM (01:34:14):
Oh yes.

DK (01:34:15):
... Names, not to mention all of the Vietnamese.

SM (01:34:20):
Have you ever read Lewis Puller's book, Fortunate Son?

DK (01:34:27):
I have not. And I have got it. And I have got so much. I mean, read all the time. I read so much. That is one, believe it or not, that was on my list. That is a good one.

SM (01:34:48):
Well, I knew him. And that is another story. This is your interview, not mine. But I only knew him through making an effort to contact him. He was the inspiration to write my book.

DK (01:34:59):
Oh wow.

SM (01:34:59):
He supported me to do it when I talked to him before he killed himself.

DK (01:35:03):
But Galway knows him or knew him.

SM (01:35:03):
Oh yeah, and Joe's great. Of course, Joe's now in Texas, I think so.

DK (01:35:10):
Yeah. Yeah. I have not talked-

SM (01:35:13):
And when I interviewed him for my book was many years back. His wife had just passed away, and then he ended up marrying one of the daughters of guys who died at the [inaudible] Valley. So that is an unbelievable story. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end, and what do you think was the watershed moment?

DK (01:35:35):
That is a good question. They definitely ended in the (19)70s. And I would say they probably ended after... Definitely after Nixon resigned, because he represented the... I mean, he was elected in (19)68, took office in (19)69. The (19)60s as we remember them did not even really start till (19)65.

SM (01:36:10):
You are right.

DK (01:36:11):
And everybody talks about the [inaudible], because then all the images that you see flashed up are Rolling Stones, Beetles, hippies, et cetera. And I think you could safely say the (19)60s ended with the end fall of Saigon. That would be probably the most dramatic moment I could think of.

SM (01:36:36):
Is there a watershed moment?

DK (01:36:44):
That moment would be the fall Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. Yeah. I mean, I think that is the end of the (19)60s right there.

SM (01:36:51):
Where were you when John Kennedy died? Do you remember the exact moment when you heard?

DK (01:36:55):
Yeah, I was in social studies class in Roseburg High School, and when they came in to the class, I remember what was more interesting to me was what I found out many years later that there were people celebrating his death here in this country. That was shocking to me.

SM (01:37:26):
Oh, yes.

DK (01:37:26):
Unbelievable. Because all we can think about at the time, all the kids, they were all fine. And I mean, he was the president. He was like this character that because of modern communication, we would actually gotten to know this guy through TV. And he was a young person who... And my parents were Republican, but everybody was so upset. I mean, the part of Oregon I come from, it is a very conservative part of the state, and I remember in [inaudible] billboards, so that was... However, nobody was celebrating. We were all the kids. We were in shock.

SM (01:38:18):
When you were not San Francisco State, SI [inaudible], we back in the East saw that on tele... We knew what was going on there. And of course, a lot of the protests were in Berkeley.

DK (01:38:31):
But Berkeley I did not really do, but the SF State I did. I was actually based in Los Angeles. They flew me up there to cover that.

SM (01:38:38):
That was pretty intense. An, were not you threatened at that? Or were you beat up or?

DK (01:38:43):
Oh yeah, the cops hit me, the students threw rocks at me, and it was kind of an equal opportunity bashing.

SM (01:38:52):
Geez. What was your thought when all this was happening about higher ed, our young people, and America?

DK (01:39:05):
Nothing surprised me at that point. To me, it was a good story. It was dangerous though, but there were a lot of good pictures out of that. Hey, you know what? It's just what I have done. That is just another story along the way. And one of the things I was going to mention to you was I had gone to pitch a book of my photos to, I think it was Abraham, and all the editors could talk about was, did I have pictures of the social changes and fashion? And I said, no. They said, why? I said, "Guys, I do not give a flying fuck about any of that stuff. I do not care about [inaudible]. I do not care about fashion. I do not really care about sports that much in terms of photography. What I cared about is what you were looking at. These are my pictures, and I cannot go back into the vault and pull out a bunch of stuff that you think I should be doing as opposed to what I did." I was really offended by them, to be honest with you.

SM (01:40:23):
Well, you know what is interesting-

DK (01:40:24):
What do you see here? I said, "This is the story of one person's journey through the events of his generation". I said, "I cannot go back and do it over again. And if I did go back and do it over again, I do not think I would do it any differently." I mean, I would have taken some better pictures and not missed as many as I did, but the direction would have been the same.

SM (01:40:50):
The irony of your pictures of the Ali Frazier fight before you went off to Vietnam is interesting because, I am just reflecting, he was kicked out of boxing because of his stand on the Vietnam War and stripped of his title for a while. And then he came back and we all remember what he had said, that he's not going to go off and kill yellow boys when black boys in America are not being taken care of.

DK (01:41:17):
Yeah, that fight, I mean, that was one of the great fights of all time.

SM (01:41:21):
How important do you think-

DK (01:41:25):
[inaudible] Frazier, you will never, ever duplicate something like that. Well, the whole boxing industry is screwed anyway anymore. But those were, again, that was sort of representative of... That was still the (19)60s, even though it was 1971. That was an event with its roots going back into... See, basically, because we divide everything into... We like neat little items. 50th anniversary of this, 20th anniversary of that, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, the (19)80s. It does not mean jack shit. (19)60s, the (19)70s, the (19)80s, it does not mean jack shit. I mean, when I did my book, [inaudible] in 2000... Hang on, I was showing this to somebody the other day and I said something here, if I can find it. Hold on. Every month I wrote something about... Where is it? Well, I cannot find it. the end of the last day of 2000, I did a picture of... Actually, one of the pictures, you should get that book. I think you would find it pretty interesting, I was at the convention in Philadelphia, among other things.

SM (01:43:03):
The name of the book?

DK (01:43:05):
Photo du Jour.

SM (01:43:07):
Okay, I will find that. We have a really good bookstore.

DK (01:43:16):
Hold on a sec, I just want to see if I can find this one thing. Well, maybe I do not have it here. Dave Barry Howard Fryman wrote a piece.

SM (01:43:35):
You can email me.

DK (01:43:39):
The main thing right now, I guess, the point was that the last picture that I did, And this was a project I did with a Mamiya 7 camera, which is like a light on steroids. It is a medium format or a range finder camera. the last photo was of a volcano in Hawaii. Normally day-to-day, I did not even know where I would be one day to the next, but in this case, by that point, at the end of the year, the family and I were going to be in Hawaii on a vacation and the volcano was still active. That was the last day of December 31st, 2000, the last day of going into 2001. The symbolism of that volcano was, it did not make any difference that it was the last day of the year or the first day of the year, or the last day of the millennium. The fact of the matter, everything, it just goes over into the next day. It does not mean anything. It is like these are just all, they are days. They are false markers. I think that was point.

SM (01:45:12):
How important do you feel students were in ending the war through their protests? You saw it at San Francisco State, but they were all over the country, particularly between (19)67-

DK (01:45:21):
Hang on one second. Here is what I said. The first day of the new millennium was basically another day. The Earth continued to spin on its axis. There was no cataclysmic thunder clap wiping out our way of life as we knew it. That would wait until September 11th, 2001. That was the point. Oops. Can you hold on one second?

SM (01:45:56):
Yep.

DK (01:45:57):
Hold on.

SM (01:45:58):
Yep.

DK (01:46:08):
The point is, when you are talking, that was a good question. When did the (19)60s end? If you just sent out all of the, if you took all that stuff out, it really, it was a state of mind really more than anything. I think that is a really good question. I have talked to people about that. Well, what does it mean the (19)60s? It's almost like the (19)70s, somebody, they do not talk about the (19)70s per se. So much shit happened during the (19)70s. More than in the (19)60s almost.

SM (01:46:40):
What is interesting is a lot of people have said the (19)60s were from that (19)65 till about (19)73 because you cannot separate (19)71, (19)72, (19)73 and (19)70. You cannot.

DK (01:46:52):
Right.

SM (01:46:52):
A lot of people look at disco as a change when things start changing.

DK (01:46:58):
Yeah-yeah, yeah.

SM (01:46:59):
When you look at the generation that you grew up in, the boomer generation, this would be based, the generation 74 million total. What would be the people that you knew, can you give any strengths or weaknesses to this generation if you were to comment on them?

DK (01:47:20):
Ask me that one more time, I am sorry.

SM (01:47:22):
When you look at the boomer generation itself of 74 million, not all were activists and probably only about 10 percent were, and the rest were not. But when you look at this generation, which is all inclusive, it is male, female, black, brown, yellow, gay, straight, you name it. It is all of them. Were there any strengths or weaknesses that you could list?

DK (01:47:54):
Well, God, there is so many. In many ways, Clinton kind of epitomized all that. I mean, he was a person who, and in a way, this is not a fair thing to say, but because we all were brought up differently too, I mean, he had a hard way to go brought up. Here's the guy that overcame a background. I do not really like Clinton, by the way. I understand his strengths and his weaknesses. In many ways he represents many of the strengths and weaknesses of the generation. A lot of promiscuous people who were, if it feels good, do it. I understand that. I think those of us, products of the World War II generation or the greatest generation as to Tom Brokaw said, makes you feel a little bit strange. They went through all that. They collectively, and we were brought up in the (19)50s where prosperity was the cornerstone of the country and on the sacrifice of our parents. My parents and those people that age really have a different way of looking at stuff. Those who went through the depression. We do not know about any of that until now, but I do not think it's the same thing. It is for certain people, but not in this overshadowing way. I am rambling here because I do not have a good answer for you. It is everything from television, the advent of TV really accompanied the rise of the baby boomers. Jeff, it was very funny. In fact, you got to get the photo out if you do not have it. If you want to use Jeff's cartoons in it, I will give you the permission to do so because what it did, and a lot of what you are writing about is the baby generation. I told you what he said, the self-centered generation comes of age, but it is all, the first frame is the (19)50s and it is the golden age of television. There is a little kid sitting on a floor and the TV with the rabbit ears is up on a wood chest of drawers. Then it's the (19)60s, the next panel, the Golden Age, the rock and roll. You have got the same, the kid is not growing up now, but he is holding a guitar, watching a bigger TV set. In the (19)70s, golden age of drugs and the kid who is still a baby has got a cigarette in his mouth watching a TV in a cabinet. Then the (19)80s, the golden age of money. The kid's got a big cigar, this huge TV, the nineties, the golden age of healthcare. The kid's got to hook up to a blood pressure machines, still watching the TV. Then the two thousand, the golden age of arthritis. The kids pushing the button on the TV with a cane. Then the 2010, the golden age of death. That was his representation of the baby boom generation. I think there is something to that because we were not only growing up in a different world, we're actually watching ourselves do it on TV. Everything that happens is on TV anymore. The car chase, the plane crash, people on the hill, live C Span. Never before has a group of people been able to track their own progress in a mirror really like now. That was not the way it was before. The evolution of how you got your news from Life magazine to NBC, when they talk about life being killed by speed, that is probably true. It had its time. That is all. I was one of the last drivers hired by them, and it was a great tragedy for us but like so many other things I have moved on from there.

SM (01:52:52):
You say you moved on. That that leads me into, I only got three more questions then we're done. This question is regarding the issue of healing. We took students to Washington DC in 1995 to meet Senator Edmond Musky. The students came up with a question because they were not alive in the (19)60s and (19)70s, their parents were obviously, but they had seen a video of the year 1968. They put together a question dealing with all the divisions that were happening in America at that time. The question was this, due to all the divisions that were taking place in the boomer generation or in the (19)60s generation, divisions between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who supported the war, those who were against the war, those who supported the troops, those who did not. Do you feel the boomer generation, the (19)60s generation, is going to go to its grave like the Civil War generation, not healing? Not healing because of the tremendous division's, animosity and sometimes outright hatred one had for the opposing point of view, or someone with a different perspective or whatever? Senator Musky, and they were thinking of the 1968 convention and all the turmoil there, the assassinations in 68, and they were thinking of Watts in 64. They were thinking of all the things about the (19)60s. What's your answer? Then I will tell you what Senator Musky said.

DK (01:54:27):
Well, of course we got a little, yeah, that is a different thing. I do not know. The healing. It seems a lot of that bad will is really carrying over to the here and the now. It almost does not seem to be getting better. I do not know about healing. I do not see how you-

SM (01:54:51):
Hold on one second. David, can you hold on one second?

DK (01:54:54):
Yeah.

SM (01:54:54):
My tape just ended. Okay. Alrighty. Go right ahead.

DK (01:55:01):
When you talk about a generation healing, I do not personally feel damaged, so I do not know how other people, it is such an individual situation that I could not tell you, but the world, it does. Things seem more divided now. I mean, that is a fact. Everybody talks about it. You have got Fox News on one hand is supposed to represent the conservative point of view and MSNBC on the other side, and people really polarize on certain subjects. That goes back to what I said earlier. I am not a Democrat or Republican, I am a photographer.

SM (01:55:48):
Right.

DK (01:55:51):
I have seen both sides.

(End of Interview)

2010-10-07

Stephen McKiernan

David Hume Kennerly

237:33

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

3 microcassettes

Audio

Photographers; Photojournalists; Kennerly, David Hume, 1947--Interviews

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