Randolph Community College Interior Design

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photographer to Speak at RCC Feb. 19

ASHEBORO (February 5, 2013) – Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Hume Kennerly, who documented the war in Vietnam and was President Gerald Ford’s personal White House photographer, will be the guest speaker at a Canon Explorer of Light event at Randolph Community College’s Photography Imaging Center on Tuesday, Feb. 19. The event is being cosponsored by the RCC Photographic Technology department, the American Society of Media Photographers/North Carolina, and Canon. The lecture will begin at 7 p.m.; it is free and open to the public, but preregistration is requested because space is limited.

Kennerly has been shooting on the front lines of history for more than 45 years, according to his biography. He has photographed eight wars, as many U.S. presidents, and has traveled to dozens of countries along the way.

At 25, the Roseburg, Ore., native won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his previous year’s work that included photos of the Vietnam, Cambodia, and India-Pakistan Wars, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden. In 1976, he was awarded two first prizes in the World Press photo contest for pictures from the final days of Cambodia. He has been presented with numerous other honors, including the Overseas Press Club’s Olivier Rebbot Award for “Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad” for his coverage of Reagan and Gorbachev’s historic first summit meeting in Geneva. He was named “One of the Most 100 Most Important People in Photography” by American Photo Magazine.

Kennerly was nominated for a Primetime Emmy as executive producer of NBC’s “The Taking of Flight 847” and was writer and executive producer of a two-hour NBC pilot, “Shooter,” starring Helen Hunt, based on his Vietnam experiences. “Shooter” won the Emmy for “Outstanding Cinematography.” He is executive producer of the documentary, “Portraits of a Lady,” starring former Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, which made the short list of films eligible for the 2008 Academy Award nominations. He was executive producer of 2011’s “Bucksville,” an ultra-low budget film shot in Portland, Ore., featuring Tom Berenger.

Kennerly is a graduate of the AFI Conservatory’s two-year film directing program and directed a commercial starring former mayor Ed Koch shot for New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Kennerly has been a contributing photographer for Time Magazine, John F. Kennedy Jr’s George magazine, Life Magazine, and was a contributing editor for Newsweek magazine for 10 years. He has more than 50 major magazine covers to his credit.

He has published several books of his work, including “Shooter,” “Photo Op,” “Seinoff: The Final Days of Seinfeld,” “Photo du Jour,” and “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford.” In 2009, he produced “Barack Obama: The Official Barack Obama Inaugural Book,” with Bob McNeely, who was President Clinton’s official White House photographer. He provided many exclusive behind-the-scenes photographs of President and Mrs. Obama for the project. A major exhibition of photographs from the book was mounted in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., in 2009, and attracted more than a million visitors.

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), and is a member of the board of directors of the Eddie Adams Workshop and the Press Photographers Association of Greater Los Angeles.

To register for the Kennerly lecture at RCC on Feb. 19, go to http://kennerly.eventbrite.com. The Photography Imaging Center is located in the Administration/Education Center on the Asheboro Campus. Take the McDowell Road exit from Highway 220 Bypass/I73-I74 and follow the signs.