In the Room: Sixty Years on the Front Line of History

For 60 years, the Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer David Hume Kennerly has been an eyewitness to some of the most pivotal events that have defined modern America and world history. Hear the stories behind his iconic images as part of a Cooper Union Gardiner Foundation Great Hall Forum event. He will be joined in conversation by ABC News Presidential Historian Mark K. Updegrove. The event celebrates the release of Kennerly’s career retrospective In the Room: 60 Years on The Front Lines of History, published by Rizzoli Publications, and coincides with a major exhibition of his work at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. Rizzoli Bookstore will be on site with books available for purchase.

After he won the Pulitzer Prize for his photos when he was 25, Kennerly became President Gerald R. Ford’s chief White House photographer. Since then, he has photographed every American President. From the night Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel, to the battlefields of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Kennerly is behind some of history’s most-defining photographs.

Registration on EventBrite is required. However, an EventBrite ticket does not guarantee entry as this is a first-come-first-served free event.

With more than 50 Time and Newsweek covers, David Hume Kennerly has cemented his place among the most important photojournalists of our time. He won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for Feature Photography for his coverage of the Vietnam and Cambodian wars, refugees in India, and the Ali-Frazier “Fight of the Century.” He served as President Gerald R. Ford’s chief White House photographer and is the first University of Arizona presidential scholar. His fine art photographic prints have been exhibited and collected by museums such as The Smithsonian Institution, The Portland Art Museum, and Savannah College of Art and Design. His archive is housed there at the Center for Creative Photography.

Mark K. Updegrove is the chairman and CEO of the LBJ Foundation and serves as Presidential Historian for ABC News. From 2009 to 2017, he was the director of the LBJ Presidential Library. Updegrove is the author of six books on the presidency, including his latest, Make Your Mark: Lessons in Character from Seven Presidents, and is the host of the PBS series “Live from the LBJ Library with Mark Updegrove.” He has written for the New York Times, Politico, TIME, USA Today, and more. Earlier in his career, he was publisher of Newsweek.