When Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president in 1977, David Hume Kennerly had already won a Pulitzer Prize and photographed multiple presidents, including Gerald Ford.
During a lecture at Chapman University on Tuesday afternoon, Kennerly showed multiple photos of Richard Nixon, Ford, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, but just five that included Carter.
A student asked why there were so few of Carter and why Kennerly didn’t want to work as Carter’s photographer when he had worked under Ford.
“Two words: Jimmy Carter,” Kennerly quipped. “I didn’t like him. He beat my boss.”
Kennerly, 64, spoke to two history classes at the invitation of California TV icon Huell Howser, who had previously lectured at Chapman.
Kennerly spoke about his career, which included winning the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for his work in Vietnam, as well as photographing every president since Nixon.
When approached by Ford to become the president’s personal photographer, Kennerly said he asked for all access to Ford, to report directly to the president and not be censored.
“He kind of looked at me, he smoked his pipe and he said ‘You don’t want Air Force One on the weekends?’” Kennerly said. “To go from the outside to the inside was … like Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole.”
After Ford was defeated by Carter, Kennerly shot for Time magazine, continuing his work in photographing presidents, including Obama.
“It’s hard to believe that one person could have taken all those photos,” Kennerly said. “And I was that one person.”
Teachers in grades K-6 of the Orange Unified School District recently received mini-grants from the Rotary Club of Orange and the Orange Education Foundation.
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