BILL EPPRIDGE HONORED AS "PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR"

Bobby Kennedy campaigns in IN during May of 1968, with various aides and friends: former prizefighter Tony Zale and (right of Kennedy) N.F.L. stars Lamar Lundy, Rosey Grier, and Deacon Jones

The Photo Marketing Association International (PMA), an 83 year-old worldwide community of imaging associations representing 20,000 members in 100-plus countries has named Bill Eppridge as Photographer of the Year. Eppridge will be honored at their annual International covention this year in Las Vegas March 3 -5.

Bill Eppridge is one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and has captured some of the most significant moments in American history. Over the last 35 years, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, Life, and Sports Illustrated.

His collective assignments read like a list of the most important historical and cultural events from the latter half of the 20th Century. Eppridge recorded the Beatles’ first momentous visit to the United States. He photographed a young Barbra Streisand—living in a tiny railroad apartment in Manhattan—on the verge of super stardom. He was the only photographer admitted into Marilyn Lovell’s home as her husband, Jim, made his nail-biting re-entry into the atmosphere in the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft. He captured Clint Eastwood on the set of Dirty Harry. He was at Woodstock. And he was in Vietnam. He covered the funeral of civil rights activist James Chaney in Mississippi. His landmark photographic essay on Needle Park heroin addiction won the National Headliner Award and inspired the motion picture Panic in Needle Park, starring Al Pacino. That photo essay is included in Things As They Are: Photojournalism in Context Since 1955, the 2005 ICP award-winning book by World Press Photo.

Eppridge spent much of 1966 and 1968 on the road with Robert F. Kennedy, covering the presidential campaign for LIFE magazine. It was Eppridge who took one of the decade’s most poignant and iconic photographs: a stunned Los Angeles busboy cradling the candidate in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel of just seconds after he was shot.

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to represent the photography of Bill Eppridge.