Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Unpublished JFK Photos: Houston Remembers President Kennedy's 1962 "Moon Speech" At Rice Stadium




Via KUHF


Today is the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's famous speech in which he declared, "We choose to go to the moon ..." He delivered it here in Houston, vowing to put Americans on the moon within the decade.
I'm sitting here in the bleachers at Rice, on the stadium's east side, where most of the 40,000 people had gathered to hear Kennedy speak. It was Sept. 12, 1962 and reportedly it was quite hot but clear that day. The crowd included not only the mayor of Houston, the county judge, and the president of Rice, but also the Texas governor and various Texas congressman.

"It was blazingly hot. And poor Lyndon Johnson was drenched with perspiration."

Bob Gomel was photographing Kennedy that day for LIFE magazine. He says the president, unbelievably, didn't seem sweaty at all.

"He was cool, man. He just didn't, he just somehow or other, was oblivious to it. He looked perfectly fine."

Houston was the third stop on a presidential tour of aerospace facilities.

Gomel had gone with him to the rocket facility in Huntsville, Alabama and to Cape Canaveral.
At Rice he was so busy taking photos that he didn't realize the importance of the speech until later.

"It was very daring, it was very daring. I mean the Russians were out there in space. And he elected to put us in competition."

Excerpt from speech:
"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard …"

 
  • JFK and Bob Gomel

    President JFK and LIFE magazine photographer Bob Gomel

    LIFE magazine photographer Bob Gomel, 28, at right in background holding camera, as the president enters the stadium before the famous speech. Photo credit: Unknown.
  • JFK pokes his head out of spacecraft

    Unpublished Photo by Bob Gomel

    At Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center on 6040 Telephone Road, President Kennedy pokes his head out of a spacecraft in this previously unpublished photo. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
  • JFK speaking from the podium

    President at the Podium

    At Rice University, the presidential speech that ignited the dream. Photo by: Bob Gomel
  • JFK speaking from the podium

    "We choose to go to the moon ..."

    "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard ..." Photo by: Bob Gomel
  • President JFK and VP Lyndon Johnson

    Space Industry Tour

    President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson began their space industry tour on Sept. 11, 1962 at rocket-production facilities in Huntsville, Alabama. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
  • President JFK and VP Lyndon Johnson

    President JFK and VP Lyndon Johnson

    President Kennedy, with Vice President Johnson by his side, speaks at Cape Canaveral during his 1962 tour of U.S. aerospace facilities. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
  • JFK at Cape Canaveral

    President Kennedy at Cape Canaveral

    President Kennedy at Cape Canaveral. Photo credit: Bob Gomel.
  • JFK walking

    President Kennedy walking into Rice Stadium

    President Kennedy walking into Rice stadium. Photo by: Bob Gomel
  • JFK at the podium

    President at the Podium

    At Rice University, the presidential speech continues. Photo by: Bob Gomel
  • JFK with cleched fist

    President with Clenched Fist

    President Kennedy with clenched fist during speech. Photo by: Bob Gomel
  • JFK druing convocation

    President during Convocation

    President Kennedy during Rice University's Convocation. Photo byBob Gomel
  
Rice presidential historian Douglas Brinkley says this was not only the most important event in Rice's 100-year history, but it was also one of Kennedy's best and most successful speeches, in which he sold the American public on a vast public works project, that despite its expense, united the country.

"It was a way to get Congress to appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars into the space program. This was the single largest public discovery project ever. In scope, it dwarfed the Panama Canal. Maybe only the interstate highway system of Eisenhower is comparable."

Brinkley says Kennedy wisely sold the project as more than just a Cold War space race with the Soviets.

"Kennedy framed it as the march of human civilization into the galaxies. And framed it in that language of breaking the shackles of earth."

Brinkley notes that this was the last time a U.S. President managed to unite the country around a vast, expensive, and noble goal.

The tragedy of the Vietnam war, followed by Ronald Reagan's call to shrink government, made Americans more skeptical about public spending, especially on infrastructure and exploration.

"We aren't seeming to do public discovery anymore. It's all become private sector. And you don't have the government leading the charge on one big grand possibility like Kennedy threw out in front of the 40,000 people at Rice Stadium."



Bob Gomel: LIFE in The 1960s will be on exhibit October 5 - November 18, 2012 at Monroe Gallery of Photography. Bob Gomel will be in attendance at a reception in his honor on Friday, Oct 5, 5 - 7 PM.


Related: 50 years ago, Kennedy reached for stars in historic Rice address

50 years ago a promise made, a promise kept: going to the moon

Kennedy’s speech a ‘tonic’ for nation losing to Russia

Friday, September 7, 2012

Panel Discussion | Shifting Sands: Conflict Photojournalism and Ethics



featuring Marcus Bleasdale and Stephen Mayes
Tuesday, September 18, 2012, 6:30pm
Aperture
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10001

What are the ethical responsibilities of a photojournalist who chooses to cover conflict? Can he or she be truly neutral, or do they have a responsibility to reflect the moral and political imbalances of the situations they report on?


Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2003
© Marcus Bleasdale/VII

The panel will explore the ethical pressures on photojournalists in conflict and will consider their accountability for the positions they take and the pictures they make, how they make them, where they place the work and the voice they attach to it. The discussion will consider the responsibilities and consequences, intended and otherwise, of reporting on conflict.


Marcus Bleasdale – Photographer, VII
Jason Cone – Communications Director, Doctors Without Borders USA
Philip Gourevitch – Journalist, The New Yorker
Thomas Keenan – Director of the Human Rights Project, Bard College
Kira Pollack – Director of Photography, Time Magazine
Stephen Mayes, Moderator – Managing Director, VII


More here.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Bill Eppridge speaks at Echo Foundation and Charlotte Observer exhibit of
Bill Eppridge's photographs. Photo by Meredith Jones

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/03/3501561/dnc-party-pics-090312.html#storylink=cpy


Via Charlotte Observer


Kathleen Kennedy Townsend speaks Echo Foundation and Charlotte Observer exhibit
of Bill Eppridge's photographs. Photo by Meredith Jones
 
 
 
Echo Foundation and Charlotte Observer exhibit of Bill Eppridge's photographs.
Photo by Meredith Jones

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/03/3501561/dnc-party-pics-090312.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.cDNC Exhibit showcases photos of harlotteobserver.com/2012/09/03/3501561/dnc-party-pics-090312.html#storylink=cpy
 

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/03/3501561/dnc-party-pics-090312.html#storylink=cpy


Related: DNC Exhibit showcases photos of Robert F. Kennedy

FreePress: Journalists in Need of a Safety Net





Via FreePress

September 4, 2012


More and more independent journalists and citizens are putting themselves on the front lines to cover city halls and city streets, politics and protests — and they’re doing so without the support or protection afforded staff at established newsrooms.

Indeed, these journalists undertake incredible personal and legal risks to do their work. The Committee to Protect Journalists found that of the 179 journalists imprisoned worldwide in 2011, 86 were digital journalists and 78 were freelancers. Here in the U.S., nearly 90 journalists — many of whom are independents or freelancers — have been arrested or detained in the past year, and in state after state people have scuffled with police over their right to record.

We cannot build a bright future for news if we cannot create ways to protect and support the independent and citizen journalists who are trying to create that future.

Some of these journalists are building new networks of support to expand their reach and insulate them from legal threats. Learn more about these ad-hoc support networks in my post on PBS’ Media Shift site.

Original photo by Flickr user P. Weiskel

To support our journalism campaign, please consider a donation to the Free Press Action Fund.

Monday, September 3, 2012

DNC Exhibit showcases photos of RFK


 Bill Eppridge, Senator Robert Kennedy at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa 1966
  ©Time Inc.


Via Charlotte Observer
 By Claire McNeill
cmcneill@charlotteobserver.com

Magazine photographer followed Kennedy during 1968 presidential campaign


Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3499126/exhibit-showcases-photographers.html#storylink=cpy
Life magazine photographer Bill Eppridge shadowed Bobby Kennedy on the 1968 presidential campaign trail, witnessing everything from quiet moments to massive rallies.

On June 5, 1968, Eppridge took a famous photo of Kennedy lying on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments after he had been shot.

“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about that man,” Eppridge said.

Now, with politics on center stage in Charlotte, a special exhibit featuring nearly 40 of Eppridge’s photos of Kennedy will be on display.

The show, “One America, One American,” is sponsored by The Echo Foundation and The Charlotte Observer.

Housed in the Observer’s lobby, the exhibition is open to the public Sept. 4-Oct. 19, following The Echo Foundation’s 15th annual award gala opening Monday.

Eppridge, born in 1938 and still taking photographs, will attend the opening, as will Kennedy’s oldest daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland. Townsend will accept the foundation’s inaugural Family Legacy Award on behalf of the Kennedy family.

Former presidential candidate and retired Gen. Wesley Clark will deliver the night’s keynote address, “Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times.”

Eppridge, a self-taught photographer and veteran of Life, National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, said the exhibit’s timing – coinciding with the Democratic National Convention – is “really special.”
“I think a lot of (delegates) don’t really know who he was or what he stood for or the importance of that man, and maybe this will get them thinking about where we’ve been or where we might be able to go,” he said.

Before Kennedy became a Democratic senator from New York, he was attorney general in the administration of his brother, John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. Bobby Kennedy was an icon of the civil rights movement and took a strong stance against the war in Vietnam.
Eppridge said Bobby Kennedy’s importance lay in his honesty, popularity and dedication to getting troops home from Vietnam as soon as possible.

“I had quite unusual access to that man. I heard and saw and knew things that other people didn’t, and I realized that he was dead serious when he told us, ‘We are out of Vietnam on the day I take office,’ ” Eppridge said. “I don’t think anything was impossible to him.”

The Echo Foundation will also display the winning photographs from its international student photojournalism competition, which sought photography responding to the question, “What does democracy or tyranny; justice or injustice look like?”

From more than 500 entries from students across the globe, Tobin Jones, who attends the University of Westminster in the United Kingdom, was chosen as grand-prize winner.

Jones won the opportunity to travel to Charlotte during the convention and take photos alongside Eppridge for one day.

 Want to go?
The free public exhibit, “One America, One American,” is open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 4-Oct. 19 in the Observer lobby, 600 S. Tryon St.   

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3499126/exhibit-showcases-photographers.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/02/3499126/exhibit-showcases-photographers.html#storylink=cpy

"labor Day and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers"





John Loengard: Ranch Foreman, Whistle Mills, Flagstaff, AZ, 1970
 
 
 

US Department of Labor: The History of Labor Day


Labor Day 2011

Labor Day 2010

Sunday, September 2, 2012

The Kennedys, By Mark Shaw



Via The Independant


"These photographs were taken in order to catch and reflect the mood, the feeling of a given moment. If the viewer receives from these pictures an understanding of the affection of the Kennedys for one another, their high spirits and enjoyment of life, the book will have fulfilled its purpose." So wrote the Life magazine photographer Mark Shaw in the original 1964 edition of The John F Kennedys: A Family Album.

But in this new expanded edition, Shaw's widow reveals that the publication was also a coping mechanism; that Shaw had become not only the Kennedy's unofficial family photographer but a close friend. It explains why the work of this pre-eminent fashion and portrait photographer never recovered from Kennedy's assassination, but also how he'd been able to get such fresh, candid shots; shots that, with their vigour, vitality and promise of fresh hope for America's future, were arguably instrumental in Kennedy's election successes. Shown right, Jackie on the beach in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, with her daughter, Caroline.


Jacqueline Kennedy swinging Caroline in surf, Hyannis Port, 1959
 
 
 
GQ (Germany) Article and Slide Show

BBC: As a new book of images of The Kennedys by Mark Shaw is published in the UK, we talk to the editor Tony Nourmand about how images help the political campaign. Listen here.


Available from Reel Art Press $75

Fine art photographs available from Monroe Gallery of Photography

Saturday, September 1, 2012

News photographers gather in Perpignan for 24th Festival International of Photojournalism

 
 

 Employees fix a photograph by Italian Alex Majoli prior to the opening of the exhibition devoted to the work of the World Press awarded photographers as part of the International Photojournalism Festival of Perpignan "Visa pour l'image" on August 31, 2012 in Perpignan, southern France. Majoli won the first prize in the general news singles category for this photograph featuring protesters in Tahrir square reacting to a speech by the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The festival takes place from September 1 to 16. AFP PHOTO PHOTO / RAYMOND ROI Via artdaily.org

 PERPIGNAN.- VISA pour l’image is the premier International Festival of Photojournalism held in Perpignan, France. This festival is a unique event where you can join thousands of kindred spirits who share a love and passion for photography. View the greatest photojournalist work from around the world in exhibitions across the city. Experience the evening screenings in the dramatic open air medieval enclosure of the Campo Santo. Take part in symposiums and conferences and meet the foremost photo agencies and manufacturers of photographic related equipment.


Exhibitions
Exhibitions are open from September 1 to 16, 2012. They present stories or anthologies of a photographer's work, reporting on wars, nature, the environment, people, religious issues, and social phenomena, plus the great scourges of our time.

Screenings
Campo Santo is the venue for the evening screenings. The program includes a chronological review of the news stories from the previous year, reports and features on social issues, war, stories that have made the news and others that have been kept quiet.

Meetings
Perpignan is the place where professionals can discuss their problems, debating issues involved in producing and using pictures and the future of the profession. The symposium and "meet the photographer" sessions cover a wide range of questions.

Full program here.

Visa pour l'Image Perpignan 2012