David Hume Kennerly

Then the wire machine broke down.  It wasn’t possible in those days just to pick up the phone and call the states.  For three hours we were cut off from the world. Without warning the telex sprung back to life, and a torrent of messages flooded forth. The first said, “01181 Okuley’s 02054 No kidding and can you reach Kennerly for sudden comment need to know where he was when he got the news, Wood/NXCables”

My favorite cable was from my Associated Press competitor Eddie Adams who won a Pulitzer for his famous photo of the chief of the Vietnamese National Police shooting a Viet Cong suspect in the head. Before I left for Southeast Asia Eddie told me that I was wasting my time, and rather immodestly suggested that, “All the good photos in Vietnam had been taken.” His message to me after I won simply said,

“I was wrong.  Congratulations. Eddie.”

So, no joke, I had just joined the Pulitzer Club.

Weeks later I saw the official citation: “For an outstanding example of feature photography, awarded to David Hume Kennerly of United Press International for his dramatic pictures of the Vietnam War in 1971.” It also noted that, “he specializes in pictures that capture the loneliness and desolation of war.” The representative photo from the portfolio, (not knowing a portfolio was entered, I had no idea what was in it), was a photo that I had taken of an American soldier walking across a shattered hillside near the A Shau Valley up in the mountains outside of Hue.  It definitely fit the lonely, desolate, and dangerous bill.

What I found out later is that Larry DeSantis, chief photo editor for UPI, and a man whose laser-guided criticism had helped to make me a better photographer, had submitted me for the Pulitzer. During 1971, as photos of mine that he liked came across his desk, Larry would toss copies into the drawer. At the end of the year he scooped them up and entered them in the contest, underscoring how we can’t always make it on our own, but need some help and faith from others along the way. Larry’s gone now, but before he left I had the chance to tell him that he was the greatest photo editor on earth. I also told him that it was our award, not just mine.

Years later I visited the Pulitzer archive at Columbia University in New York to see for myself what pictures had won.  I discovered that my portfolio contained eleven photographs. Included was a single color photo taken at a little firebase named LZ Lonely that was similar to a black and white picture of the same situation, and to my knowledge is the first color photo that was part of a winning Pulitzer entry. To my surprise there was also a photo from the Ali-Frazier, “Fight of the Century,” in Madison Square Garden taken on March 8, 1971. That picture, in the 15th round of the world heavyweight title bout, showed Mohammad Ali in mid air falling to the canvas after being walloped by a vicious Joe Frazier left hook. The fight was my last domestic assignment before I left to cover the war in Vietnam, and that picture appeared on dozens of front pages around the world the next day, including the New York Times, (that also happened to be my 24^th birthday). The other photos were from Vietnam, Cambodia, and of refugees in India who had escaped from East Pakistan. It was a wide and inclusive array of my year in pictures.