When Gerald R. Ford became President
in August, 1974, one of his first decisions was to appoint a young Pulitzer
Prize–winning
photographer named David Hume Kennerly as his Personal Photographer. The
President gave Kennerly, who had covered Vice President Ford for TIME
Magazine, unlimited access to all floors of the White House, even allowing
him to attend Cabinet and National Security Council meetings.
In March, 2006 David
Kennerly visited the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. There,
he spent nearly a month poring over more than 280,000 White House
Photo Office images, selecting only the best for his book Extraordinary
Circumstances: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. He
also used 1500 of the images to stimulate the recollections of his
subjects while conducting oral histories with President Ford and members
of the Ford administration. Finally,
he chose nearly 200 of these photographs, which, combined with many
recollections appear in the book.
The photographs
in this exhibit validate Gerald Ford’s
faith in Kennerly’s photographic work. They also illustrate the
photographer’s
ability to capture some of the most important public and private moments
in the administration of Gerald R. Ford. |