Book Review: Shooter
Book thirty-two in 52 books in 52 weeks
David Kennerly is a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, Shooter is a biography that covers the first thirty years of his life. It’s not a straight biography though. Other than a few personal moments, it’s mostly about where and how he took photographs . He started young, first shooting for his school newspaper. It wasn’t long before he was a photographer at a local newspaper before going national and working for Time and Life. He won the Pulitzer for a series of photographs on the Vietnam war.
As a photographer, it’s interesting to see how he his photography led to almost every decison he made before the age of thirty. He liked Life magazine, and his admiration of it’s photographers led to eventually working for them. He was bored working with politicians, so he requested a transfer to Vietnam where he spent time in and out of combat zones documenting what was going on.
The most interesting part is exactly what he would do to get a shot he thought was worth taking. He’s drive through war zones on a jeep, sneak around guards to get someone famous, and listen in on Secret Service radios to get a good picture of Robert Kennedy. Most of the time spent in Vietnam almost sounds like he was the Indiana Jones of photography, it’s all very exciting.
It does slow down when he becomes the official photographer for President Ford. Not that the photos are any worse, it just got a little monotonous reading about what good friends they were and how much fun it was to have 24/7 access to the Ford family. It’s a real lull in the action as well just being not as fun to read.
This is only about a quarter of the book though, and it isn’t enought to bring the book down. It also includes sections of photographs from each period of work. These are very intersting, I love seeing what people can accomplish with equipment that was being dragged through rice paddies and on helicopters. Visit his website for examples of his work.
B+
Read my other reviews in 52 weeks here.
Other people doing the 52 week thing
- Jaime reviews Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
- Heliologue reviews I Want to Buy a Vowel by John Welter and All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen
- Nick reviews The Road by Cormack McCarthy
[...] Original post by jeremy [...]
[...] joy garnett wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptHe’s drive through war zones on a jeep, sneak around guards to get someone famous, and listen in on Secret Service radios to get a good picture of Robert Kennedy. Most of the time spent in Vietnam almost sounds like he was the Indiana … [...]
Huh, this sounds pretty cool. I’ve stuck it on my Amazon wish list to check out some day.
[...] than the rest usually belong to two magazines, National Geographic or Life. After reading the biography of a photographer, it sounds like photojournalists are the same way, they all wanted their work to be in National [...]