The Photojournalism Archive

In early 1971 United Press International assigned me to their Saigon bureau to replace photographer Kent Potter who was rotating out. On Feb. 10, 1971, Potter and three other photographers perished when their chopper was shot down over Laos during the Lam Son 719 operation. Larry Burrows of Life, Henri Huet of the AP, and Keisaburo Shimamoto of Newsweek were among those who died. I didn't know any of those great photographers, but Burrows was a personal hero, and his photos inspired my desire to cover the war. A few weeks later, and shortly after I turned 24, I was on a plane bound for Saigon.

I spent over two years photographing combat in Indochina, and In 1972, I was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for my previous year’s work in Vietnam, Cambodia, and India where I photographed refugees escaping across the border from East Pakistan.

Vietnam became part of my DNA, and everything that has happened to me since has been informed by that experience. I was 24, and my first year as a combat photographer was so intense, and there were so many close calls, I really never figured to see 25. When I celebrated that birthday in Saigon, I felt that every one after was a bonus. So far that windfall has added up to an extra 53 years! I have tried to use them well.

I returned to the states in mid-1973 to go to work for TIME Magazine. One of my early assignments was the Watergate melee, and I was also assigned to photograph House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford after Vice President Agnew resigned in the fall of that year. A portrait that I took of Ford ran on the cover of TIME when President Nixon announced that he would replace Agnew as the new vice president. TIME then assigned me to cover Ford full-time. When President Nixon resigned, and Ford replaced him, he asked me to be his chief photographer. With that job came total access, not just to the President and his family, but to everything that was going on behind the scenes. It was quite an honor, wildly exciting, and one of the most professionally and personally rewarding times of my life.

David Hume Kennerly's archive can be found at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which holds the copyright to his work. However, the images he took as President Gerald R. Ford's Chief White House photographer fall within the public domain.

This is my account of the final days of Vietnam. Direct quotes from the participants are from declassified minutes of National Security Council meetings, Memorandums of Conversations, Cabinet meetings, White House press conferences, President Ford’s book, “A Time to Heal,” Donald Rumsfeld’s book “Known and Unknown,” and my autobiography, “Shooter.” 

Some of the time stamps with the images are estimates based on David's recollection of the order of events that he photographed. Other time stamps are accurate, as documented in records of President Gerald R. Ford's presidency.