Capturing History

Photographers David Hume Kennerly and Beowulf Sheehan discuss the stories behind images of presidents, wartime events and the famously private novelist Cormac McCarthy. Part of Miami Book Fair, the free conversation takes place Sunday, November 22 in the Freedom Tower’s Knight Skylight Gallery in Downtown Miami.

Kennerly’s In the Room: 60 Years on the Front Lines of History chronicles six decades of political and world events through photographs and eyewitness accounts. Published during the United States’ 250th anniversary year, the collection ranges from Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination and the Vietnam War to the September 11 attacks and recent presidential elections. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennerly also served as President Gerald Ford’s chief White House photographer.

Sheehan brings a more intimate perspective in The Father of the Man: The Last Author Portrait Sitting with Cormac McCarthy. His photo essay revisits a day spent photographing McCarthy in Santa Fe, pairing previously unpublished images with reflections on the writer’s work and Sheehan’s relationship with his own father. The sitting produced the author portrait used for McCarthy’s final novels and later to announce his death.