(piano music)
(crowd cheering)
- Let me say first that I accept the nomination
of the Democratic Party.
(crowd cheering)
I accept it without reservation
and with only one obligation; the obligation to devote
every effort of my mind and spirit
to lead our party back to victory
and our nation to greatness.
- [Narrator] We're in the Photography Study Center
in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Mia
looking at a photograph of John F. Kennedy.
- [Narrator] This is a photograph that Garry Winnogrand
took at the 1960 Democratic National Convention
of Kennedy in the midst of his acceptance speech
for the nomination for the presidency.
- [Narrator] Upon this acceptance speech he begins
to run against Nixon and will eventually become
the President of the United States.
- [Narrator] Kennedy in the center, he's being looked at
by Winnogrand through the lens and then we're also
enabled as viewers to see a second image
of Kennedy on this snowy black and white TV screen.
- [Narrator] So, this is being projected live
across the country.
- [Narrator] This image is about how celebrities
and politicians and people who have a public persona
are constantly mediated through images
and through broadcasts to us.
So, we never fully have intimate access
to them as real human beings.
And, of course, we can't look at this photo
without knowing how his story goes.
Kennedy's nomination was not a foregone conclusion.
Many people were in the running like Adlai Stevenson
from Illinois, Hubert Humphrey from Minnesota
and Kennedy was not backed by the establishment
because he would be the youngest person
to be elected president up to that point.
And also his Irish/Catholic background.
- [Narrator] Every United States President
up to that time had been a Protestant.
And there was significant anti Catholic
sentiment in the United States.
- [Narrator] Those are the kinds of things that
the party elites were wondering if they would be
a liability in his facing off against Nixon,
an intense cold war crusader during the 1950s.
- [Narrator] But the 1960 Democratic Convention
was different in many ways.
Winnogrand talked about how this was not
a place of smoke filled back room discussions.
He saw it as a more open convention
with a much younger voice.
- [Narrator] One of the questions that we have about this
photograph even existing is what was Winnogrand doing there?
There's no evidence that he was on assignment for anybody,
so, he must have gone there on his own volition
to poke around and see what was going on.
And eventually winds up taking many photographs.
But this is the only one he printed.
- [Narrator] He's known best as a street photographer
who takes a small portable camera,
a Leica, out into the street.
The political context is a little unusual for him.
- [Narrator] And it's possible that because he was
drawn to crowds and people watching
and catching these unscripted moments,
that the convention with the carnival aspect
that sometimes the convention had
would have just seemed like a perfect spectacle
for somebody who was so attuned to photographing
things from the periphery.
- [Narrator] But this photograph is different.
Unlike so many Winnogrand photographs,
there's a central focus, it's the back of JFK.
In the distance we can make out some other people
but they're out of focus.
These are photographers and television news cameras.
- [Narrator] It's really only the third convention
that had been televised nationally.
- [Narrator] Soon after this photograph was taken,
Kennedy will sit down with Nixon in front
of the television camera for the first
televised presidential debates.
But within just a few years,
Kennedy will be assassinated in Dallas.
And it's those images, of course, the Zapruder films
that had such a profound impact on the American psyche.
- [Narrator] That too is mediated through lots of different
kinds of images that had been interpreted
and scrutinized over and over and over again.
- [Narrator] But here, in 1960 in a much more
innocent moment, we see Kennedy's back.
His head is framed by the camera lights,
creating a halo.
His right hand is up, it's also framed by light.
- [Narrator] It is an image that rhymes
with earlier images of orators and leaders
that go back to the convention of Roman statuary.
- [Narrator] Winnogrand is giving us a privileged
view from backstage that is very different
from the image that is beamed to living rooms
around the United States.
- [Narrator] It strikes me how vulnerable
Kennedy seems at this moment, too
because we have such close access to him.
When I look at this image, I can't help but think
of all the events that happened afterwards.
- [Narrator] The cameras trained on Kennedy
as if they were the scopes of a rifle.
The clock, a reminder of the memento mori,
that his time is running out.
But it's an important reminder also that works of art
have a life of their own as they move into society.
There is a different kind of meaning that develops
as our immediate memories of this president recede.
- [Narrator] The light on Kennedy's face,
that glowing halo effect feels like a martyrial image.
All these different things start to gain
different kinds of symbolic significance.
- [Narrator] The photographer has so little control
over the things that he's photographing.
He has his placement, he has his timing.
He has choices in terms of lens and film
and f-stop and shutter speed.
But he's working to a large extent, in terms of instinct.
- [Narrator] One second to another
could make or break the image.
Winnogrand said something about that.
He said, "Great photography is always
"on the edge of failure."
- [Narrator] Before today I had only seen
this photograph in reproduction.
This is an original print that the photographer
not only took but then he developed the film
and he printed the image.
And it is a masterful print.
- [Narrator] On specific kind of paper
that has a particular kind of texture.
The coating, all the different chemical reactions
bringing out the nuances of the black and white,
making judgment calls about how much to expose
and how not is all a skill set of the photographer
that people aren't really aware of anymore
because of the ubiquity of digital photography.
- [Narrator] You used the term black and white
but I would argue there's no absolute black
and there's no absolute white here.
There's this rich, warm gradation.
- [Narrator] The depth aspect of this is something
that can startle you when you're not used
to seeing printed photography.
And that adds to the visual dynamism of this image.
(piano music)