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# Capturing history through a lens
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/capturing-history-through-a-lens/
- Published: 2008-05-12T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T19:35:35.000Z
- Author: Melody Hanatani
- Tags: local, Santa Monica, #archive-import

Suddenly, the war became all too real. David Hume Kennerly was thousands of feet in the air, en route to Vietnam to capture a war that had ideologically divided his home country.

The young United Press International photographer, still in his early 20s, was headed to the Southeast Asian country to replace another photojournalist within the wire service, the trip being Kennerly’s first opportunity to cover a war.

He arrived to tragedy. It was Feb. 21, 1971 and a helicopter carrying Kent Potter of UPI, the Associated Press’ Henri Huet, Newsweek freelancer Keisaburo Shimamoto and Life Magazine’s Larry Burrow, whom Kennerly regarded as his hero, was shot down over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.All four photojournalists were killed.

“The guy I was going to replace was killed and my photographic hero was killed and I never met either of them,” Kennerly said during a recent interview.

The event would serve as a wake-up call for Kennerly, bringing out the seriousness in the dangers of photojournalism, previously unrealized in his young career.

Kennerly would go on to spend nearly three years in Vietnam,his photos winning the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. The Santa Monica resident is among the most renowned photographers in the field, his career spanning stints at Time, Newsweek, NBC News and the White House during President Gerald Ford’s administration.

It was in 1962 when Kennerly realized his passion for photojournalism, the career-defining moment coming to the then 15-year-old high school student in Roseburg, Ore., staring at a newspaper photo he had shot of a baseball player crossing home plate.

The photo was “crummy,”as Kennerly calls it, shot with an old Speed Graphic 4 by 5 camera

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/051208-04_01.jpg)

FAMOUS SHOT: David Hume Kennerly captured this image during the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library dedication ceremony in November 1991\. (Photo: Photo courtesy David Hume Kennerly)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/051208-04_02.jpg)

FAMOUS SHOT: David Hume Kennerly captured this image during the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library dedication ceremony in November 1991\. (Photo: Photo courtesy David Hume Kennerly)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 12, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/051208.pdf?ref=smdp.com)