Customer Reviews

Shooter

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Anyone thinking of becoming a free lance Photographer should read this book. The problems that Mr. Kennerly has to overcome as a Photographer can be very edicational to the novice and the experiences he describes will hold the reader to the last page. There is also a generous amount of photographs to support the written word.

I read this book on the recommendation of a popular photojournalist because he said that it was a book that really inspired him. I can only say that it didn't strike me as very interesting or inspiring. Maybe that just means that I'm not the photojournalist type. There are some really cool things in here, and as a memoir of someone who dashed into many dangerous situations, apparently without any thought at all, and who had the opportunity of a uniquely close vantage point on an American president there is enough history and excitement to keep you reading.

So what did the book lack, you might wonder? Ideas. When I say that Kennerly apparently dashed into dangerous situations without a thought, I mean his writing literally gives you the impression that he never thought about philosophical or political ideas at all. He didn't even have that much to say about the technical or aesthetic aspects of what makes a photograph good. I guess he was able to get the pictures he got mostly by being there. His whole M.O. seems to have been putting personal feelings, opinions, fears, scruples and all other ambitions besides taking pictures aside. Nor did he have anything to say about what constituted good journalism. Everything for him seems to have derived from his youthful impression that photographers could go places that were off limits to other people. And so his story is the fulfillment of that; going where others can't or won't, taking a lot of pictures, winning an award for one, and being close to centers of power. Not a thinking-man's book.

And frankly I think it is this vacuum where other men would have thoughts, opinions and convictions that led him to see Gerald Ford as basically a good president. From my vantage point with a little hindsight of history I see his most notable accomplishment to be pardoning Nixon, thus demonstrating that no American president need ever be held accountable for anything.