Photo du Jour: A Picture-a-Day Journey through the First Year of the New Millennium (Focus on American History Series)
by David Hume Kennerly
Category: Photography

From the jungles of Vietnam, where he shot a photo of "the loneliness and desolation of war" that won a Pulitzer Prize, to the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, David Hume Kennerly witnessed and photographed most of the history-making moments of the last third of the twentieth century. As the millennium turned and he set out to cover his eighth presidential campaign, however, the veteran photojournalist sensed something missing. In his words, "I had the uneasy feeling that I couldn't focus only on the story at hand while bypassing the texture of life that surrounds it.... This time I wouldn't speed across that covered bridge to get to the big event on the other side, but instead I would slow down a bit, maybe even pause to take a picture of the bridge." Photo du Jour is Kennerly's visual diary of "the texture of life" at the start of the twenty-first century. As he traveled more than a quarter of a million miles across thirty-eight states and seven countries, Kennerly took a picture every single day in the year 2000, using just one camera and one lens. Some offer candid, behind-the-scenes glimpses of the men who would be president--John McCain, Al Gore, and George W. Bush. Most of the photographs, though, seek to capture not the big, historic moments but rather the ordinary, even whimsical moments when the essence of a person or a place reveals itself to the observer who takes the time and has the heart to really see. Travel with him from Beijing to Boston, Moose to Miami, and Whynot to Weimea in Photo du Jour, and you'll quickly discover that David Kennerly is just such an observer.