MY NAME IS BARRY KESSLER.  I was a photojournalist for 35 years, working freelance for a number of agencies:  A.P., U.P.I., ABC, Fox, NBC, CBS, and finally PBS.  I worked all

over the world covering news.  I was assigned to the press team following Lady Bird Johnson on her Beautify America tour and later followed the campaign of Hubert Humphrey in 1968.  I

served with the press in Vietnam and accompanied Richard Nixon on his groundbreaking trip to China.   I was in the Concorde on its maiden flight to Paris and back.  I

met and photographed every President from Johnson to Clinton and won a White House Press Award.  Later, I switched to TV and finished my career  with WETA-TV in Washington, where I

worked on the McNeil/Lehrer Newshour, now the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Washington Week in Review, and the yearly Memorial Day and July 4 Concerts on the Mall.  I was

nominated for an Emmy for my work on "In Performance at the White House - An Evening with Aretha Franklin."  Now I am retired, and my wife Jan and I live full-time in our RV, traveling all

over this great country and sharing with you the beauty that you might not be able to see.  I hope you enjoy my work as much as I love taking the pictures.

 

 

I am second from the left, in the Oval

Office with President Bill Clinton, Jim Lehrer

and the WETA-TV news-crew.

President Nixon is in the background.  He was

greeting a visiting diplomat from who-

knows-where.  I was shooting for the

Associated Press at the time.

I was a little thinner once upon a time!  This was taken

during the veterans' protest of the Vietnam War.  Over

200,000 people were on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

that day. 

During my news career, I covered the first peace march on the

Pentagon,  Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech,

the women's struggle for equal rights, and civil rights

demonstrations in Selma, Watts, Cambridge, and Newark.

Wherever the story was, that's where I went.

The 70's were a crazy time.

During the 1968 Democratic National

Convention in Chicago, we were issued

head protection with a mask so we

wouldn't breathe in tear gas.

This was a press conference in Memphis

following the assassination of

Martin Luther King.  I am in the

background behind a camera.  The

interviewees were Jesse Jackson

and Ralph Abernathy.

 

Back to the Open Page