The Presidents: from JFK to Obama by David Burnett

© David Burnett. President Barack Obama and wife Michelle take a brief break for ice cream after speaking at a campaign rally in Davenport, Iowa, 2013.
© David Burnett. President Barack Obama and wife Michelle take a brief break for ice cream after speaking at a campaign rally in Davenport, Iowa, 2013.

Leading American photojournalist, David Burnett is one of the very few photographers to have photographed all US Presidents since John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Burnett’s final year of high school, his mother took him to see Kennedy speak in downtown Salt Lake City. A chance moment and a borrowed camera led to a lifelong career. He began working as a freelancer for Time Magazine, and later for Life, in the 1960s.

He co-founded Contact Press Images in 1976 with Robert Pledge and has worked in over 70 countries. His many awards in a long career include the Robert Capa Gold Medal, multiple World Press Photo Awards and World Press Photo of the Year. This work was originally presented at the Australian Centre for Photography in partnership with Reportage Festival.

© David Burnett. Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, with their interpreters, during their first summit, Geneva, 1985.
© David Burnett. Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, with their interpreters, during their first summit, Geneva, 1985.
© David Burnett. Jimmy Carter addresses a small crowd in the kitchen of a volunteer before the New Hampshire primary, 1976
© David Burnett. Jimmy Carter addresses a small crowd in the kitchen of a volunteer before the New Hampshire primary, 1976
© David Burnett. Bill Clinton, during his re-election campaign, at an event in Springfield, MA, 1996
© David Burnett. Bill Clinton, during his re-election campaign, at an event in Springfield, MA, 1996.

 

 

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November

Sydney: The exhibition delves into the State Library of NSW's vast collection of two million images, showcasing 400 photos – many displayed for the first time.

February

Melbourne: Jill Orr’s The Promised Land Refigured is an exhibition that reworks the original project created in 2012 with new insights that have emerged in the past eleven years.

March

Melbourne: Environmental Futures features five artists whose work addresses how the natural world is affected by climate change and encompasses photography, sculpture and installation both within the gallery spaces and around the museum grounds.

Ballarat: Nan Goldin is an American artist whose work explores subcultures, moments of intimacy, the impacts of the HIV/AIDS and opioid epidemics on her communities, and photography as a tool for social activism.

Sydney: The Ocean Photographer of the Year Award, run by London based Oceanographic Magazine is in its 4th year and has quickly achieved recognition amongst photographers around the world.

Albury: The National Photography Prize offers a $30,000 acquisitive prize, the $5000 John and Margaret Baker Fellowship for an emerging practitioner, and further supports a number of artists through focused acquisitions.

April

Sydney: Photographers Harold David, Lyndal Irons, Ladstreet, Selina Ou, David Porter, Greg Semu, and Craig Walsh exhibit a diverse and varied snapshot of Penrith and western Sydney as it has changed and grown over the last sixty years.

The City Surveyor’s ‘Condemnation and Demolition Books’ is a key photographic collection held in the City Archives comprising almost 5000 photographs and associated glass plate negatives.

Sydney: The images in Bill Henson’s cinematic new body of work, The Liquid Night, derive from work the highly acclaimed artist shot on 35mm colour negative film in New York City in 1989.

May

Ballarat: Art Gallery of Ballarat presents Lost in Palm Springs, a multidisciplinary exhibition that brings together fourteen creative minds who respond to, capture, or re-imagine the magical qualities of the landscape and the celebrated mid-century modern architecture of Palm Springs, California and across Australia.