"He's been everywhere, but only for an hour" - - - - American Photographer Magazine
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David Burnett is a photojournalist with more than 5 decades of work covering the news, the people, and visual tempo of our age. He is co-founder of Contact Press Images,the New York based photojournalism agency, now entering its 44th year. American Photo magazine named Burnett one of the "100 Most Important People in Photography." (That made his mom very happy.) In the spring of 2019, David was officially named an "Artisan of Imagery" with the Sony professional photographers group. He changed his day to day working system over to Sony in the last year. The new professional cameras are the perfect modern full frame (a9 and a7riii) digital gear which join his generations old Speed Graphic in the shoulder bag. Besides the incredible line of Sony glass, there is something quite wonderful about being able to use decades old specialty glass, as the mirrorless cameras leave much room for adapter rings. It's the absolute best of both worlds. In the spring of 2018, David was awarded the Sprague Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Press Photographers Assn., though he claims he is now trying to figure out what his subsequent 'lifetime' work will be. here is a link to that announcement at the Northern Shortcourse... http://tinyurl.com/y3b6xbms Here on this site are images of history unfolding: war, sport, politics, the famous, the infamous, and the Unfamous. Work is constantly being added, so come back and see one person's view of what our world of the past 50+ years looks like. The last few years, David worked with Photographers for Hope to create a workshop for homeless news vendors in Glasgow, Scotland, and in 2017 the P4H team descended on Newburgh, NY, capturing the revival of a great American City. There, they shot for two weeks and produced a 100 print show at the Ann St. Gallery followed by a book of those images -- "Newburgh Rising" -- which was published -- in 2018. For a quick tour of the last 50 years, in David's Pictures, have a look here: https://vimeo.com/96025929
He has recently taught workshops at the GulfPhotoPlus.com festival in Dubai - a long way on an airplane to get there but really great fun, and the "Big Game" workshop at Stanford University - Palo Alto. It was great fun, following the century old Cal-Stanford football rivalry. He writes, too - sort of -- check out the blog ( werejustsayin.blogspot.com ) he writes with his wife Iris. With the Impeachment Trial of 2019-20, David became the singular photographer to have covered the Impeachments of Nixon, Clinton, and Trump - and a story is published here in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/photographing-impeachment-proceedings-against-three-presidents
Here is an interview with PhotoShelter's Grover Sanschagrin on the subject of "what's in your bag?"
David appeared with Robert Caplin on his "Photo Brigade" podcast... see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ6GT6MAZ28 |
Reporters Without Borders has published "100 Photos for Freedom of the Press" featuring a whole career's worth of David's work. The publication, which helps support R.W.B. is available by mail order: If