In late 1967, he moved to Los Angeles to become a staff photographer for
United Press International (UPI). On June 5, 1968, he took some of the last photos of Senator
Robert F. Kennedy at the
Ambassador Hotel as he declared victory in the California presidential primary. Moments later Kennedy was gunned down by the assassin
Sirhan Sirhan. That night Kennerly also took a picture of
Ethel Kennedy in the back of an ambulance. The following year (1969), Kennerly moved to New York for UPI, where among many other assignments he photographed the "Miracle"
New York Mets winning the
1969 World Series. In early 1970, he was transferred to the
Washington, D.C. bureau of UPI. At age 23 he took his first ride on
Air Force One with President Nixon as a member of the traveling
press pool. However, Kennerly believed he was missing out on the biggest story of his generation, the
Vietnam War. He said, "I felt like that scene in
Mr. Roberts where
Henry Fonda, an officer on a supply ship, watched the destroyers sail into battle while he was stuck in some South Pacific backwater port." Kennerly was sent to
Saigon in early 1971 as a combat photographer for UPI. Unbeknownst to Kennerly, UPI photo editor Larry DeSantis started a portfolio of his favorite Kennerly photographs of the year, beginning with the
Ali-Frazier fight photo that ran on the front page of
The New York Times on March 9, 1971. DeSantis submitted that photograph along with images of the Vietnam and
Cambodia wars and refugees escaping from East Pakistan into India to the
Pulitzer Prize Board for consideration. It was only when the winners were announced that Kennerly, who was still in Vietnam, learned he had been awarded the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. The committee noted that he "specialized in pictures that capture the loneliness and desolation of war." Kennerly became the photo bureau chief for UPI in Southeast Asia, but still spent most of his time in the field covering combat operations. In September 1972, he was one of three Americans to travel to the
People's Republic of China to cover the state visit of Japanese Prime Minister
Kakuei Tanaka. While still in Vietnam, he joined
Life in November 1972 as a contract photographer. After the classic picture magazine folded a few weeks later, Kennerly stayed on as a contract photographer for
Time. Among the many stories he covered for them while still in Asia was the last American prisoner of war release in
Hanoi, March 30, 1973. Kennerly returned to the United States in the summer of 1973 for
Time, right in the middle of the
Watergate story. He photographed the resignation of Vice President
Spiro Agnew, and the selection of Minority Leader
Gerald R. Ford (R-MI) as Agnew's replacement. Kennerly's first
Time cover was of Congressman Ford, a photo he took the day before Nixon selected Ford, and it was also Ford's first appearance on the front of
Time. That session with Ford led to a close personal relationship with him and his family. After Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974, the new president selected him to be his
Chief Official White House Photographer. Kennerly was only the third civilian to ever have that position (before him was President
Lyndon B. Johnson's photographer
Yoichi Okamoto, and Nixon's photographer
Oliver F. Atkins). Kennerly photographed major meetings, events, and trips during Ford's tenure in office. He also arranged unique access for photographic colleagues from the magazines, newspapers, and wire service during that period. More than 50 photographers were granted exclusives with President Ford. His staff consisted of four other photographers who divided coverage of the First Lady and Vice President, as well as presidential duties. He also directed the White House photo lab that was run by the military as part of the
White House Communications Agency. Kennerly's
White House photographs and negatives are physically housed at the
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the campus of Ford's alma mater, the
University of Michigan. Many of his photos are also on display at the
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in
Grand Rapids, Michigan. In late March 1975, Kennerly accompanied
U.S. Army Chief of Staff General
Frederick Weyand who had been dispatched on a presidential mission to South Vietnam to assess what was becoming a rapidly deteriorating military situation. The president privately told Kennerly he wanted his view of what was happening. In his autobiography Ford wrote, "I knew David wouldn't try to give me any propaganda about 'enemy body counts' or 'light at the end of the tunnel.' He had been shot at many times by the North Vietnamese. As an American, he felt ashamed that we weren't doing more to help a loyal ally, and he thought that once I saw the photographs he took of the suffering there, I would have a better feel for what we had to do." Kennerly flew around the country, escaped from
Nha Trang before it fell to the advancing communists, was shot at by retreating South Vietnamese soldiers at
Cam Ranh Bay, and landed under fire in
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia, for a quick visit and assessment of the situation. When he returned from the trip, both Weyand's and Kennerly's assessments were bleak. The President ordered that Kennerly's stark black-and-white photos of the tragedy be put up in the halls of the
West Wing of the White House to remind the staff just how bad things were.
Saigon fell a month later. Before the fall, Ford had ordered the evacuation of the last Americans and many Vietnamese who had been working for the United States. The photos that Kennerly took on that mission helped convince Ford to open the doors to allow tens of thousands of other Vietnamese refugees into the country. The day before the Fords were turning over the keys to the White House to incoming President
Jimmy Carter, Kennerly accompanied Betty Ford around the West Wing as she said goodbyes to the staff. They walked by the empty
Cabinet Room and a mischievous look came across her face. "I've always wanted to dance on the Cabinet Room table", she said. The former
Martha Graham dancer kicked off her shoes, jumped up on the middle of the table, and struck a pose. The photo was published for the first time 15 years after Kennerly took it in his book
Photo Op. During the Carter presidency there was no official White House photographer, in part because Carter did not like Kennerly's high public profile during Ford's administration. After the White House, Kennerly went back on contract for
Time magazine, where he covered some of the biggest stories of the 1970s and 1980s for them; Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat's trip to Israel, the horror of
Jonestown, exclusive photos of President
Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary
Mikhail Gorbachev's first meeting in
Geneva in 1985, the Fireside Summit, and many other stories around the world. When
Life made a brief comeback for
Desert Storm in 1991, he shot an inside story on Secretary of Defense
Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Colin Powell called "Men of War". In 1996, Kennerly became a contributing editor for
Newsweek where he produced inside stories on President
Bill Clinton, Senator
Bob Dole, the
impeachment hearings, special prosecutor
Kenneth Starr, the 2000 elections, the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon, and other top stories. Kennerly also had a contract with
John F. Kennedy Jr.'s magazine
George. While still working for
Newsweek, Kennerly was assigned to cover the 2000 presidential election campaigns, initially covering the candidacy of
Senator John McCain until his withdrawal on March 9, 2000. On election night November 7, Kennerly was at the Governor's Mansion in Austin with Governor
George W. Bush after Vice President
Al Gore first conceded the election and later recanted. Kennerly has covered every presidential campaign from 1968 through 2020 with the exception of 1972, when he was in Vietnam. Kennerly was a fellow in the
American Film Institute directing program from 1984 to 1986. He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy as executive producer of NBC's
The Taking of Flight 847, and was the writer and executive producer of a two-hour NBC pilot,
Shooter, starring
Helen Hunt, based on his Vietnam experiences.
Shooter won the Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography. He was executive producer of the
Academy Award short-listed documentary
Portraits of a Lady for HBO, directed by
Neil Leifer and starring former Justice of the Supreme Court
Sandra Day O'Connor. In 2013, Kennerly collaborated with Emmy Award-winning filmmakers
Gedeon Naudet,
Jules Naudet, and producer
Chris Whipple on a documentary ''The Presidents' Gatekeepers
, a four-hour Discovery Channel documentary about the White House chiefs of staff. The team joined forces again in 2015 to produce The Spymasters'', a documentary for CBS/Showtime about the directors of the CIA. Kennerly is a frequent public speaker, and has appeared at events such as
TEDx, RootsTech, the
University of Arizona, and a multitude of corporate events. In addition to his photojournalism work, Kennerly has also worked as a corporate photographer, and for the last ten years his main client has been
Bank of America. In announcing the acquisition CCP director Anne Breckenridge Barrett said "Adding the Kennerly Archive to our collection allows the Center to connect the relevance of Kennerly's work to the photographic legacies we house. It is a critical contribution to the Center's commitment to expanding the understanding of the role photography plays in today's society." The acquisition highlights the decades long relationship between Kennerly and
Ansel Adams, one of the co-founders of CCP. The two first became acquainted when Kennerly invited Adams to the White House to meet with President Ford in 1975. In 1979 Kennerly photographed Adams for the cover of
Time, the only time a photographer has been featured on the cover of the magazine. ==Personal life==