Shel Hershorn

Hershorn was born on June 11, 1929, in Denver, to a jeweler father. His father, who Hershorn described as "patriotic", enlisted him into the United States Navy; while serving, he practiced aerial photography while deployed in Hawaii. He and a friend deserted from the Navy for seven years – the period to be considered legally dead – and skied in Colorado during that time. After sustaining a back injury, his absence was discovered and he was arrested until his return to service was ordered by the Navy. In 1951, Hershorn worked as an Army hospital photographer in Denver. In 1954, he moved to Dallas, where he worked for the Dallas Times Herald and United Press International (UPI). With UPI, he was assigned to photograph Pat Milliken, a banking executive who had lost $250,000 to embezzlement, who pulled a pistol on him as he rejected being photographed; he destroyed one photograph at Millikens request, though left with one of him sobbing. He later joined the Black Star agency, which syndicated his photographs for National Geographic, Newsweek, Fortune, Life, Look, Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, and Time, among other publications. and in 1963, he documented the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, where Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway at the University of Alabama to prevent African American students from attending. Hershorn also captured the moment when Lee Harvey Oswald was placed into an ambulance following his murder. On August 1, 1966, he took a series of photographs of the aftermath of the University of Texas tower shooting. One of the most notable images from the series, known as Texas Store Window Shattered by Sniper, appeared on the cover of Life; Hershorn later kept the cover hung in his home in New Mexico. The picture depicts the view of the Main Building at the university through a bullet hole in the window of a nearby jewelry store. Hershorn's photographic works, consisting of about 100,000 images, are held by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. == Furniture making career and later life ==

Hershorn lost interest in journalism following the assassination of John F. Kennedy After moving to Taos, New Mexico in 1971, he married Sonja, an elementary schoolteacher. He later lived in Gallina and Talpa, New Mexico. Their house was composed of three bedrooms and was described as "primitive" by the Albuquerque Journal. He drove a 1954 Chevrolet pickup truck, which he traded a large drum of water for; he mounted a sheep skull to it as a hood ornament. Hershorn was an outdoorsman who enjoyed fishing and reading. He lived in restored log cabins and raised goats, for which he built a playground. He died of pneumonia on September 17, 2011, aged 82, in an Española nursing home. He also had alcohol-related dementia and a broken hip from a fall, the latter which made him unable to walk. A wake was held in October, and his body was donated to the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. ==Selected work==

• Sam Rayburn (Sam Rayburn funeral series) (1961) • Constance Baker Motley with Protesters, Washington, D.C. (Civil rights movement series) (ca. 1962-1963) • Governor George Wallace (Stand in the Schoolhouse Door series) (1963) • Texas Store Window Shattered by Sniper (UT Tower shooting series) (1966) ==Exhibitions==

• "Faces of Texas". Texas Bank and Trust. ca. 1966. ==Collections==

• Amon Carter Museum of American Art • Briscoe Center for American History • National Archives at College Park • Time Inc. Picture Collection • Wittliff Collections == References ==