Image © Harry Benson
Earlier this year I caught the Harry Benson Retrospective at the National Gallery of Scotland. I knew Harry for his work photographing the Beatles just as their star was rising in the US, but is was this image of Ethel Kennedy that really remained with me that day.
Harry was standing next to Bobby as he was shot leaving a press conference, having just won California in the 1968 congressional election primaries, putting him on a sure path for the Whitehouse race next year. Taken just seconds after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination this, and the sequence of images he managed to rattle off, catpure the mayhem, bewilderment and sheer horror of the moment in that room. At the show, this image of Ethel had been blown up to lifesize, so you looked her straight in the eye. Chilling.
When I heard of Emilio Estevez’s film that covered the events of that fateful day, it’s huge ensemble cast and the seven-minute standing ovation it received at it’s premier at the Venice Film Festival, I was very keen to seen it to put this experience in perspective.
The film is semi-fictitious, following as it does the lives of 24 people in the hotel on that day, woven seamlessly around the actual footage and events of the time. The events in these peoples’ lives paint a picture of how America was feeling in the late sixties - the racial tension post MLK, the growing resentment towards the Vietnam war, and the rising economic problems in the face of another depression. The direct comparison with current day events is obvious and timely and very deliberate. Where is our Bobby Kennedy today?
I couldn’t do the film justice here - all I can say is “go and see it” - i’ll give you a money-back-guarantee.
0 Responses to “Bobby”