JN134 - Bernie Boston

Bernie Boston was a photojournalist who worked for several smaller papers such as the Dayton Daily News and The Washington Star. Boston also worked for the Los Angeles Times later in his career.

Born in 1933, Boston grew up in Washington D.C. in a middle-class family. His parents gave him his first camera at seven-years-old and photography was part of his life from then on. As a teenager, he was the photographer for the newspaper and yearbook at his high school.

Upon graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York in 1955, Boston joined the U.S. Army. After completing medical training, Boston served in Germany for two years as a radiologist.

Upon returning from Germany, Boston worked for a few years as a freelance photogapher and eventually secured a full-time position at the Washington Star afternoon newspaper in 1967. It was later that year that Boston took one of the most iconic photographs of the Vietnam-era in the U.S. when Boston captured actor George Harris placing a flower into the barrel of a soldier's rifle in front of the Pentagon. Boston called the picture "Flower Power."

His editors didn't understand the clearly powerful photograph and buried it inside the paper, although it became an absolutely iconic picture.

Boston had a highly successful career, winning numerous awards and photographing every president from Lyndon B. Johnson to Bill Clinton. Boston took photos of the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement and even photographed the Pope.

Boston's highest awarded photo was a picture of Coretta Scott King at the ceremony where she presented a bust of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Capitol Rotunda. Boston was a Pulitzer Prize-finalist for the photo.

Boston died in 2008 from a blood disease.

"Flower Power"

Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012303713.html

https://library.rit.edu/depts/archives/bernie-boston

http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/bernie-boston