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Close-Ups of History

Three Decades through the Lens of an AP Photographer

Henry D. Burroughs

Margaret Wohlgemuth Burroughs

Close-Ups of History

288 pages

10 x 7

Published: July 2007

112

ISBN: 9780826217257

Format:

Hardcover

Price: $34.95

BUY
About This Book

     The Berlin Airlift. The Cuban Missile Crisis. The Nixon resignation. There aren’t many people privileged to live at the front row of history, but photojournalist Henry Burroughs was one of the lucky few.

            A “shooter” for the Associated Press for thirty-three years, Burroughs was assigned to the Washington bureau, and his photos appeared frequently in newspapers around the world, as well as on the covers of Life and other magazines. Close-ups of History is both an eyewitness account of history and a stirring professional memoir—a book that brings special moments into the viewfinder as Burroughs turns his trained photographer’s eye to reflect his highly cultivated sense of news.

            These dramatic photographs testify to an incredible career launched at the end of World War II, and Burroughs’s work in postwar Germany is especially poignant. He documented the remains of Hitler’s office, ruined cities and displaced persons, and the Nuremberg trials. He also captured the beginning of the Cold War as the Soviets tried to take over Berlin and the German people struggled to hold the city for the West.

            Close-ups of History is a collection of more than one hundred photos that will amaze all who follow world events. Here is Burroughs’s surreptitious shot—reproduced around the world—of Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain receiving his death sentence and an intimate photo of Jackie Kennedy congratulating her husband after his inaugural address. Depicting presidents and astronauts, the famous and the infamous, all of these images attest to a thoroughgoing professionalism that won Burroughs access to individuals and stories and found him equally at home on the streets and in the Oval Office.

            These photographs demonstrate an ingenious craftsman’s dogged resilience in seeking out opportunities not simply to record his subjects but also to make memorable images for a worldwide audience. The accompanying text also lends insight into how Burroughs went about photographing his subjects and how “exclusive” pictures are produced by the photographer’s uncanny sense of timing.

            Burroughs’s career placed him not only at the front lines of news stories but also in the front ranks of his profession. Close-ups of History documents that career and offers readers a rich visual feast that brings world events into sharp focus

Authors and Editors


In addition to his long career with the Associated Press, Henry Burroughs was president of the White House Press Photographers Association and chairman of the Senate Standing Committee for Photographers. He died in 2000. Margaret Wohlgemuth Burroughs, widow of Henry Burroughs, lives in Annapolis, Maryland.

Praise For This Book

“Henry’s photographs are as real to me as those times were. He captures the power, poignancy, and paths of those turbulent years like no other.”—Bill Moyers

“Before television and the Internet, we depended on pictures and print to portray the world in which we lived. Henry Burroughs’ words and his pictures remind us brilliantly of that time and what we have lost in the electronic age of the twenty-four-hour-a-day news cycle which purports to tell us and show us everything and illuminates nothing.”
—Sander Vanocur

“Close-ups of History will appeal to photo buffs, to history buffs, to those with a political bent, to those who seek adventure and to news junkies. Its strength is that Burroughs was there and he recorded it on his film and in his mind, and it is shared with readers.”—Hal Buell

I enjoyed the memoirs of the late Henry D. Burroughs immensely. Unpretentious, humorous, and highly informative, they took me back many years to what, in retrospect, were happier times. Even though my memories of the fifties are vivid, this book provides slants and information that are completely new to me. It was a joy to read.”—John S. D. Eisenhower

“When I first met Hank I was a brazen young wire shooter, and he was AP’s tranquil dean of the White House press photographers. Even though I worked for archrival UPI he always had helpful words of advice, and suggestions about how I might get better in my chosen field. To this day Hank is my shining example of a life well lived, and of the exemplary professional we should all strive to be.”
—David Hume Kennerly

“Henry Burroughs was a great photographer who saw, and captured, it all: from World War II to the end of the Cold War, from the Nuremburg war crimes trials to the activities of seven presidents from Roosevelt to Ford. This wonderful memoir blends compelling photographs with absorbing accounts about the personalities and events that shaped our current world. The result is a memorable and moving evocation of history as it happened, told by one of the premier photojournalists of the last half century.”
—Haynes Johnson




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