By NOEL MURPHY
THE IMAGE OF Gorbachev and Reagan, sitting together in matching blue suits and black shoes but looking apart and conferring with their interpreters, is one for the ages.
The United States and USSR leaders, pictured by photographer David Burnett at the 1985 Geneva Summit with the Cold War still holding full sway, is history writ through the lens.
So too are another 20 striking shots by the American shutterbug – one of the few to have captured every US president from John F Kennedy to Barack Obama.
The images have gone on exhibition at Geelong’s waterfront Alfred Deakin Library.
Some feature Jimmy Carter tackling the hustings from a kitchen chair, Gerald Ford with wet dogs after a morning swim, a damp-eyed Richard Nixon resigning andJFK shortly before his assassination.
Then the focus swings to Obama spooning ice cream to wife Michelle, Lyndon Johnson’s 1969 state of the union address to Congress, George Bush senior with troops, and his son in the White House gardens.
Burnett plumbs the humanity of his subjects, political figures often revered as near-divine by the American public regardless of their leanings.
Multiple award-winner Burnett worked in over 70 countries as a freelancer for leading US magazines and co-founded of Contact Press Images in 1976.
“Being in the company of presidents remains a rarified place, you seldom have second chances,” he said.
“You need to be on top of your game. When that look, that gesture, that moment happens, there’s nothing like that click of a camera to let you feel like you’re entitled to exhale.”
The Alfred Deakin Library, in Deakin University’s Waterfront campus, secured the travelling exhibition via the Australian Centre for Photography.
Burnett’s powerful photos capture five decades of presidential life from electioneering in open rural barns to the tight, stage-managed access of social media, smartphones and the 24-hour news cycle. They were snared on equally changing technology, from his Speed Graphic film camera to modern digital and retro plastic cameras.
