The School of Photographic Arts and Sciences Gallery at Rochester Institute of Technology is proud to present Bernie Boston: American Photojournalist, a retrospective exhibition of the photojournalistic career of RIT alumnus (’55) Bernie Boston. The show features images drawn from Boston’s forty plus years of photographing the American social and political scene for noted newspapers including The Dayton Daily News (Ohio), The Washington Star, and The Los Angeles Times. As staff photographer and later White House news photographer, Boston chronicled the civil dissension and strife of the 1960s, prompted by the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war movements; the hermetic, inner sanctum of the White House and its Presidential residents; and history-making newsmakers, scandals, conflicts, and triumphs. He possesses a trained instinct for arresting a heightened moment drawn from unfolding human experience; an instinct that bores into the very essence of a specific time and place, as seen in the signature and iconic work of this exhibition, Flower Power, a second-place Pulitzer Prize award-winner in 1967. Photographic reportage is synonymous with picturing history. Throughout his career, Boston has demonstrated that the essence of picturing history is to seize upon its most telling and crucial human element, whether the personality or event is spectacular or commonplace. A witness to our times, Boston is recognized as one of the United States’ most consummate photojournalists. In association with the exhibition, RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press is publishing a companion exhibition catalogue. This 112- page catalogue surveys Boston’s award-winning career with illustrations and more than seventy black and white plates, an interpretive essay by SPAS Gallery director, Therese Mulligan, Ph.D., a noted photography curator and historian, and a chronology by Peggy Boston.
