From the “tens of thousands” of photographs he took of Robert Kennedy, former Life
magazine photographer Eppridge has culled his most evocative images for this “photographic history of one of the nation's most compelling figures,” published to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his assassination. Following Kennedy from 1966, Eppridge chronicled Kennedy's '68 presidential campaign trail, his battles with Eugene McCarthy in the Democratic primaries and victory in California, which would have sent “his campaign into orbit.” Soon after the victory speech, Eppridge heard eight gunshots—“the sound I will never forget”—and snapped the grim final images of Kennedy, bleeding in the arms of a stunned supporter. A devastated Eppridge captured the national grief that followed, the funeral train from New York to Washington, D.C., attended everywhere by “a cross-section of America... old, young, women, men, black, white.” The photographer's dual focus on the candidate (whose back, legs and hands are caught more often than his full face) and his audience (caught reaching, touching, running alongside, and lastly, saluting) speaks powerfully and wordlessly of Bobby Kennedy's charismatic presence in the late '60s. (June)
