NYAB Event - Paul Fusco "RFK Funeral Train Rediscovered"

This event has ended.
At Danziger Projects
Media: Photography

print

On June 5th, 1968, less than three months after the murder of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles as he was campaigning for the Presidential nomination. His death shook the country to its core. To Paul Fusco and millions of other Americans it seemed to represent the end of hope.

Kennedy's body was subsequently flown to New York City for a memorial service at St. Patrick's Cathedral and then carried by train from New York to Washington D.C. for burial at Arlington. That final journey took place on June 8th – a swelteringly hot early summer day. On board the train was the Magnum photographer Paul Fusco, then a young photographer on assignment for LOOK Magazine. As the train made its progress down the eastern seaboard, hundreds of thousands of mourners came out to line the railway tracks and pay their final respects to Bobby Kennedy and all he stood for.

From inside the train, Fusco began to take pictures of the mourners – people from every section of society – black, white, rich, poor, in large groups and on their own. By Fusco's own calculation, he took approximately 2,000 pictures in the eight hours it took for the train to make the usually four-hour journey.

Reviews

This event is already finished, and reviewing is closed.