A Face in the Crowd - March 2004
THE 1970 SHOT OF JANE FONDA WITH BLURRED JOHN KERRY ABOVE AND BEHIND HER
LEIF SKOOGFORS/CORBIS
EXCERPT:
"The Pictures Worth a Thousand Slurs. That's the headline the Dallas Morning News used to describe two photographs that surfaced recently, supposedly showing John Kerry attending an anti-Vietnam war rally along with Jane Fonda thirty years ago. I know one of those images was real -- I took it.
On February 10th I was checking my e-mail in a cyber cafe in Malmo Sweden. The room was filled with cigarette smoke and the peaceful Swedes had computers going at full blast as they electronically slaughtered each other while war gaming. I had a hacking cough. The election in the US was far from my mind. One e-mail popped out, "Did you know one of your pictures of Jane Fonda and John Kerry is all over the Internet?"
I ran Google, and up came a number of hits. It was my picture, one I had taken 33 years ago. It was Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally in Valley Forge, PA.
Sitting some 20 feet behind her and very out of focus was the just recognizable face of John Kerry. The captions described this rally, organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, in terms that made the sacking of Rome by the barbarians seem like a Sunday School picnic.