Enhanced image of Moorman photograph #3; Patrolman Glenn McBride
Stepping back onto the grass, Mary Ann and Jean now saw the Presidential motorcade turn the corner onto Elm. Now the President and Jackie were clearly visible. Jackie was wearing a bright pink dress — “Pink!” Mary Ann and Jean commented to each other. Moorman lifted her camera to take the fifth of her eight photo pack. It would be the last picture she would take that day. With the presidential limousine merely feet away, she pushed the button to activate the shutter, and heard Jean yell “Mr. President, look this way, we want to take a picture.” Later that day, she gave official testimony to the Dallas County Sheriff’s office, describing what she had just recorded on film: “As I snapped the picture of President Kennedy, I heard a shot ring out. President Kennedy kind of slumped over. Then I heard another shot ring out and Mrs. Kennedy jumped up in the car and said ‘My God he has been shot.’ When I heard these shots ring out, I fell to the ground to keep from being hit myself. I heard three or four shots in all. After the pictures were developed, the picture of President Kennedy showed him slumped over. When the pictures were developed, they came out real light. These pictures have been turned over to Officers investigating this incident.” Mary Ann’s photograph is generally acknowledged to show the President at the near instant he was hit by the first of three bullets that Lee Harvey Oswald fired from the Texas Book Repository. In the chaotic moments after the assassination, Moorman can be seen in other surviving photographs of the scene, including a widely circulated image of her being questioned by a newspaperman, and she and Hill are clearly visible in frame number 298 of the famous film taken by Abraham Zapruder. Both wear their raincoats, Mary Ann with her Polaroid camera to her eye. Controversies have swirled around Moorman’s photographs just as they have around nearly every aspect of the assassination and its witnesses. After the
Enhanced image of Moorman photograph #5; depicting the moment of impact of Oswald’s first shot
assassination, Jean Hill (1931-2000), Moorman’s companion spoke repeatedly — and inconsistently — about the events that day, and whether intentionally or accidentally, provided fodder for conspiracy theorists. For her part, however, Mary Ann Moorman has remained largely silent until very recently, when she has granted several extensive interviews. Her recollections about that dreadful day remain unchanged from the deposition she gave in 1963. Regardless, for many conspiracy theorists, Moorman’s Polaroids are like a Rosetta Stone for unlocking the secrets of the assassination. Mary Ann Moorman: Citizen Journalist Beyond their historical significance, these images mark the dawn of an era. In a day where hundreds of millions of photographs and videos are taken daily by cell phone users — many of which record newsworthy events — it is easy to forget that at the time Moorman took these photographs, photo-journalism was almost exclusively the domain of professionals. Newspapers in every major city had special departments employing professional photographers whose sole job was to ensure that they were in the right place at the right time to “get the picture.” Much of what passed as “news” photos were carefully staged photo-ops where the news photographer was part of a “scrum” of press, waiting patiently with a cumbersome Speed-graphic, or later, 35mm camera. The exception, of course, was the combat photographer. Robert Capa had produced unforgettable images during the Spanish Civil War; during World War II and the Korean War that followed, official Army photographers routinely sent back images that captured the immediacy of the moment. At the time of Kennedy’s assassination, the War in Vietnam was just beginning to ramp up. Soon, Americans would view the horrors of war nightly on their televisions.
NOVEMBER 15, 2013 CINCINNATI, OHIO
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