Bernie Boston Bio

About Bernie Boston:


Bernie Boston was an American PHotojournalist who is best known for his flower power photo from the 1967 anti-war march at the Pentagon and his involvement in capturing the news and numerous civil rights protest. Boston was a photographer for the Dayton Daily News, the Washington Star, and The Los Angeles Times. 

Boston covered every president from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton. Boston graduated from RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) in 1955, and also studied at the School of Aviation Medicine in the Air Force and then served in the Army. During his service he spent two years in Germany as a radiologist in the neurosurgical unit.

Boston was presented with numerous awards including: The White House News Photographers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Press Photographers Association Joseph A. Sprague Memorial Award – NPPA’s highest honor in the field of photojournalism.

He was also a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for his photos of Coretta Scott King at the unveiling of a bronze bust of her late husband in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda and for his flower power photo of the 1967 anti-war photo of a young man placing a flower in the barrel of an armed guard. Boston was also inducted into the Hall of Fame of Sigma Delta Chi, The Society of Professional Journalists prior to his death in 2008 and after his induction he served as a chairman of the NPPA Freedom of Information Committee.

Boston's photos are an interpretation of civil war news and local protest that went on in the 1960's as well as news after the 60's. Boston definitely chose to be in the middle of the action to capture intense photos and show the viewers what the middle of chaos, during these protest, may depict. 

My favorite photo by Bernie Boston was of Ronald Reagan laughing with a colleague, capturing his innocents as a human and not the seriousness as The President. It seems that President Reagan is laughing at the title of the article "won't wrinkle ever" and how misconstrued that statement might be seeing that he has wrinkles, while laughing, in this photo.
https://www.rit.edu/news/photo-exhibit-highlights-alumnus-bernie-boston