Photographer accepts William Allen White award

A Friday afternoon ceremony at Woodruff Auditorium at the Kansas Union honored the world-renowned photojournalist for exemplifying William Allen White's ideals in service to journalism and to his community.

In his photography, Clarkson has perfected the art of capturing historic moments. His photographs have appeared on the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time magazines and on Wheaties boxes. He has photographed presidents and first ladies and other famous and infamous people.

But the 1956 KU School of Journalism graduate told the crowd of nearly 200 that it was the early days in his career that were his best moments.

“My greatest satisfaction and best lessons were learned at the Lawrence Journal-World and, for 22 years, the Topeka Capital-Journal," he said.

People in Photography

The result, as seen in People in Photography, is an avalanche of more than 200 photographs with extraordinary, occasionally baffling juxtapositions of subject matter and author. Cecil Beaton's portrait of Princess Alexandra shares wall space with an anonymous 1910 portrait of the confident but ultimately doomed boxer Les Darcy and hawkish Kings Cross witch Rosaleen Norton.

The great American portraitist Arnold Newman's take on an earnest but irrevocably shifty Richard Nixon shows the American president attempting a sincere smile from beneath a handwritten, affectionate inscription to an Australian friend.

John Elliott's 1982 photograph of Slim Dusty coexists uneasily with Max Dupain's portrait of a chubby young Yehudi Menuhin, photographed 40 years earlier. Dupain's versatility shows in two other, very different pictures - his carefully lit 1940s views of the enigmatic politician "Doc" Evatt, and the actor Chips Rafferty resting on his haunches in a rocky landscape with his right hand cradling the ever present hand-rolled cigarette.