‘Everything I saw, everything I heard is still in my head, like a slow-motion film.’ Those were photojournalist Bill Eppridge’s words as he recalled that fateful evening of June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Robert F. Kennedy lay on the floor before him, struck by a hail of bullets. When dishwasher Jose knelt down to support the senator’s head, Eppridge pressed the shutter.
The shooting cast a pitch-black shadow over American politics and, following the violent assassinations of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Martin Luther King just two months earlier, over the hopes and dreams of the American people. Robert Kennedy (1925–1968) had, after all, been well on his way to becoming the Democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency that day.
He had just won the decisive California primary and, in an impressive victory speech, emphasized that he was the right man in the right place. It was not to be: before the applause had died away, a series of fatal shots were fired from a .22-caliber weapon. They ultimately ended the promising presidential candidate’s life the following day, June 6, 1968, at 01:44, in Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.
Although Palestinian-born Sirhan B. Sirhan (1944) confessed to the murder and was serving a life sentence for it at the time of publication, the assassination remained shrouded in mystery. Other photographs were said to show the presence of several alleged CIA agents, there was uncertainty about the number of shots fired, and some questioned how Sirhan could have inflicted the fatal wounds from his position relative to Kennedy.
And Guillermo Alfredo Eduardo ‘Bill’ Eppridge (1938)? ‘I want to try to help the senator. I cannot help the senator, and that is why I take photographs. I had to force myself to do my job…’ The then- Lifephotographer gave the world an iconic photograph, an image that captured the onset of death with rarely equaled poignancy.
Date: June 5, 1968, Bill Eppridge (1938 − 2013)
