Art
Cliffhanger Election, Austin, Texas, 2000 (limited edition, framed photo)
- Item Number
- 122
- Estimated Value
- 2000 USD
- Sold
- 500 USD to Live Event Bidder
Item Description
Tension filled election night 2000 for presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush. As the evening wore on and their vote totals stayed nearly identical, the presidency hung in the balance as the state of Florida tried to come up with a final count. At 2 a.m., the Bush family gathered around the television at the governor’s mansion in Austin, Texas, to learn that the Florida results were too close to call.
David Hume Kennerly was the only photographer inside the Bush home after things tightened up on election night. “The anxiety was thick in the room,” Kennerly says. Everyone there felt the pressure of the unfolding events, from the candidate’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and father, former President George H.W. Bush, to campaign officials. “It was such a historical moment,” says Kennerly. “You couldn’t ask for a more dramatic scene.”
At one point, Gore’s staff signaled that he was ready to concede. But ten minutes after Kennerly took this image, Gore called Bush to say that he would withdraw his concession and fight on. As the first person to speak to Bush after this famous phone call, Kennerly recalls that the shocked candidate could only mutter: “He took it back. He … he just took it back.”
This photo appears in Kennerly’s book Photo du Jour: A Picture-a-Day Journey Through the First Year of the New Millennium.
Item Special Note
This framed photo is signed and numbered by Kennerly. It is a 16" by 20" archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta paper.
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