"Original version of John Filo's iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller after he was shot by the National Guard."
caption from wikipedia.



"John Filo's photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller after he was shot by the National Guard."

caption from wikipedia, with these words removed: "Original version of," "iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning"




Kent State 1970



Mary Ann Vecchio


Nadine Brozan, "Chronicle," New York Times, April 25, 1995, Sec. B, Pg. 4.


Photographer, May 4 subject return to KSU, May 6 2009




In the early 70's someone airbrushed out the "distracting" fence post.


"The picture had run numerous times–without the fencepost, and without anyone taking notice–in TIME (Nov. 6, 1972, p. 23) PEOPLE (May 2, 1977, p. 37), TIME (Jan. 7, 1980, p. 45), PEOPLE (April 31, 1990, p. 117) to name just a few publications. ….while closing our May (1995) issue, (we) contacted photographer John Filo, hoping to secure a repro quality print, as is customary at LIFE. Since we could not obtain a print from him directly in time to make our run, we went with the photo we had, not realizing a pole had been removed. One can only wonder why the missing pole hasn’t been noticed the previous times it has appeared, even though literally millions of people have seen the fence-post-less photo in publications dating back 23 years. At no time would LIFE’s photo, art or production department intentionally alter a news photograph.” (taken from the NPPA-L – and found at http://journalism_jobs.tripod.com/a.filo.html) This is indeed interesting – an unknown individual altered this photograph in the early 1970′s and the altered version seems to have become the standard."


From "Kent State Revisited – John Filo’s Photograph
By Thomas Henneman | Published January 21, 2010"