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The bullets were supposed to be blanks. When I put the camera back to my eye, I noticed a particular guardsman pointing at me. I said, “I’ll get a picture of this,” and his rifle went off. And almost simultaneously, as his rifle went off, a halo of dust came off a sculpture next to me, and the bullet lodged in a tree.
I dropped my camera in the realization that it was live ammunition. I don’t know what gave me the combination of innocence and stupidity… but I never took cover. I was the only one standing at the hillside. After I did that self-check and turned slowly to my left, what caught my eye on the street was the body of Jeffrey Miller and the volume of blood that was flowing from his body was as if someone tipped over a bucket. I started to flee—run down the hill and stopped myself. “Where are you going?” I said to myself, “This is why you are here!”
And I started to take pictures again. And the picture I made then was of Jeffrey Miller’s body lying in the street and people starting to come out of shelter, and then a picture where Mary Vecchio was just entering the frame. I knew I was running out of film. I could see the emotion welling up inside of her. She began to sob. And it culminated in her saying an exclamation. I can’t remember what she said exactly … something like, “Oh, my God!”
"John Filo, on his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the Kent State shootings. He was a photojournalism student in the right place at the right time with the right eye.
“This is why you are here!” made me tear up reading up on this photo for my art history by themes class. I’ve been getting a bit romantic about journalism lately, as my days as EIC draw to a close. Hopefully we’ll never face something so tragic on campus, but if we do, I know my staff would be in the right place at the right time with the right eyes and ears.
