(RNS) — George Conklin, a photojournalist, longtime religion communicator and ordained minister known for an iconic 1960s photo of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has died.
Conklin, a retired faculty member at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, who died on July 24 at age 93, had photographed King at the Cow Palace in San Francisco as the civil rights leader addressed an interfaith rally in 1964. Worldwide Faith News announced his death in a news release on Wednesday (Aug. 6).
In a 2015 article posted on the website of his alma mater, Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, Conklin described how his black-and-white photo showed a beam of light shining down on King: “The long evening wore on, the humidity in the vast hall increased and I could see the beam appearing. I got up and took the last frames of a 36-frame roll,” he said. He added in the comments under the article, “it was partly being in the right place at the right time. The rest is history.”
Conklin was an ordained United Church of Christ minister. A graduate of Hartford Theological Seminary, he was on the faculty of Pacific School of Religion for 15 years in the 1970s and 1980s, ultimately serving as an associate professor of media and culture studies.
“George Conklin helped PSR understand the importance of bearing witness — through story, through image, and through courageous curiosity,” said the Rev. David Vásquez-Levy, PSR’s president, in a statement. “His life invites us to remember not just what we have seen, but how we choose to see.”
Stewart Hoover, professor emeritus of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and a onetime student of Conklin, said his mentor “carefully and authentically combined his work with his values” and helped students like him understand the wide uses of media in religious spaces.
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“He showed us that we needed to recognize that our work in media creation and media research mattered to the world,” Hoover, who is founding director of the Center for Media, Religion and Culture in Boulder, told RNS in an emailed statement. “He was one of the early visionaries who could see that churches should see media as important missions not for proselytizing but for social justice.”
In 2013, Conklin was honored with the Religion Communicators Council’s DeRose-Hinkhouse Memorial Award, after his photo of King was engraved on a stone in San Francisco’s McLaren Park, overlooking the arena where Conklin captured the shot decades before.
Conklin documented in photographs other events in religious life, from the historical trajectory of his home church in San Mateo, California, to the winners of the RCC’s Wilbur Awards. He also photographed leaders such as theologian Karl Barth, labor rights pioneer Cesar Chavez and then-Sen. Barack Obama, according to the Bates article.
“He has touched so many lives around the world,” said Shirley Struchen, former executive director of the RCC, of which Conklin was a life member.
Conklin served roles in numerous ecumenical and interfaith organizations, including as director of radio-television and print for the Hartford Council of Churches; associate director of the Northern California Council of Churches; and founding member of the North American Broadcast Section of the World Association for Christian Communication.
He was the co-founder of Worldwide Faith News, an independent aggregator of denominational news releases. It launched in 1995, originally run by a commission of the National Council of Churches, and later expanded to include other faith groups, including Jewish organizations and Religions for Peace USA, according to the WFN website.
A memorial service is being planned for the fall at College Heights Church, his home congregation affiliated with the United Church of Christ, in San Mateo.
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