[ inaudible ] you know, again, it goes back to what i said earlier. Nick and i are both professional photographers both actually i spent five years of wire photographer. Really our job. Its that simple. Dont you think. Picture showing a story. Always the right story. Its quite fascinating, very interesting. My question was, when you were in country, were there any areas you were specifically forbidden to go to or simply explicitly told you should not or were there any subjects or areas you felt were off limits that perhaps that wouldnt be beneficial for your camera . Good question. Well, i know we were talking about coverups on the government side. My experience was i found the military incredibly helpful wherever i wanted to go, hitch a ride on a chopper. A few were stupid enough or excited enough to get into action, you could get there. If there were americans or vietnamese, i never had one instance where i wasnt able to go where i wanted to go, see what i wanted to see and one of the profound experiences that i had was when i would show up in the field with a group of american gis and questions intelligence to show the world what was going on to them and i had almost 100 really good cooperation with the government that didnt extend to what reporters going on in washington but by the time i got in there its the last time by the way. This has not happened since where we just had a free hand to go where we wanted to go but there was never if you had the wherewithal to get into somewhere and usually the photographers would be going to where the action was, you could do it. And i did you ever have an instance where people kept you out . We had a military path and vietnam, played and we didnt want trouble. They are welcome to take a picture. I dont want trouble. Big trouble is when you got there. Proper. Not proper at all. Getting there so easy. Getting there wasnt the problem. Today more difficult. Today is iraq afghanistan, i think from vietnam war to other thing. They are having more freedom to travel that shows they got a poor camera. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Thank you. We have time for one more question. Verification question. I wasnt clear what happened to the young girl that was burned so badly. Did she survive . Is she still alive . Whats could you tell us something about that . Thats a picture of her, by the way. The photo was taken by kim. She still alive today. Shes now 54. She live in toronto, canada. I talk to her one a week. She come here this week but she speaking today and shes married with two children and travel everywhere in america and talk about her picture. And shes still suffering from those burns. She has great pain from the burns. I want to thank this has been a privilege to be on the stage with you all and i want to thank you for coming and i want to thank you as well. I have a few announcements. Okay. I just want you can come up afterwards perhaps and ask because what were going to be doing now is right after this, theres going to be a ceremony of the pinning of the vietnam vets so if there is any vets in the audience to go and mark up will be awarding them the pin. And id like to also recognize the vietnam vets that are in the audience, if they are here, can you please stand so we can celebrate you . [ applause ] thank you for coming. We appreciate it. We can take their question. Thank you. Oh, thank you. [ applause ] cspans Convention Coverage begins live today at 7 30 eastern. Scheduled to speak tonight are wisconsin Governor Scott walker, senators marco rubio and ted cruz, and Newt Gingrich and Vice President ial candidate governor mike pence. Making America First again is tonights convention theme. Again, live coverage starts at 7 30 eastern on cspan. 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Coming up next, on the presidency, Smithsonian National portrait gallery Senior Historian david ward. He chronicles Abraham Lincolns life through photographs and portraits and discusses details in the images that reveal idiosyncrasies, like what his clothes reveal about his health, or why he chose certain photographers. The university of st. Mary hosted this 90minute event. Good evening. My name is brian labow. Id like to welcome you to the 18th annual university of st. Mary lincoln event, featuring Smithsonian National portrait gallery Senior Historian david c. Ward, who will speak on the first visual presidency, how Abraham Lincoln used photography for politics, which seemed particularly important this year to do. And a special welcome to the crew from cspan television who will be covering this event for later broadcast on cspan tv. As a reminder, when we open the floor to questions, please be sure to use the microphones. If you dont, youll not be heard on television and youll miss your big media event. Our speaker tonight, david ward, joined the National Portrait gallery in 1981. He oversees the Permanent Collection galleries include ing the spaces devoted to the antebellum age, 1820 to 1860, as well as the gallery in the ongoing exhibit 20th century americans. Among his many accomplishments, too many that i can go into completely tonight, david was cocurator of an Award Winning exhibition hide, seek, difference in desire and american portraiture. Currently working on rehanging the hall of president s, not the president s, the hall of president s, and the american origin space along with cure rating new exhibits on the photographer Mario Testino and a survey called the sweat of their face, portraying American Workers 1750 to 2015. Speaking more directly to his talk tonight, david has his fourth civil war themed exhibit on view now at the portrait gallery called dart fields of the republic, alexander gardener photographs 1857 to 1872, which includes several lincoln photographs. I saw this last week and thoroughly enjoyed it. And this exhibit was preceded by the portrait galleries one life grant and lee, the mask of lincoln and walt whitman, a cosmos, you may remember the last year walt whitman was a theme of our lincoln event. I might mention that along the way, with his work at the National Portrait gallery, this multitalented david ward is a poet, an editor, and a literary critic. A selection of his poetry was published in 2011, called internal difference, and a full collection call waiting was published in 2014. David earned his bachelor degree from the university of rochester and graduate degrees from both Warwick University in england and yale university. Please join me in welcoming david ward. [ applause thank you, brian. Thank you, all. Really delighted to be here. Also, i want to because i am for the portrait gallery, art and history museum, i want to congratulate the portrait competition winners. And i do need to say that we are traveling our portrait competent significance which opens in april in the National Portrait gallery and at the kemper next year. I invite you all to join us then and i invite our portrait competition winners tonight to come and see how much better they are than most of americans contemporary portraitures. Thank you, im pleased to be here. Im always ive been fascinated with lincoln for a long a fairly long time. The other reason i accepted this invitation is when i came to kansas, i had a great time. Ive always really enjoyed it. And then today i realized i would be in leavenworth. So you are kind of taking your chances tonight. So happy president s day. Great to get together and celebrate the career of franklin pierce, William Henry harrison, john tyler, cant forget john tyler. And im joking and slightly to make a point. I understand the imperatives of the three day weekend and bureaucracy and you cant take two days off as we used to do back when i was a lad, february 12th and february 22nd for the alpha and omega president s washington and lincoln. But there is a kind of participatory medal now to the president s, they all get lumped together. Lincoln and with pierce. And some of this is a justifiable suspicion of the great period of history, 19th century, with Thomas Carlisle and worked its way through to popular biographies that glorified lincoln or glorified washington or teddy roosevelt, the greats if you will. And we now are more sensitive to democratic politics, more sensitive to diversity and the panoply. And im not a devotee of the great i dont like it. I dont believe the single individuals with rare exception including as well get to with lincoln that they determine the outcome of World Historic events that hagels world individual who included lincoln, doesnt really work for history. History is much more multifaceted and complicated, but i do think we lose something, first instance in asia by not celebrating people who were great. I think they would it is a good idea to celebrate people who really achieved something. And while not all the president s have and not all the president s will, that people like lincoln and all their complexity, washington, two roosevelts, have done so. I think we should pay some attention to it. How does this work . I went the wrong way here. It was short. I did my best. The other thing as part of the interpretive theory, historians are always changing things, they need to come up with new ideas because they need to write new books so they can keep their jobs, and the Frederick Jackson turner frontier thesis is largely discredited, but as ive gotten older, and thought about it again, and not in a yes or no way, that you can bring in the fact that america crossing the prairies, crossing to the west coast, actually does change american character. And, again, i revert to the fact that i am in kansas, and it is great to be in the plans, which begins, carl sandbergs first volume of his biography of lincoln, the prairie years, begins with lincoln being formed, the long travel between kentucky and illinois, and we have said the speech in leavenworth, because in washington, youre surrounded by monumental lincoln. Lincoln and the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the mall looking at us, still kind of homey and lincoln was always accessible figure if you will. Fascinated as most people are with his face. But sitting in this huge edifice with the huge building and white marble and the facies out of many one, after mussolini you cant use that as a sculptural item but it meant E Pluribus Unum before that. But you have the monumental lincoln and including the gpa healy portrait, the signature portrait in our gallery, the portrait gallery has all of the president s along with the white house, were the only collection that concludes all of the president s. And this is our signature, if you will, i dont particularly i have to say they made the mistake of putting me in charge of hanging the president s and i dont like this portrait and ill end with the portrait i want to replace this with. But this is a typical 19th century american portrait which hides as much as it reveals. It is a thoughtful lincoln, his face has been airbrushed, posthumous. It is a little bit after lincoln died. It is lincoln being avuncular and thoughtful and all rest of it. And we have the mystery of Abraham Lincoln, the monument and the portrait, it hides what is an extraordinary career. And i think this western movement from kentucky to springfield, the family spends one entire year winter in a lean to, a pine lean to, open ended with a fire burning, his family, takes his mom and you have the lincoln as the president and we read back into these beginnings, which are ultimately mysterious. I called my exhibition the mask of lincoln because we all have a public persona. I have one on now, where im speaking to you as a semiqualified historian, and talking to you in a professorial, professional way. In your private life, you are different ways of doing things. For lincoln, and lincoln had that element of a public pose, as most politician states men do, but there is something mysterious where the mask for me blocks lincoln, the accessibility of getting to lincoln is becomes more and more difficult and im taking a still taking a skill here of henry fonda young. You can see that lincoln has become part of the natural landscape and is lying on his back with feet in the tree and reading. This drove Thomas Lincoln mad that lincoln would lincoln would read a book while plowing and would get to the end of the road and forget to turn the horse around. Thomas would come down and get angry at him. It is funny but it is not because Thomas Lincoln would beat him and switch young abraham. There is this drive and the element of parental disapproval. Dreamy young man, dreaming what . In the middle of nowhere. A small farm, failed father as a mentor, no guidance, no college. I think we forget in the 19th century how there was no safety net. If you didnt succeed you died and disappeared. There was no record of your passing. Lincoln himself cuts off the discussion of his youth where he refuses to talk about it where he just simply lincoln does this repeatedly where he just cuts it off. He cuts the line. He forbids any real inquiry to the chicago newspaper about what he was doing. When lincolns father, thomas, is on his death bed young mr. Lincoln moved on and is 80 miles away and refuses to come to the death bed. He doesnt go to the funeral. He cuts off the relations with the man who he had grown to loathe. He had grown to loathe him in part because his dad would hire him out. This is the origins for lincoln in notion that i borrow from the bible. For my show on American Workers because this is the beginning of ideology or free labor, the beginning of lincolns evolution from advocate of free labor to antislavery, abolitionism and the great freedom. And, of course, lincoln is coming of age politically and generationally and where photography is coming into vogue. The element of oil painting is disappearing. Lincoln is not the first visual president because in my title because other president s, there was a thirst to know what president s look like. Iconic president s like George Washington especially, Andrew Jackson or lesser known ones, John Quincy Adams would have an oil painting done because it was customary with the royalty and you would have a democratic portrait in a democratic country. Then there would be lith graphs and prints and drawings of varying quality. As you move down the food chain the quality becomes not pretty artistic. So there was this thirst to find imagery which photography satisfies. You have lincoln for the first time here 1846 becoming visible. Again, he has worked his way up. He is a lawyer, becoming a lawyer, establishing himself. He has gone through this process of auto didacting, self teaching of where all of the cliches are true where he does walk five miles to return five cents. He does learn to cipher by using wooden logs. There is primitivism which only adds to the mystery that in the beginning of this modern country that the United States is becoming that lincoln is coming out of the west. He is coming into prominence and fairly early on in 1846 he starts to get photographed. The thing that is interesting about lincoln politically to me is that he is a classic figure of the Democratic Party as it emerges the jackson party, if you will of the small, older. He becomes a wig which is the party of privilege. And american historians slightly overdrawn this and taken the example of the french revolution where it is a conflict between the haves and have nots and the democrats being the party of the working class and progressives. Some of that is true. Some of it there is demographically a difference. What lincoln does this is a cast of lincolns hands which is in the National Portrait gallery collection. I am showing that because i want to emphasize his origins working class individual that he was the rail splinter. He did work for his father and more willingly as he made his way on the river looking for jobs, scuffling for a job in the 19th century when there was no real pattern to follow outside of priesthood. Its the rough nature of lincoln which was part of his political career. We think of lincoln again particularly as he has become methologized after death of not being human. One thing he had was attribute of physical strength. 165, 170 pound guys who he was famous for his resting ability. He had his trick where he would hold a sledge out parallel to the ground and he could hold it there