MUSEUMS
Photographer started his career in Fort Pierce and perfected it around the world
40
SEASON OF THE ARTS
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
As a young photographer on his first
big newspaper assignment, Jon
Kral knew what he had to do to
get the shot. He strapped himself to the
outside of a Stearman Double crop duster
plane while his subject skimmed over
orange trees in a plume of chemicals.
That photograph of the colorful Fort
Pierce crop duster Harold Williams
sealed Kral’s fate. From then on, the
camera would always be with him and
he would always go the extra mile to get
the shot he wanted.
As a photojournalist who has worked
for some of the most prestigious publications
in the world including Time and
National Geographic, Kral has found
himself using that same determination
as he documented wars, prisons, youth
gangs and natural disasters all over the
globe. But the place where he began his
award-winning career, Fort Pierce, has
always been special to him.
Insight: Photography of Jon Kral will
include that photograph of Williams,
along with more than 30 other photographs
of local people and places taken
during a nearly 50-year span from 1970
until 2019, in an exhibition at the A.E.
Backus Museum and Gallery in Fort
Pierce. It is on display from Nov. 20
through Jan. 3.
Kral and museum director Marshall
Adams decided to concentrate on Kral’s
local photographs.
“We felt these images have a nostalgic
quality and are a celebration of the
area,” Adams says. “Many of them are
of people and places that area residents
will remember. But you don’t have to be
from Fort Pierce to appreciate them. They
are timeless photographs that anyone can
relate to. They are capturing that perfect
moment in the landscape or that quiet
moment of an individual.”
On display will be images of local notables,
such as Alto “Bud” Adams and A.
E. “Beanie” Backus, both of whom Kral
called friends.
He met Backus in the seventh grade
and they continued their friendship
through the years as Kral’s photography
career took off.
“We had a mutual respect of each
other’s work,” Kral says. “He encouraged
me and really prodded me along.”
Kral worked first at The News Tribune,
calling both his editor, Bob Enns, and
photographer Arden Baker his mentors.
He moved to The Palm Beach Post and
then finally to the Miami Herald. When
he told Backus he was moving to Miami,
Backus quipped, “The cream always rises
to the top.”
Kral’s photographs didn’t turn away
from reality, but reveled in it. Haunting,
yet in their own way beautiful, they were
documentations that became artistic images
in their own right.
Always drawn to black and white
photography, Kral was an expert in the
darkroom and preferred film long after
his colleagues converted to digital. It was
only after one publication insisted on using
digital photographs that Kral relented.
He says he has never turned back.
“I like it for its convenience and its
clarity,” he says.
During his 18 years with the Miami
Herald, he won a Robert F. Kennedy
prize for photojournalism for a series on
teen gangs in Miami. He was a Pulitzer
Prize in news photography finalist for
his photographs taken in a Venezualan
prison. His photographs were part of the
Hurricane Andrew coverage that won the
JON KRAL
Kral has focused his photographer’s lens on
places and scenes around the world, but the local
area has long been a favorite subject. Legacy,
1996. Archival pigment print. 13x19 inches.
Herald’s Pulitzer.
Now 74, Kral lives in Boone, N.C.,
with his wife, Beth. Not one to rest on
his laurels, Kral has continued to do a
number of book projects, including one
on the last real Florida cowboys, Cracker.
He continues to lead workshops and
seminars around the country. He had
one planned in Seville, Spain, before the
pandemic hit.
Always interested in the emotional aspects
of photography, Kral now concentrates
on street photography, capturing a
spontaneous image. That’s been difficult
during the pandemic, he says, because of
mask wearing.
“It used to be it was hard for people to
put down their phones,” he says. “Now it
is masks.”
JON KRAL
The Florida cowboy is another of Kral’s favorite
subjects. Rush Hour, 1991. Archival pigment
print. 13x19 inches.
JON KRAL
Always looking for the perfect moment in time,
Kral captures it in this photograph, The Wait,
1992. Archival pigment print. 13x19 inches.
BY CATHERINE ENNS GRIGAS