1984 Photo Contest, People in the News, 3rd prize
Photographer

David Burnett

Contact Press Images

01 January, 1983

John Glenn, US Senator and presidential candidate.

John Glenn, here portrayed during his campaign for the US presidency, became famous in 1962 for being the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth. Glenn started his career as a combat aviator in the US Marine Corps, which lead to his selection as one of the seven military test pilots selected by the NASA to become the first American astronauts. In 1965, Glenn, a member of the Democratic Party, resigned from the space program to be able to stand for election in public office. In 1974, Glenn was elected to the US senate for his home state of Ohio, an office he kept until 1999. Glenn ran for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination in 1983, but he was defeated by Walter Mondale. In 1998, he made a second space flight on the space shuttle Discovery, in order to study the effects of space flight on the elderly.

About the photographer

David Burnett

David Burnett was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, 1946. He began working as a freelancer for Time, and later for Life magazine in the 1960s. After two years in Vietnam, and the dem...

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