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MANITOU SPRINGS — When Bob Jackson sits at the desk of his home office, surrounded by evidence of life keenly observed through a photojournalist’s lens, the images all around him reflect not only an uncommon eye for composition but also a career that has careened from race cars to the Beatles to innumerable freeze-frames of history.

But for the moment, he doesn’t have the most important photo of his career — the iconic 1963 image of nightclub owner Jack Ruby firing the fatal shot into President John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the garage of Dallas police headquarters — displayed anywhere on the walls of his home.

“I should, but I don’t,” says Jackson, now 90, noting that he sold his latest display print just a few weeks ago. But the historic photo that won a 1964 Pulitzer Prize for news photography also appears in many of the books that line his shelves and occupies a place in one of the nation’s most enduring and controversial historical narratives.

He has told the story behind the photo countless times over more than six decades, to generational audiences with shifting perspectives on everything from technology — film has long since given way to digital images — to perceptions of the murder itself, if listeners are even aware of it at all.

“When I have run across kids that are younger,” Jackson says, referencing the school classes among his many presentations, “and I ask them about it, they don’t know. It’s like telling them the story for the first time.”

In the fall of 1963, he was working as a staff photographer for the Dallas Times Herald, married with one child and another on the way and attending sports car events on the weekends — a passion encouraged by his proximity to a legendary Texas racing outfit. In the ensuing years, royalties from use of the Ruby photo, plus the sale of vintage prints, enabled him to live comfortably and eventually raise six children while carving out a life in photography.

“Since photographers don’t make the greatest income, it certainly supplemented mine, which is probably the best thing,” he says. “Because I was able to survive.”

Jackson, aside from his years shooting for the Times Herald, also worked as a freelancer and in 1968 did a one-year stint at The Denver Post before his affinity for the car racing scene drew him back to Texas. He eventually relocated to Colorado and in 1980 started shooting photos for The Gazette, where he retired in 1999.

Although he returned to that paper for a while as a part-timer, he mostly settled into retirement and spent time with family from his home tucked among the foothills below Pikes Peak. In the early 2000s, as anniversaries of the Kennedy assassination rolled around, he found himself in demand to attend exhibits and panel discussions all over the world and as far away as Taiwan.

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, home to artifacts from the assassination housed in the former Texas School Book Depository from which Oswald fired, in 2009 and 2010 devoted exhibition space to a retrospective of Jackson’s collected work. Titled “A Photographer’s Story,” the exhibit was testament to a career that, while widely recognized for a singular photo, encompassed much more.

Stephen Fagin, the museum’s curator who has known Jackson for years, describes him as a “very humble, straightforward guy” with a remarkable photographic eye. On Jackson’s visits to the museum, Fagin loves when his friend pulls out his smartphone and starts snapping pictures.

“I sometimes joked about what a tremendous honor it is to be in a Bob Jackson photo on his iPhone,” Fagin says, “because it’s still that same eye that was so fixed in the 35-millimeter viewfinder on Nov. 24, 1963.”

Rifle shots and no film

Two days earlier, on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, Jackson and the Times Herald’s chief photographer went to Dallas’ Love Field to meet Air Force One. The plan was for both to take photos of Kennedy’s arrival and then for Jackson to join the motorcade heading downtown while his colleague rushed their film back to the paper to be processed.

“We got some really nice pictures at Love Field,” Jackson recalls. “Kennedy decided he would go over to the chain link fence where all the crowd was. I got a really nice picture of him reaching out, shaking hands with people leaning over the fence. And so I was pleased with that shot, because the Secret Service, I’m sure, didn’t really want him to do that.”

The parade route stretched from the airport to downtown Dallas. The Times Herald had positioned a reporter at the intersection of Main and Houston streets, which mark the entrance to Dealey Plaza. The plan called for Jackson to empty his two cameras — one with a wide-angle lens, the other with a telephoto — put the film in an envelope and toss it to the colleague who’d run it back to the newspaper office for processing.

As the car containing Jackson and some other photographers turned the corner at the intersection, he spotted the reporter running toward him and tossed the envelope, just as a wind gust carried it out of his reach and sent him chasing it down the street.

That’s when he heard the first shot, and after a pause, two more shots closer together.

“By then, we had made the turn, and we were facing the book depository,” Jackson recounts. “And after the last shot, I just looked up — the sound came from right in front of me — and there’s a rifle resting on the ledge of the window on the sixth floor, and I could see it being drawn in.”

Jackson alerted others in the car to the rifle, and pointed toward the location. But by then there was nothing to photograph but an open window. And Jackson held an empty camera.

He has thought about those moments often over the years.

“If the camera had film in it, and I lifted it up, it’s a zoom, and I would have had to focus, pull the window up as close as I could,” he figures. “There was not enough time for me to do that, because when I looked up, the rifle was on the ledge. It came in immediately. So what, two seconds? I couldn’t have swung the camera up and shot the rifle. I wish I could have. Maybe I’m rationalizing a little bit, but not really. Because I only saw the rifle for maybe two or three seconds.”

The other photographers in the car told the driver to stop so they could get out. Jackson sat there surveying the scene — parents shielding their kids, people running, a motorcycle cop leaping off his still-moving bike on the grassy knoll and hurrying toward the Texas School Book Depository.

He weighed his options and decided to get out.

“Second thoughts,” Jackson says. “I really should have just taken the camera with the wide lens and just shot everything that I could see in front of me. But I’m thinking I made a mistake. I’m supposed to be following the president, and he’s probably on the way to Parkland Hospital. I figured that’s where they would go, because by now, people had said he was hit and it was terrible.”

He and a couple other photographers flagged down a woman caught in the slow-moving traffic and caught a ride to the hospital, but Jackson got to the emergency entrance too late to capture any activity. Authorities kept everyone well away from the doors.

“And that’s where I stayed until the hearse came,” he says, recalling the tragic events of a surreal workday. “I photographed the hearse leaving with Kennedy. And then, to this day, I don’t know how I got back to the paper.” 

Preparing for a routine photo

Fractions of a second, fate and circumstance, separate mere images from history.

The tick-tock of events that left Jackson with relatively little to show for his assignment covering the motorcade — one frame of jubilant well-wishers along the route would eventually be prominently featured — turned into a professional redemption story two days later.

The Kennedy assassination occurred on a Friday. Jackson officially had Saturday off, though he hung around the Times Herald offices and the police station to keep his finger on the pulse of events. Word came down that Oswald would be moved Sunday morning, and Jackson would be deployed to the police station to capture images of Oswald as they moved him to county lockup.

Another staff photographer chose to stake out the county facility to capture images of Oswald’s arrival.

“He’s thinking it’s right across the street from the assassination site,” Jackson says of his colleague’s strategy. “People putting flowers out here, a lot of activity. He’s going to get a lot of good pictures there. But I’m going to see Oswald before anybody else does. I wanted a shot of that guy, because I knew once he got to the county jail, Sheriff (Bill) Decker, who ran a tight ship, was not going to parade Oswald out for us to photograph.”

On Sunday morning, Jackson headed to the police station. On the road to the assignment, he remembers noticing a pickup heading the opposite direction and, just as the two vehicles passed, hearing a loud backfire that rattled the memory of gunshots two days earlier.

He’d been given a two-fold assignment for the day: cover Oswald’s transfer and then scramble over to Parkland Hospital for a news conference featuring Nellie Connally, wife of Texas Gov. John Connally, who’d also been wounded in the assassination. The timing of the two events made covering them both unlikely. A city desk editor at the Times Herald relayed word to Jackson through a reporter to skip the Oswald assignment in favor of the Connally news conference.

Jackson wasn’t swayed. He told the reporter to inform the editor that he wasn’t leaving, confident that his chief photographer would back him up. The paper decided to rely on a wire service photographer to handle the Connally assignment.

Shortly before authorities were to bring Oswald to the basement garage, officials instructed reporters and photographers to assemble, find a vantage point and stay put. An armored van was parked at the top of a ramp — its roofline wouldn’t clear the garage’s low ceiling — presumably to transport Oswald. As Jackson staked out his space, an unmarked police car backed up and forced him to shift his position. Authorities had apparently decided to use the car instead of the van, to minimize the distance Oswald would have to be escorted.

Anticipating Oswald’s imminent arrival, Jackson leaned against the unmarked car’s rear fender, repeatedly checked his camera to make sure the film was wound and prepared to take what he figured would be “a pretty routine type picture.” He’d done it many times before when police had moved high-profile prisoners.

“It was just a matter of, when he gets in the right spot, punch the button,” Jackson says.

Reaction and chaos

And that was pretty much the way it happened. Except …

“I was aware of this guy stepping out, on my right, kind of blocking my view,” Jackson recalls. “No more than slow motion, but this person was stepping out, and the gun fired, and I fired. I was already pre-focused and looking through the viewfinder, so I didn’t have to react other than punching the button.”

Jack Ruby, the 52-year-old Dallas nightclub owner, fired virtually point-blank into Oswald, triggering chaos. 

Jackson recalls his competitors at that moment. A wire service photographer had guessed that authorities would march Oswald up the ramp to the armored van, so had positioned himself there. Jack Beers of the Dallas Morning News had found a higher vantage point, a favorite tactic of his, and snapped his picture just before Ruby fired. A young photographer for United Press International also took his photo as Ruby took aim and, in the aftermath, was “jumping around, saying ‘I got it! I got it! Did you get it?’” Jackson recalls.

He responded: “Well, I’ll let you know later.”

John Mazziotta, the Times Herald’s chief photographer, sent word that UPI was “screaming for what you shot” and was willing to send a runner to retrieve Jackson’s film. 

“I said, and these are my words, ‘What if he gets hit by a bus?’” Jackson recounts. “I said, no way am I going to give my film to anybody.”

When Jackson made it back to the Times Herald offices, Beers’ excellent photo had already drawn a crowd at the wire service machine that chugged out images.

Somebody asked: “Do you have anything as good as this?”

Jackson ran his film and held the negative up to the light. It looked good. Sharp. An enlarger revealed a decisive detail — Oswald reacting to being struck by the gunshot. When he made prints, Jackson also realized that the photo, properly printed, showed smoke rings emanating from the gun, further evidence that his photo captured the moment after it was fired. He carried the first print out into the newsroom.

“It was pretty exciting, because we knew we’d beat the News,” Jackson says. “We knew we’d beat our rivals. And somebody, one of my cohorts, says, ‘How does it feel to win the Pulitzer?’ And I said, ‘Don’t say that, because then it won’t happen.’”

In fact, the photo was indeed awarded a Pulitzer prize for photography in the spring of 1964, and yet, the paper didn’t break out the champagne. Jackson has no idea why the Times Herald skipped the traditional newsroom celebration. But the paper gave him the rights to his picture — a gesture that guaranteed financial compensation for its use, which he considered recognition enough.

“Every photographer dreams of winning the big one, the Pulitzer — in those days, especially,” Jackson says. “And I was just thrilled that I was able to win it for that. But we got back to work, doing the same old thing, and for 10 or 12 years the excitement wasn’t there. Then the excitement started building when we got to the anniversaries of the event, and I’ve had a lot of exciting times since. But initially, it was just business as usual.

“The magnitude of it I don’t think hit us for days, way after it all happened,” he adds. “We were just kind of working hard, you know?” 

After a shooting that was also beamed live into televisions across the country, Oswald died a few hours later in the same hospital where Kennedy died. Ruby was tried, convicted and sentenced to death, though his conviction was later overturned and he was granted a new trial. But after being diagnosed with cancer, he died — also at Parkland — of a pulmonary embolism in 1967.

The Warren Commission’s examination of the assassination would determine that Ruby acted alone, murdering Oswald in retaliation for Kennedy’s death. Jackson was called to testify before the commission specifically on details about seeing the rifle in the sixth-floor window and the timing of the three-shot sequence he heard from his vantage point seven cars behind the president in the motorcade. 

Still, Ruby’s role remains an enduring trigger for endless conspiracy theories. Jackson points to a set of bookshelves in his home office. Many of the volumes paid to use his image from Oswald’s death, but he hasn’t bought into any of their alternative narratives about the Kennedy assassination. 

“No conspiracy,” he says. “I always had an open mind to it, if they’d ever prove it. But they haven’t proved it, even though you can look at half those books in that bookcase right there where they try.”

History and pop culture legacy

Iconic.

Although the word sometimes tends to be too broadly and easily applied, one photograph that fits the definition comfortably is Jackson’s shot of Ruby firing at Oswald — a still image even more indelibly etched on the public consciousness than the event’s first live, televised footage of a murder.

“In the popular imagination, when people think about the Kennedy assassination, really there’s two images that come to mind — and Bob Jackson’s photograph of Ruby shooting Oswald in the basement,” Sixth Floor Museum curator Fagin says. “It’s had a remarkable legacy in terms of not just history, but popular culture. It’s been used in a wide variety of ways over the years to help keep it in the collective conscience.”

Fagin recalls the photo as one of the few used to illustrate the entry on the Kennedy assassination in the venerable, bound editions of the World Book Encyclopedia. At the other end of the cultural spectrum, it also found a place in the 1989 Billy Joel music video for his hit song, (The image appears at the 2:43 mark.)

Of course, there were other images of Oswald’s murder, most notably Beers’ photo snapped just a heartbeat before Jackson’s.

“But Oswald is not reacting to the shot,” Fagin notes, “and it’s been determined that Jack Beers snapped his photo six-tenths of a second before Bob Jackson did. That six-tenths of a second resulted in the Pulitzer Prize and truly one of the most iconic news photographs of the 20th century.”

That thin slice of time created a photo unique in the manner in which it captured people reacting — and not yet reacting — to the moment. Fagin notes the beginning of shock and horror on the face of homicide Det. Jim Leavelle, the famous figure in the light-colored suit and cowboy hat, who was linked to Oswald by handcuffs. 

Both law enforcement and the city of Dallas itself came under enormous criticism, presaged by what Fagin calls “a challenging political environment” that prompted some to warn Kennedy against visiting that fall, culminating in “the ultimate lapse of security.” 

“It really kind of captures a lot of that chaos the weekend of Nov. 22, and in a lot of ways it symbolizes the debate that is still with us 60 years on,” Fagin says. “Because it was at that moment, captured by Bob in that instant on film, when Oswald would never live to see a trial, ensuring that there would always be lingering questions about the Kennedy assassination.” 

Jackson’s full image has been part of the museum’s core exhibit since it opened in 1989, in an alcove that focuses on the arrest and eventual shooting of Oswald in police custody. When the museum expanded its exhibit and added artifacts and interpretive elements in 2013, it included a life-sized enlargement of one portion of the picture behind the actual suit worn by Leavelle, fitted on a mannequin posed as the detective stood at that moment.

Fagin says he enjoys helping students navigate such a minefield of interpretive history and try to make sense of it all. When he does question-and-answer sessions with school groups, kids generations removed from the actual events, the most common questions revolve around why Ruby shot Oswald and, especially, how it could have happened. 

“We live in an age of tight, tight security,” Fagin says, “and the idea that somebody like that could just be in the basement in a supposedly tight security area — for the kids of 2025, that is just something that is very difficult for them to accept.”

An exclusive club

Jackson may not currently display his own defining photo on the walls of his home — creating a display print remains on his to-do list — but among the wall-to-wall images are other famous pictures, many of them signed with short personal messages by renowned photographers.

There’s a photo by , of a toddler being lifted through barbed wire in 1999 in war-torn Kosovo. And on Sept. 11. George Tames’ famous 1961 image of an introspective John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office. One shot from David Hume Kennerly’s 1971 . Bill Winfrey’s

And on and on.

Jackson claims membership in an exclusive club, which is how those photos and many others — some he still needs to have framed — came to him in trade for prints of his Ruby image. 

“If they feel like they want to do a trade, they’ll get a hold of me or vice versa,” he says, “because none of us can afford each other’s, if you sell them. So it’s easier to just trade.”

In one unusual exchange, he made a deal with the Florida-based owner of the actual handgun Jack Ruby used to kill Oswald. Jackson traded his photo for cash and, as a supplement, two bullets test-fired from the .38-caliber Colt Cobra, which as Jackson recalls were valued at $500 each.

He keeps them in a wooden case.

One photo he doesn’t have — at least not yet — is the famous June 5, 1989, image shot by Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener of a protester standing alone before a column of Chinese army tanks in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. , but is reputed to be the most used of the images from that day, earning it a place in the news photo pantheon.

Widener, who like Jackson doesn’t currently have his most famous image on display at his home outside of Mexico City, recounts strange and chaotic circumstances that in some ways echo the surreal atmosphere that surrounded Jackson’s famous photo.

“I was scared the whole time I was in China,” Widener says by phone, recalling the bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protests. At the hotel in Beijing, other correspondents warned him about secret police using cattle prods to make journalists give up their film in an effort to quash coverage. Sensing he might be interrogated in the hotel lobby, he quickly spotted a young American guest — he turned out to be an exchange student named Kirk Martsen — and pretended to know him, while whispering he was from AP and asking the young man to give him access to his room.

The cloak-and-dagger move worked. Widener, though suffering from the flu and intense fatigue, at least now had a sixth-floor vantage point, where he could see tanks and armored vehicles churning down the streets below. Eventually, a man carrying shopping bags moved into the path of an advancing tank column.

Widener, perched on the balcony and leaning awkwardly to frame the scene, realized that the drama was too far away for him to capture with his 400 mm telephoto lens. A doubler, which would allow him to zoom in twice as close, lay on the hotel room bed. He quickly debated whether to make the switch and risk losing the shot altogether.

He scrambled to grab the doubler.

“While I was gone, that guy had crawled up on the tank and was yelling at the tank driver, and he jumped back down,” Widener says. “By the time I got back to the window with the doubler — so now I’ve got an 800 mm lens — I took three pictures.” 

Martsen asked him if he’d gotten the photo before authorities converged on the man and took him away. 

“And I said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think so,’” Widener says — reflecting the same kind of uncertainty Jackson felt immediately after photographing the Ruby shooting. “But in my mind, I just had that strange feeling that one came out. And I don’t know how to explain that to you, other than the fact that after you shoot pictures for so many years, you just have feelings about things, about your pictures.

“But I have to tell you, all through my career, I got close calls where I’ve almost screwed up majorly,” he adds. “And somehow I always pull out of it. I must have a guardian angel, because I’ll tell you, I’ve been very, very lucky. And as far as the effect on my life, it’s been unbelievable.”

The photo opened doors. While Jackson tells of subsequent access to the Beatles during the group’s tour in Texas, Widener’s rock-star moment came when, by chance on vacation, he encountered the British reggae and pop band UB40 — he had never heard of the group — who welcomed him into their inner circle and asked him to photograph their concerts.

Iconic photos tend to have that effect — even, or maybe especially, on other photographers who by their own experience understand and have a unique appreciation for the confluence of opportunity, skill and sometimes serendipity. 

“Where’s Bob living?” Widener asks, turning the conversation to Jackson. “I’d love to meet the guy. Do you think he’d be willing to meet me? And maybe he doesn’t want to bother with it, but if he’s interested in trading photos, I’d swap photos with him. ”

“An early apex”

Jackson can place the Ruby photo — the whole experience of documenting history and winning a Pulitzer, really — easily into the arc of his career.

“It was an early apex,” he says. 

Although as a young photographer he carried in the back of his mind the dream of perhaps one day shooting for Life, once the nation’s preeminent photo-centric weekly news magazine, he was quite content working for the Times Herald, which he joined in 1960 armed with experience as a general photographer for the Army. 

Prior to that, Jackson also got to immerse himself in his passion for fast cars when (notably played by Matt Damon in the 2019 movie ) in 1957 set up shop just three blocks from where Jackson was attending Southern Methodist University. He says Shelby nicknamed him “Three-quarters Jackson,” because he spent about three quarters of his time at the dealership. 

Then he started attending races and shooting photos. Eventually, he bought an MG and then a Jaguar, and competed against the clock in autocross events. But he credits the experience of photographing races as setting him on the course for photojournalism.

“Really, I owe Shelby my career,” Jackson says, “because I had not gone to journalism school or anything like that. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”

He found his calling. Then came his 1963 career-changing opportunity. And then there was everything afterward.

“I also had to feel some pressure on doing the best I could do on whatever assignment I had after that,” he says, “because I didn’t figure that I would ever have a chance at a Pulitzer with some other event.”

He frequently ran into people who wondered how he could ever top the experience, how he could return to the grind of shooting mundane assignments — food and fashion shots and the everyday routine of news photos that were hardly historic, much less iconic.  

“That’s just the way it is,” Jackson would tell them. But he’s quick to note that he could also indulge his love of fast cars by shooting regional races, including the annual Pikes Peak Hill Climb. Sports cars have always captivated him, and he wound up owning several — including a Porsche he later sold to a buyer in Baltimore, bought back after having seller’s remorse and then totaled in a March blizzard as crosswinds on black ice buffeted him into the center guard cables on Interstate 70 in Kansas as he drove it back to Colorado. 

Many of the books on his shelves feature his automotive shots, including one particular favorite in which British driver Ken Miles went airborne in the debut of the Shelby Mustang on Feb. 14, 1965. Another book, a photographic biography on which he collaborated, reveals the range of a remarkable run in which he chronicled endless news events, cultural icons from Cher to Johnny Carson and, of course, an important slice of American history.

“When I stop and look at all of ’em,” Jackson says, “I think I did a pretty good job.”

Type of Story: News

Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.