Zimmerman spent nineteen days photographing Richard Nixon and his family behind the Iron Curtain in July 1963 for a Saturday Evening Post cover story (left).
(Below) Production still of Richard Nixon and Zimmerman walking together at Checkpoint Charlie with Pat and Tricia Nixon behind. West Berlin, 1963. Photo by Robert Lackenbach for Black Star.
Zimmerman took many photos of the Nixon family during their Iron Curtain trip, including a striking picture of Julie Nixon at the Berlin Wall (below). A dozen of these photos are included in a special exhibition, Cold War: Soviets, Spies & Secrets, currently on view at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California. The exhibition runs through March 31, 2023.
The Zimmerman Archive would like to thank Christine Mickey, the Supervisory Museum Curator at the Nixon Presidential Library and Erik Christian, Museum and Exhibit Specialist, for their creativity and perseverance in incorporating John’s photos and related ephemera in the ‘Cold War’ exhibition.
The Post story featured an exclusive essay written by Nixon himself, who offered a candid assessment of Iron Curtain politics and observations based on his first-hand experience, as in the excerpt below:
At an open-air market we were loaded down with scores of bouquets of flowers, which people of very modest means had purchased to give us as a remembrance of our visit. When John Zimmerman, our Saturday Evening Post photographer, was taking pictures of the crowd around us, a policeman tried to stop him. Promptly, hundreds of Hungarians surrounded the policeman, berating him until he finally relented and allowed Zimmerman to continue with his photography.
Richard Nixon for the Sat Eve Post, Oct 12, 1963
When the story was published in October 1963, Nixon wrote a personal letter to Zimmerman, acknowledging him for a job well done:
Throughout the years I have been in the public eye, I have never worked with a more skilled lensman than you are. And during the trip there was the added bonus of your unfailing courtesy and fine cooperation which my family and I greatly appreciated.
Richard Nixon, letter excerpt, Oct 9, 1963
Fast forward eight years, with Richard Nixon now President of the United States and his daughter Tricia set to marry David Cox in the White House Rose Garden in June of 1971. TIME magazine made the high profile Nixon-Cox wedding its cover story. Although Zimmerman was not a White House photographer, based on his previous rapport with the Nixon family, they requested he photograph the pre-wedding activities at the White House for TIME. Several of these wedding-related photos are also on exhibit at the Nixon Library (below).
by Linda Zimmerman, Ph.D. January 19, 2023