John Shearer

John Shearer (April 21, 1947 – June 22, 2019) was an American photographer, writer, and filmmaker, best known for his photojournalism, especially of "racial subjects", the funerals of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and Muhammad Ali before his fight with Joe Frazier.

Early life and education John Shearer was born on April 21, 1947, in Harlem to Phyllis Shearer, an attorney who would later become the Deputy Commissioner of Social Services in Westchester County, New York, and Ted Shearer, art director of BBDO and a cartoonist who would later create Quincy. In 1969, he left Look for Life, where he was the second African-American staff photographer after his neighbor and mentor, Gordon Parks. He was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, and taught at Columbia University in the Graduate School of Journalism.