Show features photography of Lawrence Schiller

The Brooklyn-born Lawrence Schiller has witnessed more 20th century American history firsthand than Forrest Gump. He shot photos for the Saturday Evening Post, Life, and Paris Match on his way to becoming an Emmy-winning screenwriter, producer, and director. Schiller’s first pictures appeared in print in 1953, when he was only sixteen. He captured Pat Nixon in tears when her husband conceded the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy. In 1962, he photographed Marilyn Monroe nude on the set of “Something’s Got to Give,” a film left incomplete after the starlet’s death soon thereafter.

His 1977 photograph of Gary Gilmore, taken mere hours before Gilmore became the first American to be executed following the 1972-6 moratorium on capital punishment, is among the unforgettable photos included in the overview of Schiller’s work on view at Adamson Gallery — his first solo show in Washington.  (Schiller’s 1976 series of interviews with Gilmore were one of the sources of Norman Mailer’s Pulitzer-winning novel “The Executioner’s Song.”)