Charles Knoblock, 89, Photographer For AP in Chicago
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Charles Knoblock, an Associated Press photographer whose images captured presidents, celebrities, sports heroes and even frolicking polar bears during a 52-year career based in Chicago, died Friday at his home in Charlotte, N.C. He was 89.
Knoblock joined AP in 1934 and photographed presidential candidates including Richard Nixon, Adlai Stevenson, and Barry Goldwater, and sports events including the Olympics, World Series and Kentucky Derby.
He also covered the civil rights movements and racial unrest of the 1960s and the 1973 standoff between federal agents and Indian activists at Wounded Knee. In Chicago, Knoblock covered the tumultuous 1968 Democratic convention, novelist Saul Bellow on the day he won the Nobel Prize, and the Chicago Bulls’ signing of a young player named Michael Jordan.
He also had a knack for feature photography at venues such as the Brookfield Zoo in suburban Chicago, where he made a widely used image of polar bears in a pool on a warm day, playing with an empty metal beer keg as if it were a beach ball.
Knoblock retired from AP in 1986.
