This is the lunch that President Richard Nixon ate on August 8, 1974, just before going on national television to announce that he was resigning. White House photographer Robert Knudson captured it on film. The next day, Nixon boarded a plane for California.
By the standards of official White House photography, this image is spare and melancholy, almost shockingly so. Typical White House photography “is so people-focused,” says Jon Fletcher, an archivist at that National Archives who is responsible for the Nixon Administration photographs.
Fletcher could not remember offhand any other photo in the collection that is devoted to food itself. After our conversation, he did a search and came up with a few images from Nixon’s trip to China that featured tables filled with food that had been prepared for the visiting American president.
via NPR
Image: Robert Knudson/Nixon Library
