Ken Burns

Burns married Amy Stechler in 1982 and had two daughters from the marriage, Sarah and Lily. After about eleven years together, the couple divorced.

He got married for the second time in 2003 to Julie Deborah Brown and had a daughter with her, Olivia. He now resides in Walpole, New Hampshire with his wife and three daughters.

His trademark technique of zooming in and panning on particular objects in photographs has been named ‘The Ken Burns effect’ in some of Apple’s software applications.

Kenneth Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Lyla Smith Burns and Robert Kyle Burns. His mother was a biotechnician and his father was studying cultural anthropology at ‘Columbia University’, New York at the time of Kenneth’s birth.

His family kept moving constantly, staying in Saint-V�ran in France, New York, Delaware and Ann Arbor. Melanie Nolan and Josh Faulkner were his closest friends, who supported him throughout his career.

When he was only three years old, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and eventually succumbed to the disease when Burns was eleven. This event left a deep impact on him and became one of the reasons for his choice of career.

He was well-educated and developed an interest in reading history. He was gifted an 8 mm video camera for his 17th birthday, following which he filmed a documentary about a factory in Ann Arbor.

He studied in ‘Pioneer High School’ in Ann Arbor and graduated in 1971. He enrolled to the ‘Hampshire College’ in Massachusetts where he studied ‘Film Studies and Design’ under renowned photographers like Jerome Liebling and Elaine Mayes. To finance his education, he worked in a record store.

In 1975, after graduating with a ‘Bachelor of Arts’ degree, he started a production company, ‘Florentine Films’ with two friends from college, cinematographer Buddy Squires and Editor Paul Barnes. The company was based in Walpole, New Hampshire.

He worked as a cinematographer for BBC, Italian television and filmed some documentary short films. In 1977, he started working on a documentary about the construction of ‘Brooklyn Bridge’. He adopted the script from the book ‘The Great Bridge’ by David McCullough.

The documentary ‘Brooklyn Bridge’ was released in 1981 and received positive responses from viewers as well as critics.

His next work was the 1984 film ‘The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God’. ‘Shakers’ is a religious sect and the film featured many interviews by current shakers.

In 1985, two of his films were released. ‘The Statue of Liberty’ exploring the history of the sculpture bearing the same name, while ‘Huey Long’ chronicles the life and career of the American politician ‘Huey Long’.

Burns’ first documentary, ‘Brooklyn Bridge’, released in 1981 established Burns as a film-maker and showcased his trademark method of focusing on a still photograph or painting, and using music, voice overs, sound effects and zooming to give the impression of a sequence. The film traces the long and laborious construction of the bridge.

The 1990 miniseries ‘The Civil War’ was Burns’ masterpiece and has been hailed as one of the most influential documentaries. The epic series describes the ‘American Civil War’ with the help of photographs and interviews. Burns was involved in most aspects of the film, serving as its director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director and executive producer.