Burns was born on July 29, 1953,[1] in Brooklyn, New York, to Lyla Smith (née Tupper) Burns,[3] a biotechnician,[4] and Robert Kyle Burns, Jr., at the time a graduate student in cultural anthropology at
Columbia University in Manhattan.[3] The documentary filmmaker
Ric Burns is his younger brother.[5][6]
Burns's academic family moved frequently. Among places they called home were
Saint-Véran, France;
Newark, Delaware; and
Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his father taught at the
University of Michigan.[4] Burns describes his family as hippies.[7]
Burns's mother was found to have
breast cancer when he was three, and she died when he was 11,[4] a circumstance that he said helped shape his career; he credited his psychologist father-in-law, Gerald Stechler,[8] with a significant insight: "He told me that my whole work was an attempt to make people long gone come back alive."[4] Well-read as a child, he absorbed the family encyclopedia, preferring history to fiction.
Upon receiving an
8 mm film movie camera for his 17th birthday, he shot a documentary about an Ann Arbor factory. He graduated from
Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor in 1971.[9] Turning down reduced tuition at the University of Michigan, he attended
Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where students are graded through narrative evaluations rather than letter grades and where students create self-directed academic concentrations instead of choosing a traditional major.[4]
Burns worked in a record store to pay his tuition. Living on as little as $2,500 in two years in
Walpole, New Hampshire,[10] Burns studied under photographers
Jerome Liebling,
Elaine Mayes, and others, describing Liebling as his "principal mentor."[7] He earned his
Bachelor of Arts degree in film studies and design[11] in 1975.[4]
Florentine Films
In 1976, Burns, Elaine Mayes, and college classmate
Roger Sherman founded a production company called Florentine Films in Walpole, New Hampshire. The company's name was borrowed from Mayes's hometown of
Florence, Massachusetts. Another Hampshire College student, Buddy Squires, was invited to succeed Mayes as a founding member one year later.[12][13] The trio were later joined by a fourth member,
Lawrence "Larry" Hott. Hott did not actually matriculate at Hampshire, but worked on films there. Hott had begun his career as an attorney, having attended nearby
Western New England Law School.[12]
Each member works independently, but releases content under the shared name of Florentine Films.[14] As such, their individual "subsidiary" companies include Ken Burns Media, Sherman Pictures, and Hott Productions. Burns's oldest child,
Sarah, is also an employee of the company as of 2020.[15]
Burns initially worked as a
cinematographer for the
BBC, Italian television, and others. In 1977, having completed some documentary
short films, he began work on adapting
David McCullough's book The Great Bridge, about the construction of the
Brooklyn Bridge.[11] Developing a signature style of documentary filmmaking in which he "adopted the technique of cutting rapidly from one still picture to another in a fluid, linear fashion [and] then pepped up the visuals with 'first hand' narration gleaned from contemporary writings and recited by top stage and screen actors",[16] Burns made the feature documentary Brooklyn Bridge (1981),[17] which was narrated by David McCullough, and earned an
Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary and ran on
PBS in the United States.
In 1982, Burns married Amy Stechler. The couple had two daughters,
Sarah and
Lilly.[21][11] Their marriage ended in
divorce in 1993.
As of 2017[update], Burns was residing in Walpole, New Hampshire. He and Julie Deborah Brown, daughter of Leslie Mundjer and the
Smith Barneysenior vice president Richard Brown and stepdaughter of Ellen Brown, married on October 18, 2003. Julie Deborah Brown founded Room to Grow, a non-profit providing aid to babies in poor families.[22] They have two daughters, Olivia and Willa Burns.
Burns is an avid
quilt collector. About one-third of the quilts from his personal collection were displayed at
The International Quilt Study Center & Museum at the
University of Nebraska from January 19 to May 13, 2018.[26] Burns is also an avid fan of the New York Times crossword puzzle, appearing in the documentary Wordplay, and in a 2022 interview he says he completes the puzzle every day.[7]
When asked if he would ever make a film regarding his mother Lyla, Burns responded: "All of my films are about her. I don't think I could do it directly, because of how intensely painful it is."[4]
In 2004, Burns received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by
Jefferson Awards.[42]
In 2010, the
National Parks Conservation Association honored him and
Dayton Duncan with the Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks. The award recognizes an individual or organization that has effectively communicated the values of the National Park System to the American public.[44]
As of 2010[update], there is a Ken Burns Wing at the Jerome Liebling Center for Film, Photography and Video at Hampshire College.[45]
In 2012, Burns received the
Washington University International Humanities Medal.[47] The medal, awarded biennially and accompanied by a cash prize of $25,000, is given to honor a person whose humanistic endeavors in scholarship, journalism, literature, or the arts have made a difference in the world. Past winners include Turkish novelist
Orhan Pamuk in 2006, journalist
Michael Pollan in 2008, and novelist and nonfiction writer
Francine Prose in 2010.[48]
In 2022 he served as the Commencement speaker at the
University of Pennsylvania and received an Honorary Doctor of Arts.[55]
Style
Burns frequently incorporates simple musical leitmotifs or melodies. For example, The Civil War features a distinctive violin melody throughout, "
Ashokan Farewell", which was performed for the film by its composer, fiddler
Jay Ungar. One critic noted, "One of the most memorable things about The Civil War was its haunting, repeated violin melody, whose thin, yearning notes seemed somehow to sum up all the pathos of that great struggle."[56]
Burns often gives life to still photographs by slowly zooming out subjects of interest and panning from one subject to another. It has long been used in film production where it is known as the "
rostrum camera". This technique, possible in many professional and home software applications, is now termed the "
Ken Burns effect" in
Apple's
iPhoto,
iMovie, and
Final Cut Pro X software applications.
Burns stated in a 2009 interview that he initially declined to have his name associated with the software because of his stance to refuse commercial endorsements. However, Apple chief Steve Jobs negotiated to give Burns Apple equipment, which Burns donated to nonprofit organizations.[57]
As a museum retrospective noted, "His
PBS specials [are] strikingly out of step with the visual pyrotechnics and frenetic pacing of most reality-based TV programming, relying instead on techniques that are literally decades old, although Burns reintegrates these constituent elements into a wholly new and highly complex textual arrangement."[11]
In a 2011 interview, Burns stated that he admires and is influenced by filmmaker
Errol Morris.[58]
Filmography
Conversation with Ken Burns about The Vietnam War. Video by the LBJ Library
^
abErickson, Hal (2007).
"Ken Burns biography". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from
the original on October 29, 2007. Retrieved September 22, 2011. This single source gives two birthplaces. Under the header list, it reads "Birthplace: Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA." In the prose biography, it reads "Brooklyn-born Ken Burns..."