Background
John R. Robinson was born in 1907 in Des Moines, Iowa, United States.
John R. Robinson was born in 1907 in Des Moines, Iowa, United States.
Robinson joined the staff of the Des Moines Register and Tribune in 1927 and remained there until his retirement on June 30, 1972. During World War II, he served three years in the South Pacific as a combat still and motion picture photographer for the Army Signal Corps.
In 1952 he won honorable mention in the News Pictures of the Year competition sponsored by the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, an award from the Kappa Alpha Mu photographic fraternity, and the Graflex Diamond award. His Pulitzer Prize-winning sequence of photographs showed Drake University's black all-American halfback, Johnny Bright, receive a deliberate blow to the jaw at a football game in Stillwater, Oklahoma, with what is now Oklahoma State University.
The photographer was a member of Polk County Men's Garden Club, the American Legion, the Iowa Press Photographers Association and an honorary lifetime member of NPPA.