Rocking Chair, Senate Office, Summer

1958

Jacques Lowe, a renowned photojournalist, has had several of his photographs in publications such as The New York Times, Life, Look, Time, and Newsweek. He is perhaps best known for the images he took of John F. Kennedy during the last years of the former President's life. Jacques Lowe's relationship with the Kennedy's began in 1956 when he was assigned to photograph Robert Kennedy, an emerging politician at the time. These images were so well-received by the Kennedy family that Lowe was asked to photograph another Kennedy son, Jack Kennedy. As a result, Lowe became the preferred photographer of the Kennedy administration, where he spent five years amassing 40,000 images of JFK and his family at the White House. These photographs are an example of the extremely graceful quality of Jacques Lowe's portraits. Lowe's gift was the ability to photograph Kennedy seemingly unnoticed. The result is a group of photographs that are candid and intimate, revealing the human quality of this political leader. As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. noted, "...[Lowe] has done all this as a historian, not as a press agent. Contrary to the myth, Kennedy wasted no time fabricating images. He was a relaxed man, secure and imperturbable, who gambled on himself and felt no need for hype. In Jacques Lowe he found the photographer who gave the natural rhythms of the Kennedy White House enduring form." Several of Lowe's greatest images are of John F. Kennedy. One in particular, the image of JFK and Jackie at an airport runway in Portland, shows the couple greeting the two supporters who came to meet them. This picture was taken in 1959 and remained Kennedy's favorite photo because, for him, it represented a time no one remembered anymore.