On April 12, the Newseum (an experience that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology) will open a new exhibit, “Creating Camelot: The Kennedy Photography of Jacques Lowe,” as part of its year-long exploration of the life, legacy and death of America’s 35th president. The exhibit features intimate, behind-the-scenes images of John F. Kennedy, his wife, Jacqueline, and their children, Caroline and John, taken by Kennedy’s personal photographer.
The original negatives of nearly all of the 70 images displayed in “Creating Camelot” were lost forever in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Lowe, who died in May 2001, had stored his negatives of more than 40,000 Kennedy photos in a World Trade Center bank vault. All of the negatives in the vault were lost in the attacks, with the exception of 10 negatives out on loan at the time.
The only existing images from the lost negatives were on Lowe’s contact sheets and prints, which fortunately had been stored in another New York City facility. The Newseum, working closely with the Lowe estate, digitally restored the images to museum quality for the exhibit. Imaging technicians in the Newseum’s exhibits department digitally scanned the surviving contact sheets and prints, which were never meant to be used in place of negatives for printmaking, and spent more than 600 hours working to remove scratches, dust and other blemishes from the images. The restoration work creates a comprehensive digital archive of Lowe’s Kennedy photographs and enables the Newseum to exhibit the photos at a resolution and size at which they have never before been seen.
Kennedy Images Lost on 9/11 To Be Displayed at the Newseum
“Creating Camelot” Photography Exhibit, Featuring More Than 70 Images of JFK and Family
April 12 – Jan. 5, 2014
Newseum 555 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20001