The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family
by Richard Avedon, Shannon Thomas Perich
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard Avedon, Shannon Thomas PerichEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2007-11-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 128
Publisher: Collins Design
Book Reviews of The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family
Book Review: The one book for which the Coffee Table format was created, the one which justifies such size and glory
Summary: 5 Stars
This majestic and generous book provides prodigiously much for every American, for every photographer, for any historian, for all graphic artists.
Richard Avedon served as a fashion photographer in that time. His final works frequently found place in the The New Yorker (1-year) magazine on assignment, mainly very stark images, honest, one would say, often approaching the grotesque. A bare full face portrait of this late period, with chest, might reveal nakedly far more than the subject knew, or rather, precisely as the subject hoped. We may find such cruel portraiture in Richard Avedon Portraits and several other collections, including a study by the brilliant New Yorker critic of the arts John Lahr in his Performance: Richard Avedon.
Here we find Avedon before we were thrust all into the madness and chaos of despair after the assassinations, the cruelty which produced his later true work. Here we find Avedon the artist of fashion, who nevertheless maintains an edge to it all, a keen edge of impish near-perversity. As Mrs. Kennedy stands in a wonderful formal satin white gown upon the large roll of white paper formal photography uses to cover both wall and, curving, floor, we see the holes stepped through the paper by high heels and the passing Caroline. We see in the cover photograph the great JFK, weeks from his First Inauguration, with a crooked necktie which the soon-to-be First Lady could so easily and naturally have straightened. There was such a thing as a tie clasp as well.
Perich wonderfully nevertheless reveals the secrets of the darkroom which brought these rough shots into presentable shape for publication in the leading magazines of the day. We see the original image alongside the image as published, with explanation of the processes involved. The heel marks through the paper disappear, and several other flaws in the negative image give way to great art. This chapter in itself gives life to Ansel Adam's adage that photography begins in the darkroom. The darkroom now has mostly disappeared in this age of DSLR and photo software; this chapter reveals the arduous alchemic labors of the darkroom, the burning, the dodging, which gave birth to such wonderful and eternal art.
Any photographer therefore can learn much from studying carefully with attention these photographs as such, as the fruit of careful photography, of technique as well as the art of portraiture done properly, yes with complexity and keen honesty, while not to the extremes of his later years. I have managed to do much with low budget these past few years thanks to the Nikon D40 6.1MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX and 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6G ED AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens with 2 Nikon School DVD acquired here upon the amazon, and achieved publication weekly at least, locally, and it is the study of portraiture such as this which informs us so much more than such guides as Digital Wedding Photography: Capturing Beautiful Memories, for example, as here we truly see a master photographer at work, and might reverse-engineer some technique, if not memory of composition.
And yet this wonderful work here presented is so much more than a simple demonstration of photography. We see here the Kennedys, at their zenith, weeks from the White House, and we are very grateful for this generous presentation of the finest subjects for Avedon's art.
The book itself is ten by eleven inches and beautifully designed, black and white and grays throughout to reflect the Black and White photography, with a strong canary yellow for the inside covers and chapter separations. Beautifully and fittingly designed for this subject, with elegance and a noble restraint, this is a book worthy of space not upon a coffee table but a special lectern, to be seen and to be studied, to be viewed as the iconic collection it is, for this is America's sacred family, at home and at peace with one another and with us, the viewer. These are truly images to contemplate in peace, in recollection, in prayer, for souls, for wholeness, for healing, for grief, for hope, for peace, at last, now that we may once exhale in this present The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Vintage).
See this now. And read as well the recent reflections of James Douglass in JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.
Read here the writings prepared for this book by Associate Smithsonian National Musuem of American History curator Shannon Thomas Perich of the Photographic History Collection, to which Avedon generously donated his work. Additional writings are by Professor Robert Dalleck (of UCLA, Oxford, BU, and Columbia), author of An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. The most moving words here printed of course come from our President, from Avedon, who confides: "In a very charming way, he was ill at ease . . . Jacqueline said he always looks his best when he's talking to a crowd, and freezes up when he has his portrait taken." Of Mrs. Kennedy he writes: "Jacqueline is ravishing. Today she's the most beautiful woman in the world. She has a great deal in common with top movie stars - She knows when to hold herself back while everyone else you know gives too much of themselves at one time. So when she comes out, it's a great tour de
force."
and from Mrs. Kennedy, who here, among other pearls, is quoted: "Watching a child grow, guiding him, learning new ways to present life's wonderful panorama of events and scenes to him - all this is so wonderful for the parent." and "The quality I admire the most in my husband is his intellectual curiosity - and that is the quality we both wish to encourage in our children." Too few years later he was gone, for good.
A great, a terrible, a wonderful, a beautiful book to have and to hold, now and forever.
For me the most touching series of raw straight-from-negative prints (unprocessed images not doctored in the darkroom - it makes you distrust any image, especially now with computer manipulations) is Caroline holding what she then called the "kissing baby" and her father holding her standing on his lap. With this please hear Caroline's wonderful anthology Best Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, The, in particular the unabridged audiobook version.
Summary of The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family
In the early 1960s, Richard Avedon was commissioned by Harper's Bazaar to create Observations, a column that consisted of a series of nine photographic essays. The subject of the first essay was John F. Kennedy and his young family, who sat for formal black-and-white portraits just three weeks prior to Kennedy's presidential inauguration. Six images appeared in the magazine's February 1961 issue.
That same day, Avedon created more informal color portraits of Kennedy and his family at the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach. One of these images ran as the cover of LOOK magazine's February 28 issue, with photographs by Avedon inside. Just before the magazine hit the newsstands and was delivered to over 6.5 million people, a set of photographs, comprised mostly of the LOOK images, was released by the White House and appeared in newspapers across the country.
During his lifetime, Richard Avedon donated more than two hundred images to the Smithsonian Institution, including all of the photographs of the Kennedy family sitting for Harper's Bazaar. Smithsonian curator Shannon Thomas Perich has culled more than seventy-five images from that donation for The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family, making these stunning photographs available for view for the first time. Perich's introductory essay?accompanied by a wealth of archival photographs of both Avedon and the Kennedy family?provides historical background on the two sittings within a political and cultural context and critically examines the work of one of the finest photographers of the twentieth century. A foreword by Robert Dallek, distinguished historian and author of the bet-selling An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, provides authoritative and compelling insight to one of the most fascinating presidents in American history.
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