ongoing- Sun. July 18

 It was truly a moment in time. The most famous fashion photographer of the 20th century, Richard Avedon, had one day  January 3, 1961 – to capture the essence of President-elect John F. Kennedy and his family through his Rolleiflexcq lens.
    Kennedy, wife Jacqueline, three-year-old daughter Caroline and two-month old son John Jr. were at the family’s oceanside villa in Palm Beach, Florida. Kennedy was on the verge of becoming the first president and Jacqueline the First Lady of a new media-savvy age. The ultimate power couple.
     Jackie had done a shoot with Avedon three years earlier and trusted Avedon’s instincts.  So, on this day – the same day Kennedy learned President Eisenhower had cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba – Avedon took 219 black-and-white photographs of the incoming First Family.  Six of those iconic photos ran in Harper’s Bazaar. It was the dawn of the Camelot myth, a sweet spot of history.
    “The Kennedys/Portrait of a Family: Photographs by Richard Avedon” is up at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. It runs through July 18.
   The exhibit, said curator Phillip Prodger, gives “insight into that period of optimism and hope.” The series of prints and enlarged contact sheets are works Avedon “wanted us to see in sequence … and question why he chose the frame he settled upon.” Avedon, who died in 2004 at 81, donated these photos to the Smithsonian History Museum in 1991.
   Prodger spoke with the press during a gathering at the museum Tuesday evening.
   The traveling exhibit, on loan from the Smithsonian, is both about the Kennedys and the photographer. Though there are descriptive panels on the walls next to the photos, they were published without editorial comment.
    “He was thinking of subtext,” Prodger said. Avedon wanted us to decide about what it is we saw, to see how he shaped the images that shaped a presidency.
    “He made wonderful decisions for a particular audience,” Prodger said.
    There is a regal quality to the black-bordered photos, and, of course, a melancholic undertone - knowing what we know now.
   Avedon captured that brief period of illusory innocence. He was looking, Prodger said, “for national spontaneous gestures, even though their positioning is posed.” 
    Avedon shot rapidly, 12 frames a roll. You look at his cropping and retouching – removing an errant wisp of Jackie’s hair, touching up dark circles under JFK’s eyes.
    Jacqueline is more comfortable with the camera. Her husband is more wooden. “He froze up for posed photos,” Prodger said, noting Kennedy was more comfortable and animated on the stump. “Avedon tries to eke out a little bit more emotion.”
   When, though, you consider what Kennedy had just learned about Cuba, you can see his demeanor as stoic and presidential. The photos suggest a confidence in himself, and by extension, the country.
   The sweetest photos may be of Jacqueline cradling her infant son John-John, positioned next to a photo of Caroline doing the same. You look at a family that was intact and loving, with the future rosy.
(This is an expanded story I did for the Boston Herald, www.bostonherald.com.)
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