My journey ends here...
LOWE Jacques
Born Jascha Lülsdorf.
Date of birth : January 24, 1930, Cologne, Germany.
Date of death : May 12, 2001, New York.
,
,
,
).
Best known for his role as US President John Kennedy's official photographer during his election campaign and
presidency (
).
Story
Not many informations are available about his childhood. As Jews, he and his mother had to hide themselves during World War II, finding refuge with a family that had a restaurant outside Cologne.
He came to New York in 1949. Supporting himself with odds jobs, he studied journalism and design, and in 1951, became assistant to the photographer Arnold Newman.
In 1951, he was a prize winner in Life magazine's contest for young photographers, after which Roy Stryker, the grand old man of photography, gave him an eight week assignment in Europe.
Starting in 1953 as a contributor to Jubilee magazine he won numerous awards for his photo journalistic work among gypsies and other minorities.
He subsequently opened his own studio, his photographs appearing in publications like Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Paris Match, Stern, The Saturday Evening Post, Ladie's Home Journal, Epoca and many others.
He was a staff photographer at Collier's Magazine at the time that journal folded.
In 1956, as a freelance photographer, he first met Robert Kennedy after being assigned by three different magazines to photograph him on three separate days in the same week. Robert Kennedy was then making a name for himself as counsel on the Senate's McClellan committee, taking on the Mafia and Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters union.
In 1958 Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, who admired his work, asked him to photograph his "other son, Jack."
He began working as Kennedy's campaign photographer in 1958 (
,
;
),
and became his personal photographer after he became president (
).
After the inauguration, he remained in Washington to document the Kennedy administration.
On numerous occasions, he was the only photographer present (
;
;
;
).
The photography sessions led to a close friendship with the Kennedys (
) and
picture-taking
weekends at their homes in McLean, Virginia, and Hyannis
Port, Massachussetts (
;
,
,
;
).
By mid-1962, feeling he had completed his assignment, he returned to New York and resumed his advertising, magazine and corporate work. After RFK's assassination in 1968, he sold his successful studio and moved to France.
During his self-imposed exile in Europe from 1968 to 1984, he essentially gave up photography. He founded Visual Arts, which later became Visual Arts Projects, a graphics design agency that produced books, videos, brochures and annual reports.
In 1984 he returned to New York where he again turned to photography with a passion. His assignments ranged from the New York Times Sunday Magazine to People, InStyle, and George. He extended his work to television, contributing to many documentaries on ABC, NBC, CBS, and many cable programs. He produced a forty minute video for PBS on the Kennedy Years, and worked on a major video series about jazz.
He published
over thirty books, including volumes about London's financial center,
"The City," Pope John Paul II's travels to South America, Pilgrimage,
Persepolis, the fabled city in Iran and Kentucky a loving view of that
state. His book on children What Kids Do... came out in 1998.
He also produced several books about the Kennedys.
He also dedicated his talent and time to a great deal of pro bono work. In 1992 he went to Somalia for CARE, reporting on that country's tragic disintegration, a dangerous assignment. His work there received wide television coverage. In 1996, he contributed an exhibit, "A Tribute to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis" to the Leukemia Society of America to help raise capital to start the "Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Lymphoma Research Fund."
He married 4 times, each marriage ended in divorce.
He had 3 daughters and 2 sons.
Months after his death, approximately 40 000 of Lowe's negatives were destroyed in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Link with Marilyn
He took pictures of Mariyn on February 19, 1956 during an interview she gave to Elsa Maxwell at the
Ambassador Hotel 
,
-
,
-
,
-
Website
BACK TO "PHOTOGRAPHERS" FILE