Camera-derie

The question 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' held a particular resonance for Jacques Lowe. The president's personal photographer was enjoying life in New York, having recently detached himself from the White House humdrum. He missed witnessing scenes that would haunt a nation for decades to come.

Remembering JFK, a timely collection of Lowe's intimate portraits of John F Kennedy, nonetheless contains an insight into what followed: with a photographic account of the funeral, including images of wife Jacqueline Kennedy, captured veiled and grieving going from the White House to St Matthew's Cathedral.

It's a fitting conclusion for the work of a man who, it's easy to see, recognised his subject's star quality from the beginning.

Whether they show Kennedy working hard with his wife or playing with baby Caroline, Lowe's images make clear that even from an early age Kennedy was a man with very strong family ties - or great savvy as to what looked good in the media.

What makes the book stand out from countless other offerings is the close relationship between compiler and subject.

Fallout from 9/11

The other notable point about this book is that it got published at all. All of the negatives of Lowe's 40,000 Kennedy pictures were destroyed in the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001, shortly after Lowe's death. Luckily, reproductions could be made from existing prints and contact sheets.

Thanks to Lowe's cataloguing of the president's growth as a person, we not only have a much better idea of his attitude away from the film crews, but also an idea of who he might have become, had he been allowed to get away with his - ultimately fatal - unguarded disposition.