His images made the vision of the Kennedys Camelot

For those of a certain age, the images are forever swathed in the glittering mists of memory:

A virile John F. Kennedy stands on a bunting-bedecked stage the day after his 1960 election to the presidency; the smiling, stylish, and very pregnant Jackie Kennedy stands next to him.

Jackie, before an easel, chats happily with her little girl, Caroline.

Jackie leans over Jack, who is seated in a thronelike wicker chair; infant Caroline, on his lap, is helping herself to a mouthful of mommy's pearls.

And on and on.

These are the mythic chords of Camelot.

All the images were taken by photographer Jacques Lowe, hired in 1958 by family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy, to help "sell Jack like soap flakes," as the old man famously once said.

Lowe's images appeared everywhere. They graced the fronts and insides of all the major magazines. They appeared in numerous books. They were used on buttons and posters and post cards.

And then all 40,000 negatives, the original artifacts of Camelot, were destroyed when the World Trade Center collapsed on a storage vault on Sept. 11, 2001.

But the resourceful Newseum in Washington found 1,400 contact sheets stowed elsewhere. The results are displayed in an exhibition, "Creating Camelot: The Kennedy Photos of Jacques Lowe," that opened Friday at the National Constitution Center for a run through Sept. 7.

It consists largely of 70 photographs painstakingly cleaned and restored digitally over the course of 600 man-hours from inch-square contact images.

More than half a century ago, these images helped Jacqueline Kennedy mythologize her late husband's presidency as Camelot, realm of the just, peace-loving King Arthur and the subject of a hit Broadway musical during the Kennedy administration.

Less than two weeks after Kennedy's Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, in a Life magazine interview with Theodore H. White, she recalled her husband's favorite lyric from the show: "Don't let it be forgot / That once there was a spot / For one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot."

She told White, "There'll be great presidents again, but there'll never be another Camelot again." Lowe's photos had laid the groundwork for the nation's immediate embrace of the idea.

For the Constitution Center, the exhibition provides a number of opportunities, not least being able to show lots of glamorous images, many widely known but many others never seen before. Lowe chronicled the Kennedys virtually daily for more than three years, and he took full advantage of that access.

Jeffrey Rosen, head of the Constitution Center, in a deft turn of phrase, called the collective imagery "curated intimacy" - a nice way of referring to powerful, if somewhat hidden, media manipulation.

It was, Rosen said, probably the last time Americans had a sense of any kind of intimacy, curated or otherwise, with their leaders. It was a moment before the Age of Celebrity, before sexual peccadilloes became finger-wagging news, before all things private became fodder for the news cycle, before the Age of Assassination. Before 9/11.

"It's the combination of intimacy and the air of mystery that made the Kennedys heroes," he said.

The Constitution Center is also using the show as a frame for exploration of the post-Civil War constitutional amendments and the 20th-century civil-rights movement, which Kennedy approached with hesitation and ambivalence, Rosen said. Feeling his way politically, he did not initially push hard for civil rights legislation. Events forced his hand.

Indira Williams Babic, senior manager of visual resources at the Newseum, who oversaw restoration of the images, said the show was interesting not just for older people who remember the Kennedy administration; it was the most popular in the Newseum's history, with young people representing a large proportion of visitors.

"Camelot is a myth that will always be able to attract," she said.

Creating Camelot: The Kennedy Photos of Jacques Lowe

National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St.

Monday-Friday, 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m.;

Saturday, 9:30 a.m.–6 p.m.;

Sunday, noon–5 p.m.

Tickets: General, $14.50; 65 and older, students, age 13-18, $13; 4-12, $8; active military and 3 and under, free

215-409-6600 or constitutioncenter.orgEndText

215-854-5594

@SPSalisbury