Jacques Lowe chose to leave the negatives in the JP Morgan vault of the World Trade Center
because he believed they would be safe there and because he was six blocks away from them
and felt psychologically they were under his bed.
ANOTHER ATTACK ON JFK's IMAGE
But no sooner had he died -- in May 2001 at the age of 71 --
than his cherished negatives were destroyed
four months later on September 11.
Who would have ever nightmared that they could do more in their attempts to destroy JFK than they've already done. But now they've LITERALLY destroyed his image. It's another spiritual loss to the world. ~ Jackie Jura
**UPDATE: Nov 12, 2007: Lowe's family settles with bank for loss of negatives
*UPDATE: Jun 22, 2002: Lowe's family suspects negatives weren't destroyed but removed from vault by someone to collect or sell on black market
Gone in a flash: When the World Trade Center came crashing down,
beneath it lay the archives of photographer Jacques Lowe,
whose images of the Kennedys helped create Camelot.
All, it seems, were lost in the inferno.
National Post, Dec 14, 2001
"On September 11, 2001 the entire archive of Kennedy photographs -- some 40,000 negatives which were held in the J.P Morgan Chase & Co vault at 5 World Trade Center -- was lost in the destruction of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
***drawing of WTC buildings, including #5 where Lowe's negatives were stored
The photographs recorded many of the pivotal moments in the private and public lives of America's most famous political family. The destruction of the negatives ranks among the highest losses to the history of photography.
"The negatives were not insured and there are no copies. From now on, existing prints, which were made of only about 300 to 400 of the photographs, are all that will be left. The prints are only the tip of the iceberg of what was photographed."
The tragedy is made even worse by the fact that:
"The photographer who took the photos was among the most careful of photographers. He stored his precious negatives in a fireproof bank vault and closely monitored their use. When a publication or museum wanted his prints, he personally took the negatives to the lab for printing. When the job was done, he retrieved them himself. His name was Jacques Lowe.
"Lowe first photographed the Kennedy family in the mid-1950s and was later invited to cover John F Kennedy's run for the presidency. Along the way Lowe became friendly with the family, establishing particularly close ties with Bobby, his daughter said.
"He was given a unique level of access to the White House and continued to photograph the family after the assassination. It was Bobby Kennedy's 1968 assassination that led Lowe to shutter his studio and move to Europe. After 1968 he rarely photographed the family.
"His daughter says he chose to leave the negatives in the JP Morgan vault of the World Trade Center because he believed they would be safe there and because he was six blocks away from them and felt psychologically they were under his bed."
But no sooner had he died -- in May 2001 at the age of 71 -- than his cherished negatives were destroyed four months later on September 11.
"The loss is a harsh blow to Lowe's five chldren, who relied on the photographs for an emotional link to their father's esthetic and also for financial support. 'It's so terrible it's impossible to really think about it sometimes', said his daughter.
"J.P. Morgan Chase has said the negatives might be recovered, but then said the search was being abandoned, and then reversed course again and promised to sift through the rubble looking for the safety deposit box.
"Lowe's daughter may join an existing lawsuit against the bank to ensure they do all they can to recover the images, but the few safes located by rescue officials have been to no avail.
"'They were able to open a couple of safes and what they found was just ash,' she said. 'It must have been like an oven in there.'"
"The vaporization of the JFK negatives is one more irretrievable loss experienced by the world that day. It's an attack against humanity."
**'Settlement' over loss of JFK photo archive in 9/11. Amateur Photographer, Nov 12, 2007
The estate of President John F Kennedy's personal photographer Jacques Lowe has accepted an undisclosed sum from JP Morgan Chase bank over the loss of 40,000 negatives in 9/11. Jacques Lowe's treasured archive had been stored in a safe deposit box, housed within the vaults of 5 World Trade Center – a building next to the twin towers destroyed in the terrorist attacks on New York.
Caroline Kennedy's new Christmas book. USA Today, Nov 1, 2007
...Researchers for Kennedy's latest anthology, A Family Christmas (Hyperion, $26.95, out today), found Caroline's letter in the family archives....Kennedy chose a wide range of Christmas poems, songs, Biblical verse and essays, from David Sedaris, the satirist, to Cotton Mather, the puritan. The book includes a 1961 letter from her father, reassuring a girl in Michigan that the Russians wouldn't bomb Santa Claus...The then-3-year-old Caroline also is featured in a new collection of poignant photographs — most previously unpublished — by Richard Avedon, The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family (Collins, $29.95)....She hasn't seen the book or the spread from it in the new Vanity Fair. "I'm busy. It's usually nice to look at old photographs, but I don't do it that much."...
*World Trade Center Kennedy photo intrique rolls on. Amateur Photographer, Jun 22, 2002
... Though the bulk of the archive may be lost forever, the story seems far from buried. It has since been confirmed that the lock on the safe containing the negs was missing when Thomasina opened it three month's ago to see if anything remained. This raised her suspicions that the archive may have been removed by someone, rather than being destroyed in the intense heat that followed the attacks. 'It [the door] was ajar. I literally just had to push it open with my fingers,' says Thomasina, adding that she thought the safe looked in fairly good condition when the bank showed it to her. She says there was a 'hole' where the lock had once been and finds it odd that her father's safe was empty....While she accepts that the images may have been reduced to ash and the safes' contents scattered as it crashed to the ground, praying on Thomasina's mind is the fact that these were historic images of Kennedy, of which only a few hundred were ever published. However unlikely, she puts forward a number of alternatives to the images being destroyed by fire. She says all sort of possibilities have been suggested to her such as the Mafia helping themselves to the images, thereby perpetuating some kind of Kennedy conspiracy theory - she has been told that maybe only 300-400 photos were ever published because there were images of Kennedy that were not meant for the world to see and so were removed. Or, more likely, she believes a 'mad collector' may have plucked them from the wreckage - keen to exploit any future potential value in the images by selling them on the black market. 'People have said: 'Why would they steal the negatives – what are they going to do with them?'. The truth is that, 30 to 40 years from now, they could do lots of things with them when I'm not around.' To add to her angst, Thomasina claims that the reference number she saw chalked on the safe door when she opened it did not appear to correspond to the number she had in her papers. The bank, adamant that the box was hers, says that the only items which would have survived the heat of the attacks were precious stones and metals...
JFK PHOTOS BY JACQUES LOWE (reader Kathryn wonders about value of a JFK photo by Lowe she owns)
***This drawing, taken from MUSLIMS DEFY LAWS OF PHYSICS shows the two WTC towers (black) and the paths of the attacking aircraft (red). Within the profile of the twin towers (1 and 2), the shape of the central core is shown by the green rectangle. WTC buildings 1 through 6 are numbered; WTC 7, north of 6, is not shown. See COLLAPSE OF 7 WTC
17.Falsification of Past and JFK TRUTH & UNTRUTH
Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~
email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
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