DUST!

Jacques Lowe was an internationally renowned photographer and photojournalist best known for his portraits of the big names in politics, business, and entertainment. He contributed to TIME, LIFE, Saturday Evening Post, etc. He got to know the Kennedys and subsequently went on to document JFK’s campaign, the Kennedy White House, and the life of the first family. All of this resulted in six books, numerous international exhibitions, television shows, and magazine covers. Reviewers credited Lowe's “natural, warm, and intimate images of the president and his family and the workings of the presidency with keeping alive the Kennedy flame for generations yet to come.” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., (“court historian” for the Kennedys) said that “Jacques Lowe was monumentally self-effacing. This, I believe, is why his camera caught so much human truth. There are no orchestrated photo-opportunities here.”

Lowe's work—and this includes much more than his work with the Kennedys—is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Elysée Museum in Lausanne, the European Center of Photography in Paris, the Kennedy Library Museum in Boston, the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, as well as in hundreds of private and institutional collections. Before he died in 2001, he was honored with the Crystal Eagle Award for Impact on Photo Journalism, a lifetime achievement award granted by the School of Journalism, University of Missouri and the Eastman Kodak Company. It was only the fourth time the award has been granted.

Mr. Lowe’s daughter, Thomasina, recalls how attached her father was to his Kennedy negatives. When he moved to Europe in the late 60s, these negatives had a plane seat for themselves, next to their creator. He was denied insurance on those pictures, because insurance companies deemed them priceless. She writes: “I went with him on countless occasions to the J.P. Morgan Chase Bank vault to retrieve or return negatives. There was always an air of solemnity in the room when he reached for one of the many manila envelopes as though what we were about to see and touch would bring us closer to something historic. Back out on the street, walking up West Broadway, he clutched his treasure trove until it was safe and sound in his studio.”

You might be interested to know that this J. P. Morgan Chase vault was located in the World Trade Center. And, yes, the negatives—all 40,000 of them—perished ten years ago today.

I close my eyes,

Only for a moment and the moment's gone;

All my dreams

Pass before my eyes a curiosity;

Dust in the wind,

All they are is dust in the wind!

Same old song,

Just a drop of water in an endless sea;

All we do

Crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see;

Dust in the wind,

All we are is dust in the wind!

Kansas, 1977

“Naked I came from my mother's womb,

And naked I shall return there.”

Job 1:21

Indeed! We came without anything, we go without anything.

But we can send things across … while we are still alive.

Do not store up for yourselves

treasures on earth,

where moth and rust destroy, and

where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves

treasures in heaven,

where neither moth nor rust destroys, and

where thieves do not break in or steal.

Matthew 6:19–20

For children of God this means …

… to do good, to be rich in good works …,

storing up for themselves

the treasure of a good foundation

for the future ….

1 Timothy 6:18–19

Everything else is “dust in the wind.”