The final touches are going up at the Durham's new exhibit, opening Saturday. It all centers around the first families that really embraced the public eye.
"Creating Camelot" features 70 photos from Kennedy family photographer Jacques Lowe. They're images that were almost lost.
"The negatives were actually stored in a bank vault in the world trade center. So on 9/11, all of the negatives were lost. He {Lowe} kept the contact sheets in a different location at his home. So they were able to recreate those images from those contact sheets," Jessica Brummer with the Durham said.
If the Kennedy family had an instagram account, it would look like this. It follows the early campaign days, including a picture from a backyard stop in Omaha in 1960. There's also some neat behind the scenes photos from key political moments in history. Lowe was offered the job as the white house photographer, but he actually turned it down. We don't know why, but if he didn't we might never had gotten some of the very intimate family pictures with the Kennedy family.
The exhibit is on loan from the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Omaha is only the third city that has shown it.
In addition to some videos, you can actually scan through some of the contact sheets from the 40,000 pictures Lowe took of John, Jackie, and the Kennedy family. The sheets include ones with circles and X's, ones the president and his photographer crossed off the list. There's even a few where the Kennedy's are blinking.
"Creating Camelot" is at the Durham Museum from Feb. 13, 2016 to May 8, 2016. For additional events related to the exhibit, visit here.
