Jackie Kennedy at Funeral

Expand

IIIFView PDF

Jackie Kennedy at Funeral

Artist Elliott Erwitt (American, born 1928)

Date1963

DimensionsOverall: 14 x 10 3/8 in. (35.6 x 26.4 cm)

Mediumsilver print

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LineGift of John Marvin

Object number

1982.220J

Not on View

Label TextAlthough Elliott Erwitt stated that he became a photographer because you “could be your person, your own boss, pick your own times,” sometimes the “times” picked him. This image of Jackie Kennedy in Arlington, Virginia, attending the funeral of her husband, the assassinated president, John F. Kennedy, was one of those times. Taken from a position close to the gravesite, Erwitt posited that he won the right to the choice spot. “I had a fixed position at the gravesite that I think I must have won at a lottery.” Erwitt is somewhat dismissive of this image, a reflection of his casual attitude towards his own photography in general, he stated, “It’s important because it’s a picture of Jackie Kennedy. Otherwise it’s just a lady at a funeral. I tell you, if a picture can become an important picture because it’s not Jackie Kennedy, because it’s not Nixon and Khrushchev, because it’s not any of those things, then it’s worth something.”Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, Framing Fame: 19th- & 20th-century Celebrity Photography, March 4–June 4, 2017.