Cecil Stoughton, John F. Kennedy & Daughter Caroline, c. 1962 (printed later), C-print, 10.75" x 14", mounted 15" x 18".

Artist Biography:
Cecil W. Stoughton, who was President John F. Kennedy's White House photographer, whose photographs of JFK and his young, beautiful wife and children shared their personal lives with the American public, and who took the iconic photograph of Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as president aboard Air Force One in Texas after JFK's 1963 assassination, died at his home in Merritt Island, FL, on Monday.

He was the personal photographer to presidents Kennedy and Johnson before the position had a formal name.Stoughton had a desk in the West Wing and when the president wanted a photograph, secretary Evelyn Lincoln would push a button sounding a buzzer in the photographer's office. He said he would then run upstairs as fast as he could because he knew the president would be standing "waiting for me." He was often summoned to take a picture of the president with a visiting head of state, or in Kennedy's case to make candid photographs of the president playing in the Oval Office with his children.

Stoughton was a captain in the U.S. Army Signal Corps working in the Army's Public Information Office when his boss, Major General Chester Clifton, was picked to the be the military aide to the newly-elected President Kennedy. Stoughton told National Geographic magazine in an interview that Clifton told Kennedy that he was going to be "in the public eye" and needed a photographer in-house (one they could "control") to release photographs to the press.

Kennedy and his wife, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, were charismatic and photographic and had captured the public's interest, unlike JFK's predecessor, General Dwight Eisenhower, who was elderly, Stoughton said, so until then there had been "no need" for a White House photographer. And Kennedy's youth and his relationship with his children were the popular subjects of Stoughton's photographs, pictures unlike anything the American public had seen from the White House.

"Cecil was especially fond of a group of photographs, 12 in all, that he took in the Oval Office in October 1962," Life magazine photography editor Barbara Baker Burrows remembers.

"Jackie was out of town, and Caroline and John John danced around the president's desk as he sang and clapped in delight. As much as any, when those pictures were published around the world, they helped create the aura that later came to be called Camelot," she said.

When Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Stoughton was also riding in an open car in the motorcade and he heard three loud shots.

Back on Air Force One as Johnson choreographed the swearing-in ceremony, Stoughton balanced atop a seat and got of 19 frames on two cameras as Johnson held his hand on JFK's personal Bible, surrounded by Jackie Kennedy on one side and Lady Bird Johnson on the other. As the plane's engines roared to pull away form the tramac three people ran down the stairs to stay in Texas, one of them Stoughton with his historic film.

"I felt I had lost a brother," Stoughton told National Geographic. "He was only three years older than me, and I felt close to him, being that I was in the office with him, about ten feet away, every day. I think I probably missed him more than most."

"For all the photographs Cecil took, the swearing-in clearly remains his most important – as a photograph, and as an historic document," Burrows said. "At a traumatic time, in a single photograph, Cecil provided the essential evidence of the continuity of government. In the confusion that followed the assassination, his photograph told the world that there was a new president, and the country that it was safe."

Stoughton continued to work as a White House photographer under President Johnson for two more years after the assassination. After more than 26 years of military service he transfered to the National Park Service and worked as their chief still photographer until he retired a few weeks into the Nixon administration, working more than 31 years total in government service.
(NPPA)

Good condition. Wear to corners of mount. Some surface abrasions to mount and print.

15 x 18 in