Amateur Photographer Magazine

 Kennedy anniversary update: 'Settlement' over loss of JFK photo archive in 9/11 -

Monday 12th November 2007

Chris Cheesman

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.

The pictures represented almost all of the photographer's Kennedy images. Most had never been published, many capturing historic moments of President John F Kennedy at work and play.

JFK was killed by an assassin's bullets in Dallas on 22 November 1963. This month marks the 44th anniversary of Kennedy's death.

Lowe, who died in May 2001 aged 71, had opened a safe deposit account at JP Morgan Chase in 1990.

When the photographer's daughter Thomasina opened the safe in 2002, she discovered that the uninsured negatives had been reduced to a pile of ash and debris.

Following lengthy legal negotiations Thomasina, who lives in London, today told Amateur Photographer (AP) magazine that the Lowe family has reached a 'confidential settlement' with JP Morgan Chase.

Thomasina told us: 'I am happy that both parties have managed to reach an agreement. It helps to put things to rest.'

She added: 'It's been a long process but I am satisfied about the end result - as much as I can be.'

We understand that the bank was not legally obliged to pay compensation for the loss of the safe's contents but agreed to pay an amount in acknowledgement of the loss.

As we reported in 2002, Thomasina had to wait many months before she was allowed access to the damaged safe following the 9/11 horror.

Under the terms of the financial agreement details of the amount paid by the bank are strictly confidential, according to the Lowe family.

The family say they are unsure how they will go about re-building the archive following the loss of the negatives.

• In 2002, AP broke the news that around 180 images from the archive had escaped 9/11. Thomasina Lowe discovered that 180 negatives, which had been removed for printing, had not been returned to the bank before 11 September 2001. The surviving strips of negatives represented five of her father's films and most of the pictures had never before been published

Picture (below): This contact sheet was printed from negatives that escaped the 9/11 carnage. They record JFK's first ever meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev Photo credit: The estate of Jacques Lowe



See next week's issue of Amateur Photographer, in shops from Tuesday 27 November.



AP has been following this story closely since it first broke.

Click on the following pages to read our 2002 story on the battle to salvage the missing archive:

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