Beschreibung:

Substantial collection of journalistic material including press photographs, negatives, printed ephemera, and research documents pertaining to features on the presidential administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford from the career archive of photojournalist Frank Lawrence “Larry” Stevens (1921-2009). Accompanied by drafts of Stevens’s original photo essays, editing sheets, press releases, relevant newspaper clippings, and contact sheets. The majority of this archive focuses President John F. Kennedy’s presidency (1961-1963), with photographs and negatives from the inauguration if 1961, a press conference on Cuba from April 1961, at a Washington Senators game in the spring of 1961, with astronaut Alan Shepard on the occasion of the presentation of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and with world leaders including Rómulo Betancourt, Carlos Julio Arosemena, Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, Harold McMillan, and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Also with images of Kennedy and his brother Robert as senators, his daughter Caroline, and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy at an exhibition at the Smithsonian of Egyptian art and artifacts. Collection includes photographs and extensive research material for longer Kennedy features on presidential yachts Honey Fitz and Patrick J., and the President’s burial and gravesite. Additional photographs and negatives capture Eisenhower golfing and with his wife, Mamie; Johnson as a senator, vice-president, and finally president; Nixon and his wife at a GOP rally in Washington, DC; and Ford with his family. Lot completed by presidential ephemera including a press pass and program from President Kennedy’s birthday dinner, 1961; an invitation to a Thanksgiving Eve Ball held by Mamie Eisenhower; and facsimile signatures of John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy. Frank Lawrence Stevens, known professionally as Larry Stevens, was an accomplished photographer whose passion for photography would lead him from remote military outposts, to the Hollywood Hills, to America’s most hallowed corridors of power, and beyond. A Chicago native, Stevens attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago after high school and then secured an apprenticeship as a lithographic artist with a Chicago advertising agency. The onset of World War II set a new course for Stevens who enlisted with the Air Force in 1942 as an aviation cadet and by 1943 was commissioned as a second lieutenant and bombardier. Following the war Stevens moved to Hollywood, CA, where he attended the Fred Archer School of Photography. Stevens was recalled to active duty with the Air Force as a photography officer just days after completing his photography training, once again altering the young photographer’s course. Serving with the 1st Photographic Squadron and operating from the USAF headquarters at the Pentagon, Stevens would document historic flights, new programs, scientific research, and more as the head of an Air Force combat photography team. By the mid-1950s, Stevens had attained a status as an accredited White House photographer, a position that would allow him to document Presidents and countless members of the Washington elite. In later years, Stevens remained in the Washington, DC area working as the Washington correspondent for the Sunday Group Editorial Service providing photo services to major metropolitan newspapers as well as images for popular magazines of the era such as Time and Life. Never fully embracing his role as a photographer of Washington, DC insiders and political affairs, Stevens turned his lens in the late 1960s and ‘70s to documenting birds in their natural habitats and numismatic photography. Upon his death in 2009, he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Condition: Curling to many photographs, with brittleness, toning, and some staining to documents.