JFK

Tomorrow is--it feels startling to say this--the 60th anniversary of JFK's death.

Below is a photograph that my brother took the weekend of the assassination (though as the date at the top of the picture indicates, it was not developed until March of 1964).  

The picture shows the screen of a black and white TV set our family had; the set was in a room off of our dining room.  The image is of the President's casket, on Sunday, November 24th--I believe just after it had been placed on the bier, by the military service members who had carried the casket into the Rotunda of the Capitol building. 

My brother was ten when he took the picture (I was seven). It looks to me as though two window shades in the room had been pulled down (though not entirely), one on each side of the TV set; my brother (who a handful of years later began what would become a photography career), evidently knew what to do to insure that the image would come out properly. Yet there is, nonetheless, a small imperfection at the near-center of the flag which covered the casket--a slight intrusion of white light, which perhaps came from another window in the room (there were several), or possibly from some unanticipated reflection.

There is, to me, an eeriness to the photograph--maybe, in part, due to the darkness surrounding the television screen (a darkness, one could say, befitting the tragedy which had occurred two days before). Yet the photograph--showing the TV image, and the accompanying darkness--conveys, I think, a grim sort of beauty.