The Errant Æsthete

Out of the pages of the Smithsonian, about 200 never-before-published photos of the most famous first family have been released in a new book, The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family, by Shannon Thomas Perich, associate curator of photography at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Hidden from the public eye for almost 46 years, The Kennedys offers a rare glimpse of the family in photos, not as Americans have seen them in thousands of other photographs—sailing on a boat or sitting in a beautiful house, for example—but as just themselves. Photographer: Richard Avedon.

These photos of the Kennedys “almost invariably get the same reaction, and that is first, people suck in their breath and there’s a long silence,” says Shannon Thomas Perich, associate curator of photography at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. “You can hear, practically, the memories starting to unfold in people’s minds.”