JFK for President begins with a change of allegiance behind the camera. Cornell Capa entered the 1960 campaign season as a committed supporter of Adlai Stevenson, whose presidential bids he had covered for Life. An encounter with John F. Kennedy during the Wisconsin primary altered that course. After Kennedy secured the Democratic nomination, Capa followed his campaign for the magazine, producing the concentrated body of political photography gathered around this book.
Published by Steidl/ICP in 2004, the 152-page volume revisits work made at the intersection of magazine photojournalism, electoral politics, and the construction of a modern public figure. The project drew upon the collection of New York’s International Center of Photography, Capa’s archives, and the Time-Life Picture Collection. Its scope includes color photographs described as seldom seen, expanding the familiar monochrome vocabulary through which the Kennedy era is often remembered.
Capa brought unusual continuity to this subject. A Life staff photographer from 1946 to 1954 and later a member of Magnum Photos, he pursued sustained projects on politicians ranging from Stevenson to Barry Goldwater. Following Kennedy’s election, he also initiated Let Us Begin, a collaborative account of the administration’s first hundred days involving nine other Magnum photographers. JFK for President therefore occupies a precise place within a longer examination of political character, press access, and photographic narration—from candidacy to the exercise of office.
For a photobook collection, the volume merits attention less as presidential memorabilia than as a focused document of Capa’s political practice. Its publication by Steidl and the institution Capa founded in 1974 gives the archival return particular resonance: photographer, collection, and publishing framework meet in a reconsideration of work first made for mass circulation. The book offers collectors a compact point of entry into Capa’s understanding of photojournalism as both immediate witness and historical record.
