Claudia Mangiamele

A classic 1953 photograph of U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy and his fiancée Jacqueline Bouvier on the porch of the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, during a Life magazine photo shoot... Shot by renowned photographer Hy Peskin in June 1953 for a Life magazine feature titled "Senator Kennedy Goes A-Courting". . . . Jacqueline worked as the “Inquiring Camera Girl” for the Washington Times-Herald, a job that involved photographing people around the city and asking them questions for a newspaper column. Kennedy had just been elected to the Senate from Massachusetts the year before. The two had met in 1951 at a dinner party hosted by journalist Charles Bartlett, who later said he spent years trying to set them up. LIFE magazine sent photographer Hy Peskin to capture the young couple relaxing, sailing and playing football at the family home. The story ran in July 1953 under the headline “Senator Kennedy Goes A-Courting,” and it helped turn the couple into national celebrities years before the White House. They married on September 12, 1953, in Newport, Rhode Island, with more than a thousand guests at the reception. Jacqueline’s wedding dress was designed by Ann Lowe, an African American designer. Ten days before the wedding, a burst pipe flooded her studio and destroyed the dress. Lowe and her team remade it in time, and she reportedly lost money on the job rather than admit what had happened. #archaeohistories