Photographer Stanley Tretick

Biography adapted from the Stanley Tretick Online Photo Archives

American, b. 1921. d. 1999.

Stanley Tretick was born in Baltimore but raised in Washington DC, and he made the rick and powerful of that city his special subjects. He is best known for his many intimate photographs of the Kennedy family during the 60s.

He was trained in photography by the Marines serving in the Pacific theater during World War II. After the war, he returned to Washington and got a job as a copyboy and then cameraman for the Washington Post. When the Korean War began, he joined Acme Newspictures to cover the combat. In the 50s, he covered presidential campaigns and Capitol Hill for UPI. On assignment for UPI in 1960, he befriended John F. Kennedy and made many of his best pictures. When JFK took office, Tretick was given special access to the White House, and LOOK hired him to cover the President and his family. He continued to photograph for LOOK until the magazine's demise in 1971.

In October 1963, Stanley Tretick took his most famous photograph for an article about the relationship between the President and his son. While Jackie was away in Greece, Tretick was allowed to join the father and son, walking the halls of the White House and playing together in the Oval Office. As John, Jr. popped his bemused face out from under the President's desk, with Kennedy seated behind, Tretick created an image that embodies both the myth and memory of Camelot. When Kennedy was assassinated several weeks later, these pictures were already on their way to the newsstands and helped create a lasting impression of the man, communicated through photography.

Stanley Tretick died in July 1999 at the age of 77, just days after John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s plane crashed off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.