JFK wedding negatives up for auction in Boston
BOSTON — A Boston auction house was set to close an online auction on 13 negatives from John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy's wedding in Newport, R.I.
The negatives feature images of the wedding party posing outside, the newlyweds leaving the church and the couple cutting the wedding cake. The Kennedys were married on Sept. 12, 1953, at St. Mary's Church in the well-heeled summer resort located about 60 miles from Boston.
RR Auction said the images are attributed to freelance photographer Frank Ataman.
Four images are of the newlyweds, two show the entire wedding party, and the remainder show the cake, reception and wedding attendees.
The negatives are in their original folder and accompanied by 5-by-4 printouts.
Life magazine chronicled the high society wedding, which drew some 700 guests to the ceremony and 1,200 to its reception. At the time, Kennedy was less than a year into his first term as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and more than seven years from his election as the country's first Roman Catholic president and its youngest elected head of state.
The auction began Sept. 26 and ends at 7 p.m. today. Bidding opened at $200 and had reached $3,141 as of early today, according to the auction house website.
The negatives are among other Kennedy documents currently being auctioned by RR Auction, including a holiday card President Kennedy and his wife signed just days before his assassination in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963. In September, RR Auction auctioned off a collection of World War II-era letters Kennedy sent to the family of a lost PT-109 crewmate for $200,000.
