Customer Reviews

Pictures of the Pain: Photography and the Assassination of President Kennedy

5 star:		(3)
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3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first stumbled across this book on a trip to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, and I'm sure glad I did. On a topic where so much of what is published is written to support one agenda or another, Trask's book is scrupulously (and refreshing) free from any sort of bias or slant. This exhaustive work indexes the majority of known photographs and films that were taken before, during, and after Kennedy's assassination. But moreover, Trask takes us further, giving us background on who these photographers were, what they saw, and how it affected them, be they the official White House photographer or a high schooler wielding Dad's Instamatic. It's all done in a style that's both informative and eminently readable, as well!

As a professional photographer and a history buff, this is the one book in my small JFK library that I find myself coming back to again and again. Trask has also produced a catalogue for the camera exhibit at the Sixth Floor Museum that makes an excellent companion volume to Pictures of the Pain..regrettably, it doesn't seem to be available on Amazon.com. ....

A large, fascinating volume devoted to all those photographers who were snapping away on November 22, 1963. There are several pictures presented here that I'd never seen published anywhere else, particularly some shots taken in Fort Worth of the impromptu gathering outside JFK's hotel on the drizzly Friday morning of November 22nd, and a shot or two snapped from the doorway of Air Force One just upon Mr. Kennedy's arrival at Love Field in Dallas.

The background stories on the photogs are interesting, as are the individual stories of how each of these cameramen came to be involved in the events of November 1963.

My only complaint would be that many of the pictures presented in the book are much too small in size, in my opinion. I would have preferred seeing these photos on a much larger, grander scale. However, there are several pictures that are larger, size-wise, as well. But having a magnifying glass handy as you turn these intriguing pages wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

My (new) copy of "Pictures Of The Pain" arrived nicely wrapped in plastic, much like a sealed shrinkwrapped VHS video or DVD, which was a nice surprise. This method of packaging, unusual in my experience with regards to bound printed matter, ensures (for the most part) a dust-free, pristine copy of the product. Very nice.

If you *think* you've seen all there was to see regarding the many pictures taken on that terrible day in 1963, you might just be surprised to find a few pics that have eluded your eye in this fine volume by Richard B. Trask.

Incredible collection of virtually all the photos taken that weekend. The story of each of the photographers (and Trasks' detailed interviews with a lot of them) make this a volume to refer to for years to come.


Ty Newcomb

An amazing piece of research by Trask, however his decision to self-publish ultimately makes the book a very flawed piece of work. This is a book about the photos and photographers, yet the photos are reproduced in very poor quality and small size, with not a single photo in color (except for the photo on the dust jacket), making these important pieces of "evidence" nearly impossible to study. It also results in him describing, in minute detail, nearly all of the photos. It seems to be it would have been much more effective and compelling to reproduce the photos with more quality and minimize the long-winded descriptions.

Typos, typesetting mistakes (entire lines missing) and grammatical errors abound, which definitely diminish the scholarly impact.

Structurally, the book is broken up into chapters that follow a single photographer, or small groups of photographers, through day of (and sometimes beyond) the assassination. Which results in the story of the event being told over and over and over again, just from (often only slightly) different points of view. Often Trask refers to one photographer appearing in the photographs of another, but never cross-references these photos from chapter-to-chapter, leaving the reader to hunt for the photos he is describing. Until the final few chapters, that is, at which point he suddenly and inexplicably decides to include these cross-references.

Trask goes to great pains in his introduction to say that he is not interested in proving or disproving any of the theories either for or against a conspiracy or lone gunmen. However, as the book progresses, it is clear that he is biased towards the lone gunman explanation. While I do not disagree with him, I find his claims of objectivity to be bogus, and wish he would have toned down his editorializing and stuck to the stories of the photographers and their images.

The end result is an excellent piece of research and an interesting look at history, but ultimately a shoddy publication and a somewhat annoying read.

If you would like to spend about forty bucks for a book of fuzzy black and white photos about an inch or two square, with zero color photos of any size, then this is your book.

A single good example of Richard B. Trask's "thinking" in this book is his observation that the bunched-up appearance of President Kennedy's jacket in a photograph that Trask is describing allows the single bullet theory to be correct. If this kind of lone nutter sensibility doesn't bother you too much, there are things here to weigh and consider. This book is far superior to the moral imbecility of a Posner, and is worth dipping into now and then.