Photo exhibition: Jackie Kennedy strolls through Biarritz
Until September 5, the seaside town is presenting the "Jackie and the Kennedys" exhibition at several sites around the city. The former First Lady of the United States is said to have vacationed here, but unfortunately no photographs of her stay have been found.
On the Basque coast, in front of the old train station or on the lighthouse golf course, 164 photos of the Kennedy family - some of them taken in the 1930s in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques town - are on display across Biarritz until September 5. L'Jackie and the Kennedys" exhibition revisits the lives of the legendary American presidential couple, with a special focus on the former First Lady.
"I'm visiting the exhibition several times," says Dominique, happy that the photos of "such a romantic couple" are within her 10 km radius. Christiane is less enchanted: "Jackie didn't like de Gaulle", says the Biarrote, astonished to learn that the wife of the 35th President of the United States had come to Biarritz on vacation: "But where are the photos, then? There aren't any...
At 20, JFK had "flirted with a young woman from Biarritz".
"Jackie came here when she was still a student with a friend, then came back with her children, but we don't have any photos," admits Frédéric Lecomte-Dieu, Jackie Kennedy biographer and curator of the exhibition. He did, however, find a few photos of John Kennedy, aged 20, when he came to the Basque coast in 1937 on a tour of France and Europe. "During his vacations, he flirted with a young woman from Biarritz, but she was always chaperoned by a friend," he recounts in a letter to his father Joseph Kennedy. "This lady would be over 100 years old today, so my chances of finding her are slim!
