Before she met Jack Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier was a columnist at the Washington Times-Herald, the paper's "Inquiring Camera Girl," who posed questions to the public on the streets of D.C. (while also snapping their photos with her Leica camera). She fashioned the results into a daily column, 600 of which were published in total. Carl Anthony uses these columns and other writings of hers from that time, as well as a trove of interviews with her friends and colleagues, to offer a fresh perspective on the young woman who would later become one of the world's most beloved icons.
Anthony does nice work, without fetching too far, when he ties the column’s subject matter to Jackie’s biographical time line ... Anthony astutely conveys the couple’s “mutual ambition” and shared emotional reticence ... The title Camera Girl, drawn from her column’s rubric, implies the importance of images to Anthony’s book
Whether she’s avoiding a traffic ticket after speeding in her car named Zelda, or translating books for Kennedy’s report on the history of France in Indochina, this portrait of young Jackie Bouvier shines with wit and intelligence.
Anthony delivers a well-rounded depiction of this eternally fascinating, covertly complicated, and perennially misunderstood historical and cultural icon.
