Grey Gardens, Before the Maysles

Photo: Henry Benson, 1971

“My wife and I drove out to Long Island in 1971, as I had seen a small article about an eviction notice for Jackie Kennedy’s relatives. I knocked on the door. Finally I heard a ‘Yoo-hoo’ coming from an upstairs window. Daughter Edie let me in. Her mother, Edith, came down for the first time in eighteen months, looked around, and said to her daughter, ‘Edie, you haven’t been doing the dusting.’ This was three years before the Maysles documentary and almost a year before Jackie visited and had the house cleaned up. In this photograph, Edith sits in front of her portrait as a young woman.”

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Grey Gardens, Before the Maysles