Today’s presidential inauguration of Barack Obama brings back years of memories for Baltimore resident Jay Perskie.
Perskie, owner of Perskie Photographics in Baltimore, his father, Leon, and his grandfather, Jacob, were part of past inaugurations as the official presidential photographers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
Perskie, 63, helped with the inaugural photos of Kennedy and Johnson and led the team that photographed Carter. The Perskies’ presidential albums can be found in presidential libraries.
“We were really making a wedding album for a president,” Perskie said as he held Truman’s inaugural album, dated Jan. 20, 1949.
Since working on Carter’s photos, Perskie has stuck with photographing weddings and other events.
“After doing Carter’s photos, it was enough. It’s a lot of months and a lot of work,” Perskie said. “I was leading a staff of 75 people. You worked for months after the event. It was a lot of work and a tremendous amount of planning.”
Perskie’s grandfather started the photo business in 1889 in Atlantic City, N.J., making film and mixing chemicals to develop the photos himself. Perskie’s father moved the business to Baltimore in 1934 before he got involved with Roosevelt’s photos.
About 40 years ago, Perskie, who said he had no intention of joining his father’s business, was asked to help out “for a couple of weeks” while his father’s co-worker was sick. Perskie has been taking photos ever since.
“Almost everything of a material nature can be replaced,” Perskie said. “But you can’t replace a photograph, especially ones of these historic value.”
Perskie, who first visited the White House when he was 15, said he most enjoyed meeting U.S. leaders and seeing they were no different from him or his father.
“A lot of what I remember is some of the opportunities to work closely and personally with different people,” Perskie said.
“You understood the humanity of government and how human these people were, how fragile they were and, at times, how clueless they were,” Perskie said, laughing.
Perskie’s daughters, Hannah and Julia, are beginning to work with the business as the fourth generation of Perskie photographers.
