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An advertising photograph taken by St. Petersburg photographer Jack Swenningsen was taken in a back yard on Treasure Island of models enjoying the Florida outdoors. It ran in many northern publications to attract people to the State in the 1960’s.
ST. PETERSBURG -- Know what Florida needs right now? It needs Jack Swenningsen.
Jack Swenningsen!
Yes, Jack Swenningsen, old coot idea man, famed photographer and, if you must know, accordion master. Jack Swenningsen, who wants to return Florida to glory, wants to bring those vanishing tourists back, wants to keep old Floridians from leaving — in fact, wants to make old Floridians fall in love with Florida again.
Jack Swenningsen!
Get out of his way, man. Give him a camera, a palm tree and two cavorting girls in bikinis. Ol' Jack — that's what he calls himself — will grab his camera and capture the dream.
"While I'm thinking about it, I'd want a beach ball in the picture, too!''
Jack Swenningsen! Age 91! Brimming with ideas and energy still!
Jack Swenningsen, the man who invented Florida!
Ponce de Leon. William Bartram. Andrew Jackson. Chief Osceola. Henry Flagler. Forget the names in the history books. The one you need to know is Jack Swenningsen.
In 1948, the young advertising hotshot moved from Brooklyn to St. Petersburg to escape the cold. He knocked on the door of Florida Speaks magazine, introduced himself as "The Picture Man'' and was instantly hired.
Florida Speaks was a monthly chamber-of-commerce-type magazine marketed to frozen northerners.
The war was over. Folks felt optimistic about the future. Sure, a returning GI could seek his fortune in snowbound Ohio, Michigan or Wisconsin. Or he and the wife could buy themselves a sleepy bungalow in Florida.
Jack Swenningsen drove 100,000 miles around the peninsula for decades, taking dreamy come-to-Florida photographs. Most were published in Florida Speaks, but many showed up in advertising brochures and Sunday newspaper supplements all over the United States. The Florida he documented didn't quite exist, of course. How could it? So he invented an ideal to go with the pictures.
Let's say a couple, whom we'll call Bea and Ernie, pick up the Chicago American on the way home from Sunday Mass. On a gray January morning the windy streets are piled with snow.
Ernie asks, "Bea, aren't you tired of the snow?''
Bea, who slipped on ice the day before and bruised her behind, is exhausted. Her adorable infant son always has a runny nose.
"Look at this picture in the American, Bea. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a place like this?''
Bea isn't sure. It would mean moving away from friends and family.
"Look at this photo,'' says Ernie, doing the hard sell. "If we lived in Florida, we'd reach out the back door and pick oranges for breakfast. We'd catch fish in the canal behind the house. Coconuts, Bea! We'll have our own coconut tree!''
Jack Swenningsen!
• • •
He got a Kodak folding vest camera when he was 14. He developed film in the basement next to a pile of coal. He graduated with an advertising degree from Pratt Institute, served in Italy during the war and hustled to make a living afterward.
Then he moved his family to Florida.
"You can't imagine what Florida was like to a Brooklyn Yankee like me! The way I saw Florida, it was a fairy land! All pristine! Virgin! I'd never seen such trees! Beautiful springs! Big animals! Beaches. WHAT BEACHES WE HAVE! How could anyone want to live anywhere else?''
Yet there was always room for improvement.
Traveling through Florida, Jack carried important props in his station wagon. He carried beach balls, bikinis, straw hats, oranges and fishing poles. He carried chaise longues, firewood, croquet sets.
Just in case he had to spice up a photo.
Jack Swenningsen's pictorial Florida lacked mosquitoes, humidity, hurricanes and other unpleasantness. It was balmy and breezy, ol' Jack's Florida, a nice place to drink fresh-squeezed OJ while looking at palm trees and puffy clouds.
In St. Petersburg, he was well known to the Kay Lyons Charm School and its bevy of beautiful girls — "goils" in Jack's Brooklynese — whom he posed in photographs. He didn't pay the goils, but often he provided tasteful red bikinis for them to wear in the beach pictures.
Jack Swenningsen!
Jack and his wife — he and Amelia married 67 years ago — live in a perfect bungalow in western St. Petersburg near the railroad tracks. Jack's excellent photos line the living room walls; in a storage room next to the garage are a dozen boxes of old photographs perfectly preserved, ready to publish right now if God or Gov. Crist needs them.
Ol' Jack will tell you what's wrong with Florida today. Wholesome virtues have too often been replaced by the tabloid world of Miami Vice. Crime. Drugs. High taxes. No wonder the latest statistics are glum about Florida's tourism and population growth.
The challenge makes ol' Jack want to grab a Speed Graphic 4 by 5 and take a field trip.
No dirty photos of pouting, half-nude women on the beach for Jack Swenningsen. No hairy men with earrings and tattoos sitting on scary motorcycles at the traffic light next to your elderly mother in her sensible Dodge. No gangbangers! No insurance agents! No tax collectors!
Just nice folks living the Florida lifestyle in the shade of a coconut tree.
He would pose a freckled-face kid on the dock with a fishing pole. (Of course he'd tie a rock to the line and toss it over.) Pole bends! Fish on!
Now, ambling into the photo, he'd pose a grandfatherly figure — somebody right out of a Norman Rockwell calendar — wearing Bermuda shorts, smoking a pipe and carrying a fishing rod. Grandpa, by the way, would be grinning and displaying a big fat fish (that Jack bought at the seafood market on the way over).
Finally, in the foreground, he would pose his trademark wholesome sunbathers in red bikinis. They would be offering good-natured advice to a handsome guy wearing a goofy chef's hat who is preparing to grill the fish.
Jack Swenningsen!
For an instant the corners of ol' Jack's upbeat mouth droop south.
"A lot of people moved here. Maybe too many. Maybe I was too good. Sometimes I feel guilty. . . . Better not put that in the paper.''
Jack Swenningsen!
Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at klink@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8727.
[Last modified: Apr 08, 2008 05:07 PM]
Comments on this article
by Lenny
Apr 7, 2008 5:25 PM
When I first met Jack (1988) and he told me the stories about the photographs he publshied back in the 50's.. I told him that the Florida population explosion.. and traffic, etc.. was "All His Fault!" I'm glad Jack is fi
by Lenny
Apr 7, 2008 5:25 PM
You can read all about Jack Swenningsen, the extraordinary Accordionist, here: http://www.cordeenman.com/js/ - he still entertains thousands of Floridians every year as a mainstay of the Gulfport Senior's Harmonica Club Band.
by RICK
Apr 7, 2008 9:58 AM
Jack Swenningsen is an inspiration, but the it's high costs that are driving people away. Housing needs to fall further believe it or not it’s still not affordable .Plus high insurance, taxes ,gas ,utilities its not paradise any more here.
by C.
Apr 7, 2008 9:58 AM
Nice story.
by Joe
Apr 7, 2008 9:58 AM
Florida has gone down and is no longer the "utopia" it was. Greed and crime has overtaken the state.
I, a Florida born resident, have moved from the state and will not return except to visit family and friends.
The death of Florida
by Bob
Apr 7, 2008 9:57 AM
Heh, I didn't know there was an individual to blame. I lasted from birth, for sixty years there. I don't think he can fake a picture that would make me return to that sewer.
by Donna
Apr 7, 2008 9:55 AM
What a wonderful story! This story is well written and took me back to a time when I was a little girl and would look at post cards and daydream about being on that spot having fun. Too back we do not have that creativity now.
by Pasco Mom
Apr 7, 2008 9:54 AM
How refreshing to read an upbeat, real piece of community details.
by Jen
Apr 7, 2008 9:54 AM
It would be nice to see family values instead of skin!
by Jennifer
Apr 7, 2008 9:54 AM
I am Jack's niece, the one wearing blue shorts in the above picture and I LOVE this story! My uncle is a living legend and I am thrilled that you have chosen to acknowledge him. Thanks for a great story.
by Angie
Apr 7, 2008 9:54 AM
Perhaps many of us who moved here originally had those scenes in our minds as we raced to Florida, however I am still very happy to live here.
by Lin
Apr 7, 2008 9:54 AM
In that first photo Jack looks just like the barber in fictional Mayberry on the Andy Griffith show. I think I saw some of his fictional posed models with fish pictures years ago. Good story.
by Grumpy
Apr 7, 2008 9:53 AM
Great story!! This state needs more people like this to overcome the "Don't move to Florida because of hurricanes, high taxes and high insurance problems."
by Tom
Apr 7, 2008 9:53 AM
Yes, Jack Swenningsen's photos lured countless people to Florida, and the Florida we are left with today is the result. Many people who can afford to are moving away to live in places less crowed, less taxed and with more open vistas. There is h
by neil
Apr 7, 2008 9:52 AM
What a wonderful story. I hope he has a plan for the disposition of his archive of photos or negatives. What a shame it would be to have them disappear. Congratulations Jack!!
by tim
Apr 4, 2008 12:20 PM
Bon fires, Australian pine trees and "the throwing of objects" ie: beachballs, are illegal on public beaches now. Unfortunately the same people Jack lured down here brought with them their ability to pass a bevy of "stoi-ped"
by rich
Apr 4, 2008 12:19 PM
Jeff Klinkenberg! Great story!
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