SID AVERY IS COOL

Via Vanity Fair

Hollywood’s Private Eye

"Though he captured many of golden-age Hollywood’s greatest stars as the public had never seen them before—Marlon Brando taking out the trash, Elizabeth Taylor sunbathing, Anthony Perkins waxing his car—photographer Sid Avery slipped into oblivion, dying in 2002 without the renown he might have expected. Michael Callahan recalls Avery’s quiet mastery, his guileless charm, and his poignant final shot: a portrait of a new generation of movie talents" Full article here.

 

 

 

 

 

Related: When Cool Was King

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STAR GLOW: Sid Avery Captured Young Hollywood Shining with Health and Success

 

 

Steve McQueen in his 1957 Jaguar XKSS  ©mptv

Via The Albuquerque Journal
By Kate McGraw / For the Journal on Fri, Feb 1, 2013

 

 

There is a wistful melancholy about viewing the photographs that Sid Avery took during Hollywood’s most recent golden age, the 1940s to 1960s. Audrey Hepburn has bicycled up to the camera to show off her rather smug Cairn terrier. Steve McQueen is admiring his new pistol, as well as his new Jaguar. Marlon Brando has stopped playing his bongo drums long enough to give the photographer a pensive pose. Elizabeth Taylor is stretching her shoulders into the sun on the set of “Giant.” Rock Hudson has stepped out of the shower and gleefully grabbed a ringing phone – he looks very gay, in every sense of that overused word.

Marlon Brando, At Home With Bongos, 1955

©mptv

Dean Martin, like his contemporaries, is happy and self-satisfied as he readies a song for recording. All of them are shining with health and youth and success, with not a thought for any disease or age that might lie ahead. Only Frank Sinatra looks slightly wary, as if he sensed perhaps, on the edge of the frame, some intimation of mortality.

Frank Sinatra with camera, Capitol Records

©mptv

These and other photographs by the late Hollywood photographer Sid Avery, fill a major exhibition opening today at Monroe Gallery of Photography on Don Gaspar. The exhibition, which will be up through March 24, is being opened concurrent with the publication of a new book: “The Art of the Hollywood Snapshot.” Avery’s son Ron, curator and archivist of his father’s work, will attend the public reception.

Elizabeth Taylor Sunning Herself on the Marfa, Texas Set of "Giant"

©mptv

Monroe Gallery of Photography, owned by Sidney and Michelle Monroe, specializes in classic black and white photography with an emphasis on humanist and photojournalist imagery. The gallery features work by more than 50 renowned photographers and also represents a select group of contemporary and emerging photographers. The Avery show, of which all prints are for sale, is a major coup, Sidney Monroe said. “He was one of the greatest names in Hollywood photography in the 1950s and ’60s,” Monroe said.
The book, he added, “is a sumptuous, long-overdue tribute to Avery’s prolific talent.” The text of the book was written by Ron Avery. It was edited by Tony Nourmand and additional text was written by Alison Elangasinghe and Bruce McBroom. The design is by Graham Marsh.


Avery (1918 – 2002) was born in Akron, Ohio, and introduced to photography when he was 7 years old. By the time he was 20, he had begun to photograph celebrities in nightclubs for fan magazines. In 1939, at 21, he opened his own Hollywood studio for portraiture and publicity photographs.   From 1941 to 1945, Avery was assigned to the Pictorial Service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in London and Paris. In London, the young man supervised the Army’s official photographic history of the war.


In 1946, Avery re-established his studio in Hollywood, where he got celebrity portrait assignments from Life magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He also became the photography editor of Photoplay, the movie magazine of the time. In 1947, while he was continuing to contribute to numerous magazines, he formed Avery and Associates to photograph commercial accounts. Avery directed television commercials and developed innovative special effects.


In 1985, Avery retired from directing and producing TV commercials to begin assembling the Motion Picture and Television Photographic Archive, which many regard as his greatest legacy. The foundation’s purpose was to preserve, document and exhibit the work of notable photographers.


His own archive, called mptvimages, now has more than a million historic Hollywood images on file and is recognized as one of the great archives of Hollywood imagery. Ron Avery runs the archive today. The new book was created entirely from its depths and includes never-before-seen pictures, contact sheets and other materials.


Avery was best known for capturing the private moments of legendary Hollywood celebrities like Taylor, Hudson, James Dean, Brando, Humphrey Bogart and Hepburn, who were showcased in his book, “Hollywood at Home.” He was the only photographer to shoot both the original 1960 cast of “Ocean’s Eleven” and the cast of the 2001 remake, recreating his iconic group shot around a pool table. He believed in capturing moments.


Avery taught at the University of California at Los Angeles and lectured at several other institutions and at museums. His own works are included in numerous museums and private collections.


Sid Avery died in 2002 at age 84. His work, however, lives on – and in that way, so do his subjects.

If you go WHAT: Sid Avery: “The Art of the Hollywood Snapshot”
WHEN: Today through March 24; opening reception 5-7 p.m. today.
Coincides with the publication of the new book, “The Art of the Hollywood Snapshot”
(The exhibition contunues through March 28, 2013)
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar
CONTACT: (505) 992-08

To Do Friday: Sid Avery Exhibit

 

One of Sid's iconic shots c. mptv

Via The Santa Fe Reporter

Oh, Snap!
New photographic exhibit is as smooth as fine Corinthian leather
Enrique Limón

Popular culture can thank the late Sid Avery for some of the most candid and intimate shots of Golden Age Hollywood celebrities.

His were slice-of-life photographs that revealed a different side to the icons of the day: real, non-posed images of Dean Martin hamming it up inside a hotel room; Rock Hudson taking a phone call wearing nothing but a bath towel; Marlon Brando playing an impromptu bongos set; Elizabeth Taylor basking in the Marfa, Texas sun on the set of Giant.

“He had an innate ability to get people to relax and be themselves in front of the camera,” Avery’s son Ron tells SFR. “He was also a naturally intuitive, bright guy—not necessarily school smart, but street smart, I think, is what you would call it.”

Based in Los Angeles, Ron continues his father’s legacy at the helm of the Motion Picture and Television Photographic Archive, which handles his dad’s and other celebrated photographers’ bodies of work. He’s also personally overseeing Monroe Gallery’s upcoming The Art of the Hollywood Snapshot exhibit, concurrent with the publication of an eponymous book.

Legendary as he was, Avery doesn’t think his father would fare too well in today’s tabloid-driven, crotch-shot-hungry insta-market.

“He wouldn’t print or let a picture be published if the celebrity had an unflattering look on their face, or [if] it just wasn’t showing them in a good light,” Avery says. “I don’t think he ever really pissed anybody off, either. Today, people are published picking their nose or doing whatever in public…or not even in public.”

Sid’s approach was such, his son recalls, that he managed to win over even the toughest subjects like Humphrey Bogart, who at first was apprehensive, and eventually invited the photog on sailing excursions.

Avery also developed an affinity with other giants of the time, such as Ernest Borgnine and Audrey Hepburn. He was one of the select few outside Frank Sinatra’s circle, his son points out, allowed to refer to the crooner simply by his first name.

“You’ve just got a feeling that, ‘Wow, this is what it really would have been like to just sit in these people’s houses, or ride with them in the car or be with them,’” Avery says of his progenitor’s style.

The imagemaker—who at one point served in the Army Pictorial Service during WWII—would later delve into the world of advertising and directing, and was the man responsible for the notorious Ricardo Montalbán Chrysler Cordoba campaign.

Along with a slew of memorable pictures, the show also includes “fresh and different” never-before-seen outtakes and contact sheets, Ron adds, allowing attendees to take in the full grasp of Avery’s career.

“I think this is a real good compilation of where Dad started, where he wound up and everything in between,” Ron says. “Because we pretty much cover him from before the war until [his passing in] 2001.”

Sid Avery: The Art of the Hollywood Snapshot

5-7 pm Friday, Feb. 1. Free.
Monroe Gallery of Photography


112 Don Gaspar Ave., 992-0800

STEVE SCHAPIRO: "“I don’t think I’ve yet taken my most important photograph"

 

Barbra Streisand, 1970. 'We shot this at her house in Malibu. She has extremely good taste and strong ideas about how pictures should be.'

Photo: Steve Schapiro

 Via The Telegraph


Steve Schapiro: access all areas


How did photographer Steve Schapiro go from documenting the lives of drug addicts and immigrants to spending months trailing Hollywood’s biggest stars? ‘I was quiet and polite,’ he tells Lucy Davies

Steve Schapiro learnt not to be intimidated by fame at an early age. As a teenager, long before he became a fixture of film sets and rock star mansions, Schapiro was determined to become “the world’s greatest novelist”. So he enrolled at Bard College in upstate New York, where he had tutorials with author Saul Bellow; they walked in the woods together, discussing Dostoevsky. But after a five-week sojourn in Paris and Spain working through the night on a novel, he realised there were “only four good pages in the whole thing. It was at that point I took up photography.”

Until then, it had been his hobby – something to do on holiday. He had a small, Bakelite camera called an Argoflex that he sometimes took outside on the streets near his home in the Bronx. “It seemed to me that the best thing you could do was work for Life magazine, so I began my own projects that were similar to the things they published – drug addicts in East Harlem, Haight Ashbury. I would keep going back to Life every few weeks to persuade them to hire me.”

In 1959, his story on migrant workers in Arkansas was picked up by a small magazine called Jubilee: “The New York Times saw it and asked if they could use one on their cover. It was really a terrific moment for someone just starting out.”

Life finally commissioned him – a portrait of Patrick Dennis, author of hit comic novel Auntie Mame. “I’d heard that Life photographers liked to photograph people in a bathtub – I don’t think it was necessarily true – but I brought along some bubble bath and persuaded him to do it. It ran full page.” The rest of the pack followed suit: Look, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone.

“Even though I was in my twenties, I looked about 16, and I was quiet and polite. Everyone liked me. I travelled with Bobby Kennedy, I photographed the Selma March with Martin Luther King. I did Andy Warhol in The Factory and Muhammad Ali. I never knew where I would be in two days because I was always on the plane.”

Alongside the political stories he was making his name on the entertainment pages. His photograph of Dustin Hoffman for Look became the logo for Midnight Cowboy, then Otto Preminger hired him to take the onset photographs for The Cardinal, which was nominated for six Academy Awards.

While working on the lots he heard that Marlon Brando was going to be in Paramount’s forthcoming production of The Godfather. “At the time Brando was the top actor, so I went to Life and I got them to guarantee a cover, which they never do – they wouldn’t even do it for Frank Sinatra. I went back to Paramount and, of course, they agreed. I ended up working on the entire film.” Schapiro’s shots of Brando, Pacino et al are now classics of still photography. Everybody saw them, and everybody wanted Schapiro to photograph them. At the time it wasn’t unusual for him to spend four days, even six months, with a personality, one-to-one. “It often seemed we were the best of friends,” he says.

The only person he found difficult was Charles Bronson: “very brash”. Generally, though, his shoots were amiable collaborations. “For me there’s no difference between photographing a celebrity and a migrant worker. You’re always looking for a picture with emotion, design and information. I leave a lot of room for self-expression. I want my subjects to be themselves, and then I quietly pounce.”

Now 78, Schapiro lives in Chicago with his wife and youngest son. He continues to photograph and recently worked with his son on a photo story about the ageing hippie generation. “I don’t think I’ve yet taken my most important photograph,” he says. “I’m happy with many of the images. But I always look to the future.”

‘Steve Schapiro: Then and Now’ (Hatje Cantz, RRP £55) is available to order from Telegraph Books at £50 plus £1.35 p&p. Call 0844 871 1516 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk

This article also appeared in SEVEN magazine, free with the Sunday Telegraph. Follow us on Twitter @TelegraphSeven

Happy Birthday Steve McQueen

John Domins: Steve McQueen aims a pistol

Steve McQueen would be 82 today.

"Racing is life....everything before and after is just waiting."

La Lettre de la Photographie: Steve McQueen by John Dominis


See John Dominis' photographs of Steve McQueen at the AIPAD Photography Show, Monroe gallery of Photography, booth #419.

Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali Photographs Tell Stories of Two American Icons

Andrew Berg, 12, of Souderton, Pa., views photographs of Muhammad Ali by Neil Leifer, right, and an anonymous photographer, left, at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pa. Two American superstars have crossed paths in suburban Philadelphia at the museum, where a pair of photography exhibits called American Icons offers a peek into the lives of Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali. AP Photo/Matt Rourke.

Via artdaily.org

By: Kathy Matheson, Associated Press


DOYLESTOWN, PA (AP).- In a culture saturated with celebrity magazines, paparazzi and red carpets, it's hard to imagine capturing an image of a young Elvis Presley alone on the sidewalk in New York. Or a picture of Muhammad Ali at play with neighborhood kids in a parking lot.

No screaming fans, no camera flashes, no entourages.

These unguarded moments are among dozens featured in "Ali and Elvis: American Icons," a pair of photography exhibits sharing gallery space through May 15 at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pa., about 25 miles north of Philadelphia. This is the first time the exhibits have been displayed together.

The Smithsonian-curated "Elvis at 21" show offers a glimpse into Presley's life just as his star begins to rise. Needing publicity photos, Presley's record company hired photographer Alfred Wertheimer in 1956 to shadow the rock-n-roll prince who would become The King.

Wertheimer had extraordinary access, said Smithsonian project director Marquette Folley.

"After this year, 1956, no one can ever get this close again," Folley said. "The walls go up."

The images of Ali, taken by multiple photographers, chronicle his years from teen boxer to his reign as The Greatest to a beloved figure battling Parkinson's disease. They were first displayed at a Hofstra University symposium on Ali in 2008.

Putting the exhibits together was simply an effort to take a broader look at the concepts of fame and the making of icons, said Brian Peterson, chief curator at the Michener Museum.

Certainly the two superstars had similarities. Both sons of the South, Presley and Ali enjoyed worldwide popularity but also alarmed some people with their swagger and attitude — Elvis with his thrusting pelvis and use of African-American rhythms in his music, Ali with his braggadocio and conversion to Islam.

Wertheimer's 56 images — most enlarged to 3-by-4-foot prints — capture Presley's electrifying stage persona but also his more intimate moments: standing in solitude in front of New York's Warwick Hotel; sprawling on a couch reading fan mail; and interacting with his family.

Wertheimer also chronicles one summer week that found the American idol rehearsing alone at a piano for an appearance on Steve Allen's show in New York, kissing a giddy fan backstage in Richmond, Va., and splashing in his swimming pool at home in Memphis, Tenn.

"I was basically putting Elvis under my microscope," Wertheimer, now 81, told The Associated Press. "He permitted closeness."

The bulk of "Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon" features shots of the heavyweight champ in and around the ring: training in Miami; absorbing blows from George Foreman in Zaire; and looming over a floored Sonny Liston in Neil Leifer's famous frame from 1965.

But the exhibit starts with less familiar and more personal images from when Ali was known as Cassius Clay — shadowboxing with his family, preening in front of a mirror and riding a bike with adoring local children. It ends with pictures of Ali the celebrity and humanitarian, lighting the Olympic torch in Atlanta and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Curator Hava Gurevich said the power of the 50-image show lies in its combination of fine art, documentary and news photography.

"It's like a kaleidoscopic view of Muhammad Ali's life," Gurevich said.

Peterson, the Michener curator, said he didn't find out until after booking them that Presley and Ali had actually crossed paths. Elvis visited Ali's training camp in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains and gave him a rhinestone cape; Ali gave The King an autographed pair of gold boxing gloves.

"I can't say it was part of our grand plan," Peterson said. "(But) it made us feel we were kind of on the right track."

The next stop for "Elvis at 21" is the William J. Clinton museum in Little Rock, Ark. The next stop for "Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon" is the Historic City Hall Arts & Cultural Center in Lake Charles, La.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press

PEOPLE MAGAZINE ELIZABETH TAYLOR SPECIAL ISSUE CORRECTION!

The special issue of People magazine dedicated to Elizabeth Taylor had a wealth of great photographs of the iconic star, including this classic by Richard C. Miller:

James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor take a weekend break in Houston from filming "Giant", 1955

Unfortunately, as many of our friends have pointed out, much of the caption information in the special issue was wrong. Eagle-eyed readers noted that People was off on a few details -  it was not Dallas, it was Houston. It was not the set, since the set of Giant was in Marfa. It was at a friend's home in Houston.

This photograph is included in the current exhibition "Richard C. Miller: 1912 - 2010" through April 24. Come see it! 

Steve Schapiro, Hollywood's child

©Steve Schapiro "Brando with the cat"

Via La Lettre de la Photographie

 

A selection of Steve Schapiro’s pictures taken behind the scenes during filming of “The Godfather” and “Taxi Driver” will be on display at the A. Gallery in Paris until May 14, 2011.


In 1971, when Francis Ford Coppola began working on “The Godfather”, Steve Schapiro was a young photographer, 37 years old, known for his work published in Life, Look, Newsweek, and on movie sets. It is for this reason that Paramount offered him exclusive coverage of the making of “The Godfather”. This unique status provided him access to an exceptional “cast”, capturing the private moments with Brando that would become the film’s iconic images. His reputation would certainly contribute, four years later, to his being named official set photographer for Martin Scorcese’s new movie, “Taxi Driver”. There too, Steve Schapiro’s pictures would become icons. Robert de Niro (Travis Bickle) pointing his gun in front of a mirror, or Jodie Foster (Iris) waiting in front of a hotel entrance.

©Steve Schapiro "The Whisper"

These 35 enlargements (40 × 50cm or 75 × 100cm) are the renowned pictures hanging on the walls of the A. Gallery. Slide show here.

Pictures from the sets of “Midnight Cowboy” and “Chinatown” will also be on display at the A. Gallery. Several recent and to be published books are also featuring his photographs. “Schapiro’s Heros”, 2007, Powerhouse Books, and “The Godfather Family Album”, a collection of set pictures from the “Godfather” saga, published by Taschen. “Taxi Driver” also published by Taschen and “Chinatown” soon to be released by the same editor.



Bernard Perrine

Correspondant for The Institut of France

Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr

Steve Schapiro “You talkin’ to me ?”
Until May 14

A. galerie
Rue Léonce Reynaud, 12
75116 Paris

Links
http://www.a-galerie.fr/exhibitions.php


Related: Steve Schapiro: American Edge and review in ARTnews

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: February 27 1932 - March 22, 2011

Sid Avery: Elizabeth Taylor Sunning Herself on the Marfa, Texas Set of "Giant"

New York Times Obituary here

LIFE: Unpublished Elizabeth Taylor Photographs

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: JAMES DEAN WOULD BE 80 ON FEBRUARY 8, 2011

Richard C. Miller: James Dean during the making of "Giant"

James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955)

"I, James Byron Dean, was born February 8, 1931, Marion, Indiana. My parents, Winton Dean and Mildred Dean, formerly Mildred Wilson, and myself existed in the state of Indiana until I was six years of age. Dad's work with the government caused a change, so Dad as a dental mechanic was transferred to California. There we lived, until the fourth year. Mom became ill and passed out of my life at the age of nine. I never knew the reason for Mom's death, in fact it still preys on my mind. I had always lived such a talented life. I studied violin, played in concerts, tap-danced on theatre stages but most of all I like art, to mold and create things with my hands. I came back to Indiana to live with my uncle. I lost the dancing and violin, but not the art. I think my life will be devoted to art and dramatics. And there are so many different fields of art it would be hard to foul-up, and if I did, there are so many different things to do -- farm, sports, science, geology, coaching, teaching music. I got it and I know if I better myself that there will be no match. A fellow must have confidence. When living in California my young eyes experienced many things. It was also my luck to make three visiting trips to Indiana, going and coming a different route each time. I have been in almost every state west of Indiana. I remember all. My hobby, or what I do in my spare time, is motorcycle. I know a lot about them mechanically and I love to ride. I have been in a few races and have done well. I own a small cycle myself. When I'm not doing that, I'm usually engaged in athletics, the heartbeat of every American boy. As one strives to make a goal in a game, there should be a goal in this crazy world for all of us. I hope I know where mine is, anyway, I'm after it. I don't mind telling you, Mr. Dubois, this is the hardest subject to write about considering the information one knows of himself, I ever attempted."


"My Case Study" to Roland Dubois,
Fairmount High School Principal, 1948

Richard C. Miller



James Dean had one of the most spectacularly brief careers of any screen star. In just more than a year, and in only three films, Dean became a widely admired screen personality, a personification of the restless American youth of the mid-50's, and an embodiment of the title of one of his film "Rebel Without A Cause." En route to compete in a race in Salinas, James Dean was killed in a highway accident on September 30, 1955. James Dean was nominated for two Academy Awards, for his performances in "East of Eden" and "Giant." Although he only made three films, they were made in just over one year's time. Joe Hyams, in the James Dean biography "Little Boy Lost," sums up his career:


--"..There is no simple explanation for why he has come to mean so much to so many people today. Perhaps it is because, in his acting, he had the intuitive talent for expressing the hopes and fears that are a part of all young people... In some movie magic way, he managed to dramatize brilliantly the questions every young person in every generation must resolve."

Richard C. Miller

Richard C. Miller

Richard C. Miller

Text Source: The Official Site of James Dean

All photographs ©  Richard C. Miller Trust