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Douglas Kirkland: Celebrated Celebrity Photographer
By Lynne Eodice | Feb 1, 2008
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 CLICK HERE TO SEE A GALLERY OF DOUGLAS KIRKLAND'S IMAGES
All images © Douglas Kirkland
I recently had the pleasure of visiting with Kirkland at his Los Angeles home to discuss his career as well as his new book, Freeze Frame: Five Decades of Photography by Douglas Kirkland (Glitterati
Publishing), which offers a behind-the-scenes peek at the entertainment
industry through images that span his 50-year career.
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On the set of Moulin Rouge, 2000 (From "Freeze Frame") |
He
has photographed a wide variety of subjects throughout the years,
ranging from automobiles to portraiture, although he’s best known for
his fashion and celebrity work, and has photographed such luminaries as
Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Pierre Cardin, Katherine Hepburn,
Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland, Orson Welles, John Wayne, Robert
Redford, Faye Dunaway, Angelina Jolie, Sophia Loren, and Marlene
Deitrich, among many others. He has also worked on the sets of more
than 100 motion pictures, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
2001: A Space Odyssey, Out of Africa, Moulin Rouge and Titanic, to name
just a few. Besides having a lifelong love of the camera, Kirkland has
a refreshing zest for life.
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Britt Eklund & Peter Sellers, 1960 (From "Freeze Frame") |
Defining Several Decades
“This
book has had a very odd history,” Kirkland says of Freeze Frame. “It
started with a show in Rome, which is briefly recounted in the book
itself. A friend brought me to a gallery in Rome a year ago September,
in a very fashionable area like Greenwich Village.” Although there had
never been a film festival in Rome, the very first one took place that
autumn. “I was asked to do a show at this new gallery to parallel the
festival,” he explains. “At first I thought we couldn’t do it because
we were very busy, but Francoise (his wife and business partner) said,
‘yes we can.’” To get images for the show, he adds, they went through
their considerable photo archives and found many images that had never
been published. The show was quite successful and led to doing Freeze
Frame, the book, which spans 50 years of Kirkland’s wealth of images of
celebrities on movie sets, behind the scenes, and on stage. He
discusses the book’s cover, which was photographed on the set of
Camelot. “The characters are all in costume donned in the heaviest of
winter clothing, but it’s interesting to see the crew shooting inside,
all wearing tee-shirts,” he comments.
“There’s a lot about my
life in here,” says Kirkland of the book and its rich history. “For
most people, it parallels the memory of movies from certain periods.”
As an example, he points out a photo inside the book of Peter Sellers
in a car that Kirkland took while Sellers was on location for a movie
in Rome. “It became a symbol of the show,” he says. “This was done on a
Sunday. We jacked up the side of the car very quickly without
permission, and it looks like it’s swerving. You can see that people
are looking around and wondering what’s going on.” In this series of
photographs (which he sketched out on paper beforehand), Kirkland
captured Sellers playing the part of a Paparazzi, with numerous cameras
dangling around his neck and snapping photos of his then-wife, Britt
Eklund. “He was an amateur photographer and a wonderful man,” Kirkland
points out. “That was the beginning of this book. We were in New York
and showed these pictures inadvertently to our publisher, Marta. She
saw this and said that she was interested in a book on the subject.”
125
images from Freeze Frame are currently being shown in an exhibit at the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Grand Lobby in Beverly
Hills through Sunday, April 20, 2008. The exhibit is free to the
public, and is open Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday
and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. For more information, visit www.oscars.org, or call (310) 247-3600.
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Angelina Jolie |
A Passion for Photography
Kirkland
was born in Toronto, Canada. “I became intensely interested in
photography at the age of 14 when I lived in a small town called Fort
Erie near Buffalo, New York,” he says. “I got a Speed Graphic, and went
around town photographing everything from hockey games to babies and
passport pictures, with flash bulbs.” Kirkland says that he can’t
believe he’s been doing photography for 50 years now—“And I still do it
nearly every day. The bottom line for me is that I love photography.
Not just photographing stars, but all types of photography. Photography
is my first love,” he declares.
Kirkland once served as an
assistant for Irving Penn in 1957 to ’58. On one occasion, Penn went on
location with his other assistants, and being the youngest, Kirkland
was left behind in the studio. “Eager to make a good impression, I
noticed that the large picture windows in the studio were dirty, so I
cleaned them,” he says. But his good intentions unfortunately
backfired. As it turned out, having bright, clean windows interfered
with the soft quality of light the dirt had given them, and Penn was a
little unhappy to find them clean and sparkling.
In 1958,
Kirkland says he was shooting “everything under the sun—commercial,
tabletop, portraits. Some people talk about their photographic
specialties, but my specialty was everything; no limits.” He lived in
New York for about a year and a half, and free-lanced during this time.
“In 1960, I was extremely happy to be hired by Look magazine as I was
turning 25,” he says, describing this experience as his dream job.
“That’s where I grew up as a more mature photographer, working for the
magazine. There was almost unlimited film when you went out on
assignment, and you had to give your interpretation of what you found.”
Kirkland’s first assignment for Look was to photograph men’s fashion at
Cornell University. “They hired me to shoot color. I was the youngest
photographer there at the time and the older photographers couldn’t
shoot color reliably,” he says. “I represented the new generation
coming in.”
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Elizabeth Taylor |
“People
ask me how I got started photographing celebrities,” he remarks. “I
tell them that it was almost an accident.” Kirkland was on a fashion
assignment shooting bathing suits at Pismo Beach, California, when his
boss at Look in New York called to ask him to meet with the magazine’s
movie editor, Jack Hamilton. “Elizabeth Taylor had agreed to do an
interview with the magazine, but no pictures. I was told to go there
and persuade her to let me photograph her,” he says. Taylor hadn’t been
photographed in a formal manner for about a year and a half at that
time because she had been very sick. “I went with the journalist, sat
quietly through the interview, and at the end, I went to shake her hand
and say goodbye,” says Kirkland. “As I was doing that, I held her hand
and looked her straight in the eye. I said, ‘goodbye, it was very nice
meeting you.’ I was very respectful of her. I said to her again in a
most earnest way, ‘Can you imagine what an opportunity it would be for
me—being new at this magazine—if you gave me a chance to photograph
you.’”
The end of the story (“the beginning, really,” he says)
is that Elizabeth Taylor responded by telling the young photographer to
come by the following evening at 8:30 p.m. “When I photographed her, it
was extremely successful,” he says. “That was my launch into
photographing celebrities.” Since that time, he’s had the opportunity
to take pictures of Taylor and other stars on movie sets, as publicity
stills, and on numerous other occasions.
Kirkland eventually
became a contract photographer for Look and divided his time between
shooting for this magazine and other important publications of the day,
“with the exception of LIFE,
which was their biggest competition.” he says. This was the Golden Age
of photojournalism. During this time, he photographed 25 pages of cars,
which led to shooting for all the automobile manufacturers for a while.
Altogether, he was on the staff of the magazine for four years, and
during that time they sent him to Europe to shoot fashion. Celebrities
and fashion became Kirkland’s two principal subjects. Later, he went
under contract with LIFE. “Look went out of business in 1971,” he says, “and I went to work for LIFE immediately afterward.” When this magazine was no longer published weekly, he continued to shoot for the monthly version of LIFE, and by this time, a lot of work started to come to him.
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Antonio Banderas |
Kirkland
says that he still shoots nearly every day. “We keep out of trouble,”
he chuckles. He still works internationally and in the U.S. with
companies who license photographs throughout the years that are stored
in his large archives. He also does charitable work for organizations
like the Red Cross and Starlight Foundation. “It’s not only about
making money, but about doing the right thing,” he says. “I’m very
happy to give back.” I comment on his great teamwork with his wife,
Francoise, and he acknowledges, “I’m very lucky.” She speaks three
languages, handles all of the organization of his business (besides
being a great cook), and plays an important role as Kirkland’s business
partner. He also employs several assistants. “We have some great people
working with us,” he adds.
Accolades & Achievements
Kirkland’s
next book, which will be published in August 2008, features the
fashions and photographs of legendary designer Coco Chanel. Over the
years, his images have been featured in a number of books, including Light Years, Icons, Legends, Body Stories, An Evening With Marilyn and the best-selling James Cameron’s Titanic. Kirkland was also one of the producers and photographers of A Day in the Life of Canada.
Understandably,
he’s amassed a number of awards throughout the years, including a
Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Camera Operators (he is
also an honorary member of the American Society of Cinematographers).
He has also been honored by the Photographer’s Marketing Association
(PMA) as Photographer of the Year, by the Lucie Awards for Outstanding
Achievement in Entertainment Photography in 2003, by The Golden Eye of
Russia in April 2006, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from
CAPIC from his native Toronto, Canada in 2006. In fall 2007, he was the
recipient of an Honorary Master of Fine Arts Degree from Brooks
Institute in California for his deep commitment and dedication to
photography.
He shoots primarily with a Canon EOS 1DS
Mark III and an EOS 5D digital SLR, and Canon EF lens systems. When
shooting digitally, he uses Delkin eFilm memory cards. Kirkland is one
of the original members of Canon’s prestigious Explorers of Light and
is a member of Hewlett Packard’s Photo Influencers. He uses a Mamiya RZ
6x7 and Deardorff 8x10 when shooting film in larger formats, and his
film of choice is Kodak Ektachrome 100, as well as Plus-X and Tri-X.
All of his scans are made with the Imacon Flextight 848 scanner, and
his exhibition prints are created with the HP Designjet Z3100.
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Elena in Moscow |
Advice
When
he gives lectures, Kirkland says that attendees often ask, “How does
one become a photographer like you?” He says that the following is very
important to success:
• Have a commitment and love of photography.
• Don’t be afraid to work hard.
•
Have a passion and love of people. “When someone comes in for a
portrait session, it takes two. It’s not only about me taking the
picture.”
• Deliver what you say you will. “You want to help people.”
•
Be curious about the latest techniques and learn to use them. “I was
one of the first to use digital photography in the early ‘90s, and I
celebrated it from day one.”
“I consider myself very lucky,” he concludes, “and I don’t want to waste the opportunities that I’ve been given.”
To learn more about Douglas Kirkland, visit www.douglaskirkland.com.
CLICK HERE TO SEE A GALLERY OF DOUGLAS KIRKLAND'S IMAGES
Let us know if you found this article useful, and tell us what kinds of articles you'd like to see in upcoming issues. Send your comments and ideas to Lynne Eodice.
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© Copyright 2008 by PHOTOWORKSHOP.COM
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Last Updated: Jul 1st, 2008 - 15:48:44
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