Insight to the Stars

From the Montague Reporter 

Brian Mercer photo and illustration by Anja Schutz

BY ANN FEITELSON

TURNERS FALLS - Marilyn Monroe, covered only by a thin white sheet, her eyes half closed, her mouth half open, faces the doorway of the Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography. Her image was caught on film by Douglas Kirkland, who has photographed numerous other idols and icons of our day including Audrey Hepburn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jack Nichol-son, Orson Welles, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, John Lennon and Ringo Starr, Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslett. They are all there, on the corner of Third and Avenue A.

Kirkland's exhibit, “Face to Face: Portraits from Fifty Years" -- or, as he alternately subtitled it, "Favorite Encounters from a Half-Century Love Affair with Photography" -- runs through March 18th.

The photographs are worth seeing, as much for their subjects as for their intimacy, and also for what they reveal about the photographer. Kirkland's love affair is with his posers as well as the medium. The camera serving as intermediary, Kirkland negotiates access to a private world, and focuses on his subjects lovingly. They blossom accordingly; the photographs record that synergy. Kirkland has won the trust of many stars otherwise reclusive or elusive, and found unique ways to portray them.

"Photography is connecting with people," he said at the thronged (almost 500 attended) opening of his exhibit last Saturday afternoon. In the case of theMarilyn Monroe photograph, it was a connection not just between photographer and sex symbol, but, as he writes in his book An Evening with Marilyn, between a provocative 36-year-old woman with preferences for silk, Sinatra, and champagne; and an ambitious yet innocent 24-year-old man -- she called him a boy -- who shared the champagne and cantilevered and pretzeled himself into position from a balcony above her in search of the best vantage point. Somehow he kept his head. The delicately misty, seductive picture was on the cover of Look magazine.

The same year that he photographed Marilyn Monroe, 1961, Kirkland shot Art Buchwald in Paris, leaping, improbably spread-eagled in mid-air, the Eiffel tower splayed behind him. In his Saturday evening lecture at the Hallmark Institute of Photography, Kirkland explained that the photo was taken during his first trip to Europe; it expresses "the essence of joy of being in Paris."

Kirkland himself, now 72, leapt for joy, and for emphasis, at least a half-dozen times during his talk to an overflow audience of approximately 300 photographers, students of photography, fans and the general public looking for inspiration and insight into a legendary career.

Lanky and silver haired, energetic and enthusiastic, Kirkland leapt as he advised the aspiring photographers in the audience: "You have to makesomething happen." He sprang up and down when telling of his thrill and pride the first time his photo made the cover of Look. He related a story of meeting Hasselblad, the camera manufacturer, by chance on the street in New York , and leapt again, to underline "photography is fun." He jumped when telling how he wanted to lift up Marlene Dietrich from her sorrow over Hemingway's death. And he jumped yet again, to convey, "I have been so lucky," about the many adventures his camera has provided a passport to, all over the world. He has worked on all the continents (excluding Antarctica).

Was Kirkland's seeming luck in being in the right place at the right time a coincidence? Maybe not: "You always have to be reaching, finding, discovering, inventing," he said. And, "You've got to try as hard as you can every time. You gotta invent, explore, question, search…" Wonderful words to live by. Turners Falls certainly felt like the right place to be last Saturday. The band Viva Quetzal played all afternoon at the museum entrance; the stunning vegetable hors d'oeuvres table with radish lollipops was as luscious a display as it was sustaining, and constantly replenished. The scene was more New York City than humble Western Massachusetts. Even a cameraman from CBSChannel 3 in Springfield filmed the gallery-goers. Parking for the evening lecture was more what you would expect at the Franklin County Fair than a serious lecture. Following the talk, the line of people waiting for Kirkland to sign books of his photographs was three people wide and 25 long, stretching past the dessert array (the lollipops this time were bananas dipped in chocolate) and back to the vast lecture hall.

How does a portrait express or evoke the inner world with only black, white and grays?

To answer that, look at three of Kirkland's photos from the mid-90s on the left wall, towards the back of the gallery. The first, of Elena Bespalova, an art historian who wrote an introduction to Kirkland's book of nudes, is very high contrast, geisha-like, almost solely black and white. Her angled arms form a dynamic V-shaped buttress supporting her face. The arch of her eyelid rhymes with her arched lip, and again with a notch in her bangs; these repeated upward-pointing shapes imply vivacity, aspiration, elevation. Next, a melancholy Rod Steiger is all murky grays, very low in contrast. Every form bespeaks heaviness: his cheeks sag, his head presses on his arm and dents it. His arms are crossed, and he fills the space to bursting, suggesting imprisonment.

In the third photo, cinematographer Philippe Rousselot is at the bottom of the photograph, looking up, with only one eye visible, the other in shadowy obscurity. His hand on his cheek pulls his skin upward, distorting his face. It is not a familiar configuration. The tiny brilliant glints on Rousselot's revealed eye and shining from his hidden eye indicate incisiveness, quirkiness, the ability to see in the dark. This man would be fascinating to know.

As well as having insight and intuition, being a good photographer requires mastering a massive amount of technique and technical information. Kirkland is proficient with more types of cameras and film than you knew existed. He showed a 1960s photo of himself standing with every piece of equipment he used in one year at Look, and a veritable camera shop of stuff it was: tripods, lenses, filters, flashes, flares and strobes - not to mention numerous cameras.

Kirkland has kept up with the times and has fully embraced digital photography. Every one of the pictures at the museum is an ink-jet print via computer, not a gelatin silver print. All of Kirkland's past work has been archived and scanned into computers with mega memories of eight terabytes (the next order of magnitude after a gazillion gigabytes is terabytes). This has allowed him to go back and revive neglected moments and to re-see the past.

Digital technology gives better -- "amazing," he says -- archival quality, guaranteeing prints for 200 years. Kirkland's fans will be looking at them then.