Garbo. Harlow.
Dietrich. Gable. These are just a few of the stars featured in an exhibit
at the Grolier Club—“Silver Screen/Silver Prints: Hollywood Portrait
Photographs from the Robert Dance Collection.” The exhibit examines the genre
of portraiture during Hollywood’s Golden Age and the great photographers who created the glamour portraits of Hollywood's legendary stars.
Starting with the leading photographers of the silent era—James Abbe, Albert Witzel, and Alfred
Cheney Johnston (famous for his Ziegfeld Follies portraits)—the exhibit is broken up into ten sections, each dedicated to a single photographer, star, or theme. Even if you've seen some of these images before in books, nothing compares to looking at these lovely silver prints with all of their nuanced details in person.
One of my favourite
photographers in the exhibit was Ruth Harriet Louise. The first woman to work
as a portrait photographer in Hollywood, she was the head of MGM’s portrait
studio when she was just 22. A striking example of her work is a photograph of Myrna
Loy portrayed as a sophisticate, a type she played on
screen as Nora Charles in the Thin Man
series. This was probably one of the loveliest portraits in the exhibit.
The section on
Ramon Navarro illustrates through a mix of portraits
and film stills how he perfectly embodied the role of romantic lead on
screen. A portrait by Carl Van Vechten, better known for his photographs of
members of the Harlem Renaissance, is especially modern looking; it wouldn’t
look out of place in a magazine today.
Other great
photographers in the exhibit include Clarence Sinclair Bull, who captured Jean
Harlow shortly before her death on the set of her last film Saratoga, and George Hurrell, whose
portraits of stars like Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer probably helped to define the Hollywood glamour portrait more than any other photographer in the 1930s and 40s.
The last photo in
the exhibit is the famous portrait of Louise Brooks with her pearls taken by Eugene Robert Richee in 1928. This image perfectly
symbolizes what Hollywood portraiture is all about—the melding of art with a
star’s beauty, resulting in an iconic image.
Seeing exhibits at the Grolier Club
is always enjoyable. Founded in
1884, the Grolier Club is the oldest society of bibliophiles in the country and
is housed in a lovely townhouse. Best of all, their exhibits are free.
Silver Screen/Silver Prints is on through
November 12, 2011.
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