Burt Glinn Retrospective

"Delinquents run from a cop, Snoqualmie, WA" Burt Glinn (1956)

Contact sheet images of a bikini-clad Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Suddenly Last Summer (1959) cover the windows at Milk Gallery. Compelling to look at, they are the work of Burt Glinn.

“Burt Glinn: Retrospective” is a sampling of images taken by the noted photographer. From American high school students and British aristocrats to Fidel Castro and Robert Kennedy to the Beats and the Rat Pack, Glinn captured some of the defining people and moments of his day.

Born in Pittsburgh in 1925, he received his first camera—a Kodak Monitor folding camera—from his aunt on his 12th birthday. From then on photography became his passion. He served as an artilleryman in the US Army during World War II and studied at Harvard where he shot photos for the Harvard Crimson. After graduation Glinn worked as an assistant at Life Magazine before he, Eve Arnold, and Dennis Stock were asked to join Magnum Photos in 1951, the first Americans to be invited. Three years later he became a full member and would later serve twice as Magnum’s president. During his half-century long career, Glinn's work took him around the globe and earned him high praise including the Mathew Brady Award for Magazine Photographer of the Year in 1959 for his colour series of the South Seas. The man who once said, “The most important thing that a photographer like me can have is luck” passed away in 2008.

The photos in the exhibit are striking and leave you wanting more (I’d especially like to see some of Glinn’s colour work). While I enjoyed the images of famous people—Jack Kerouac flirting at a party, an exquisite portrait of Twiggy—my favourite may have been this image above, “Delinquents run from a cop, Snoqualmie, WA.” The shadowy figures seem like something out of Peter Pan, two lost boys being chased by Captain Hook (look at the cop’s right hand). And you can almost hear the scream coming from the one boy's open mouth. It’s just wonderful and a perfect example of why Glinn was such a great photographer.

“Burt Glinn: Retrospective” is at Milk Gallery through May 10. For more info, visit here.

Bookshelf

Jacqueline Kennedy reading The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.

It’s time for the latest edition of Bookshelf—a collection of short reviews of the books that I've recently read. You should be warned that my history crush, Robert Capa, pops up in more than one of these books (at some point I'm going to have to get serious and just write a book about him). Let me know your thoughts on any of these titles and what you've been reading.

Ingrid Bergman: My Story—Ingrid Bergman and Alan Burgess

With alternating passages by Bergman and Burgess, Ingrid Bergman: My Story tells how a shy young Swedish girl became one of the great stars of the silver screen. At times modest and often candid, Bergman writes about the importance of acting in her life, her famous co-stars, and of her great loves affairs with Robert Capa and Roberto Rossellini. Her relationship with Rossellini and the worldwide scandal it caused understandably takes up a good portion of the book. Reading this will make you want to go back and watch every Bergman film again.

Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld’s Broadway—Eve Golden

At the turn of the 20th century, Polish-born performer Anna Held met Florenz Ziegfeld who persuaded her to leave the stages of Europe and come to New York. Held’s charming and slightly naughty personality combined with Ziegfeld’s promotional skills turned her into the toast of Broadway (she also became Ziegfeld’s common-law wife). While the passages about her early life seem rushed (I suspect it was from a lack of source material), Golden does a good job clearing up some of the rumours about Held and painting a picture of what New York theatre life was like at the time. 

Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History: The Story of the Legendary Photo Agency—Russell Miller

Founded by Robert Capa and a small group of photojournalists in 1947, Magnum Photos is a photographic cooperative that continues to be one of the preeminent photo agencies in the world with members who have contributed some of the most lasting images of the 20th century. The book discusses Magnum’s history in detail and includes stories about the famous bickering of the members and of the rivalry between the New York and Paris offices. Seemingly always on the brink of collapse, Magnum has managed to survive deaths, money woes, and a changing industry. A must read for people interested in photojournalism.

The Chaperone—Laura Moriarty

In 1922, 15-year old Louise Brooks left Kansas for New York to study with the Denishawn School of Dance in New York City. Accompanying her was an older woman who acted as her chaperone. In this engaging fictional account of that trip, Laura Moriarty renames the chaperone Cora Carlisle and makes her the story’s protagonist. While attempting to look out for her young charge, Cora discovers some answers about her past and finds a new road for her future. I normally do not like fictional accounts of people whom I admire but I was quite taken with this book save for the one very predictable plot line. I just wish I could have heard more from Louise but alas it isn’t really her story. 

Dimanche and Other Stories—Irène Némirovsky

Confession: I have not read Suite Francaise. My first introduction to Irène Némirovsky was a short story, Dimanche, in Persephone Books’ magazine. I loved that story so much that I went out and bought this collection (Dimanche is the first story). I was moved by the beauty of the language in these ten tales that deal with issues of love, relationships, and class differences. Knowing that she died in Auschwitz in 1942 only adds a bittersweet air to these excellent stories. Highly recommended.

A Russian Journal—John Steinbeck

In this amusing and informative account of a trip that John Steinbeck made to Russia in 1948 with Robert Capa, he writes about their many obstacles from transport issues to finding places to sleep to dealing with censors while trying to document their encounters with the Russian people. Steinbeck reports on the great hospitality they were shown and how the Russian people were not all that different from Americans. Capa, whose powerful photographs lend credence to Steinbeck’s account, provides a lot of the humour in the book (there’s even a passage he contributed defending himself). Very entertaining.

Get Closer

"Nun and swimmers on the beach, Biarritz, France" Robert Capa (1951)

This morning I had the chance to attend the media preview of the new "Robert Capa in Color" exhibit at the ICP. Readers of this blog can already guess how excited I was to see the museum's walls full of his work. A full review will be up on the blog later this week but I didn't want today to go by without noting that this marks the final day of Magnum Photo's "Get Closer" project. Since October 22, 2013, the 100th anniversary of Capa's birth, Magnum has posted a different Capa photo alongside a responding image by another photographer while encouraging people to "Get Closer" and post their own responses on various social media platforms with the tag #GetCloser100. The image above is today's 100th Capa image, which has an added level of humour thanks to the inclusion of the nun (it is one of Capa's colour images that's in the ICP exhibit). It's been interesting to see what's been uploaded everyday and quite compelling once you start going back and looking at the 100 days as a whole. So if you haven't checked out "Get Closer" yet, visit here.

Dennis Stock at the Milk

"James Dean in Times Square" Dennis Stock (1955)

Tonight I went to an opening of an exhibit of Dennis Stock photographs at Milk Gallery. A photojournalist, Magnum member, and author of more than 24 books, Stock captured a variety of people from screen stars Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe to jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday to non-celebrity bikers and hippies. He also took some hilarious images on the set of Planet of the Apes. 

Yet he is perhaps best known for a series of photos of James Dean including the iconic shot of Dean walking through Times Square in the rain. Stock first met Dean at a Hollywood party in January, 1955. The two hit it off and after seeing a screening of his first film, East of Eden, Stock realized there was something special about Dean and convinced Life Magazine to finance a story on the journey of a young actor. Over the course of three months the two visited Dean's hometown in Indiana and spent time in New York before returning to Los Angeles. Later that year Dean would be dead at the age of 24. Many of these photographs are included in the exhibit and are both stunning and poignant.

"The 20th Century Fox studios during filming of Planet of the Apes, Hollywood" Dennis Stock (1967)

The opening was quite the scene (I'm not used to having to queue outside to see art), with a mix of photography fans and people who were obviously there for the free booze and to be seen. But the photos were worth braving the crowds.

The exhibit is at the Milk Gallery through April 17. For more information, visit here.