MissMagAddict
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2005
- Messages
- 26,630
- Reaction score
- 1,309
source | nytimes
THE OSCARS ISSUE
Spotlighting the Standouts
By Lynn Hirschberg
In recent years, celebrity photography has been largely reduced to off-guard, gotcha-style paparazzi shots or heavily stylized photos invented for the camera. This was not always so: as recently as the early ’90s, portraits of celebrities took many forms besides the abrasive or the massaged. As practiced by photographers like Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, celebrity portraiture was meant to reveal the soul of its subject — to unearth the mix of qualities that made a person captivating. Avedon’s photographs of, say, Elizabeth Taylor, or Penn’s of Marlene Dietrich have a stunning immediacy and a deep humanity. Although Avedon was, and Penn is, an expert fashion photographer, able to create a mood through shape and design and style, neither used clothes to define his subjects. In their best portraits, character trumps fashion.
Unfortunately, the reverse is now the norm. Most top actresses (and many actors) are now used by many magazines as models. They are dressed, coiffed and made-up by a team chosen by a stylist who coordinates with the photographer (and the magazine — even if it’s not a fashion magazine). What results is the look of the season; the photos, almost always retouched to achieve a kind of high-gloss perfection, may be lovely, but they bear little trace of anything real.
The flip side of all this careful manipulation is the raw aggression of the tabloids. Publishing images of stars in their daily lives, preferably with their children, has become a hugely profitable business. That may have always been true, but today, paparazzi shots have increasingly displaced other kinds of documentary photography. In the ’60s, by contrast, the photo agency Magnum sent a team of photographers to the set of “The Misfits,” where they were given full access to the movie’s stars. The resulting pictures of Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift were intimate and natural, capturing the celebrities both at rest and at work.
It was in that spirit that we approached our sixth-annual best performance portfolio. In the past, we have spotlighted a large group of actors and actresses, but for 2008, we chose to concentrate on only eight individuals who did remarkable work this year. We photographed Brad Pitt, Penélope Cruz, Frank Langella, Robert Downey Jr., Kate Winslet, Mickey Rourke, Sean Penn Mickey Rourke, Sean Penn and a newcomer named Kat Dennings in a documentary fashion, without the use of a stylist or hair or makeup experts. We asked Paolo Pellegrin, who has brilliantly photographed everything from Olympic athletes to refugees from Darfur to President Obama's campaign, to tackle the world of celebrity.
Pellegrin was able to accompany Pitt to Berlin, where he is working on his next movie; Cruz as she rehearsed for her role in the film “Nine”; Winslet as she primped for the red carpet; Penn as he made a hamburger at home; Rourke as he cuddled his beloved Chihuahua, Loki, in London; Langella as he was fitted for a tuxedo before an awards show; Downey Jr. as he shared a laugh with his wife; and Dennings in the bath at her house in Los Angeles. The idea was to revive a kind of celebrity portraiture that has all but disappeared — documentary photographs that both illuminate and examine the lives of celebrated individuals.
Last edited by a moderator: