Most of us know Stanley Kubrick as one of America’s most celebrated filmmakers responsible for such iconic films as Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Stanley Kubrick actually began his career as a photographer for Look magazine, not a filmmaker. The legendary director was only 17 year old when he joined Look, one of America’s highest-circulation general interest magazines in 1945, and spent five years working for them.
During his time at Look, Kubrick trained the camera on his native city, drawing inspiration from the nightclubs, street scenes, and sporting events that made up his first assignments, and capturing the pathos of ordinary life with a sophistication that belied his young age.
The Museum of the City of New York is launching the “Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs” exhibition on May 3. More than 120 photographs from the Museum’s Look Magazine archive, an unparalleled collection that includes 129 photography assignments and more than 12,000 negatives from his five years as a staff photographer, will be displayed in the exhibition.
To accompany the exhibition, the museum will hold a talk entitled From Photography to “Film Noir: Stanley Kubrick’s Early Career” on May 22 to examine two of the first films Kubrick ever made – Day of the Fight (1951, 16 min) and Killer’s Kiss (1955, 67 min). New York magazine film critic Emily Yoshida, co-curators of the exhibition Donald Albrecht and Sean Corcoran will discuss the connections between these formative films and Kubrick’s’ early start in photography, as well as the imaginative eye and visual flair that would come to define his later work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzRvsU_JQEU
The exhibition will run through October 28, 2018. Meanwhile, a book titled “Stanley Kubrick Photographs, Through a Different Lens” published by Taschen will coincide the exhibition as well. It will offer the keen and evocative vision of Kubrick in a range of feature stories and images. Featuring around 300 images, many previously unseen, as well as rare Look magazine tear sheets, the book will include an introduction by noted photography critic Luc Sante. The book can be pre-ordered here.
Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue @ 103rd St.
Ramp access @ 104th St.
New York, NY 10029
