Lifestyle

Marilyn Stafford, a Photojournalist Rediscovered, Dies at 97

Published

1 year ago

January 24, 2023

Marilyn Stafford, a Photojournalist Rediscovered, Dies at 97

Marilyn Stafford’s journey from aspiring Broadway singer and actress to famous photojournalist and style photographer began with a drive to New Jersey and a spasm of concern.

One morning in 1948, Ms. Stafford, who was 23, was tagging together with two pals who had been driving to the house of Albert Einstein in Princeton, N.J., to make a brief documentary about him and his views, as one in every of historical past’s best physicists, on the dawning of atomic weapons. On the automotive experience down, one of many pals handed Ms. Stafford a 35-millimeter digicam and requested her to take some stills between takes. “I’d by no means used one earlier than, and I went right into a panic,” she recalled in a 2021 interview.

There was little to fret about, it turned out. Einstein, carrying dishevelled pants and a sweatshirt, appeared mild and modest as he greeted the three at his door. As her pals arrange their film cameras, Ms. Stafford started snapping away as Einstein slumped right into a floral-print chair close to a fire and stared distractedly into the gap.

Her pals finally despatched her a few prints from her rolls of movie. One stood out. Gauzy and barely out of focus, the shot of the seated Einstein was not technically excellent, but it surely captured him in an unguarded second, wanting ruminative, maybe mournful.

Ms. Stafford would finally commerce her Broadway goals for a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex digicam on her strategy to turning into a pioneering, if underrecognized, photojournalist and style photographer. However the Einstein picture was a harbinger of what would turn into her specialty: piercing the superstar armor of Hollywood stars, fashionistas and even world leaders and discovering a story behind the picture.

Ms. Stafford died on Jan. 2 at her house in Shoreham-by-Sea, on the south coast of England, her publicist, Nicola Jeffs, mentioned. She was 97.

“I like to inform tales,” Ms. Stafford mentioned in an interview with The New York Occasions final 12 months, “and for me, taking {a photograph} is like telling a narrative. I inform it subconsciously, as I take the image.”

She by no means achieved something near the celebrity of Twentieth-century masters like Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Henri Cartier-Bresson. For many years her archive largely consisted of shoe containers filled with images stuffed beneath her mattress, and far of her work might need been misplaced to historical past if it weren’t for an opportunity assembly with a images curator named Nina Emett at a gallery present in Sussex, England, when Ms. Stafford was in her 90s.

Ms. Emett spent the subsequent a number of years bringing Ms. Stafford’s work again into the general public eye, culminating final 12 months in “Marilyn Stafford: A Life In Pictures,” a much-publicized retrospective that Ms. Emett curated with Ms. Stafford’s daughter, Lina Clerke, in Brighton, England, and an accompanying monograph.

“Working on this male-dominated discipline in opposition to the gender expectations of her time, Marilyn elevated social considerations that had been ignored or underrepresented by mainstream media,” Helen Trompeteler, a British images author and curator and a pal of Ms. Stafford’s, wrote in an e mail. “Her distinctive archive supplies a singular perception into Twentieth-century historical past and displays her lifelong advocacy for ladies’s rights and illustration.”

As a contract photographer based mostly in Paris within the Nineteen Fifties, and later, London, Ms. Stafford chronicled the poor in Paris in addition to the struggles of rape victims in India and of refugees from the Algerian warfare of independence from France within the Nineteen Fifties.

Even when photographing the well-known, she sometimes opted to shoot them in candid, revealing moments at house. Through the years she produced richly expressive portraits of movie luminaries (Lee Marvin, Sharon Tate, Richard Attenborough and Alan Bates); era-defining fashions (Twiggy, Joanna Lumley); musicians (Donovan, Édith Piaf, with whom she briefly lived in Paris) and public intellectuals (the architect Le Corbusier, the author Italo Calvino).

In 1972, Ms. Stafford spent a month shadowing Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India, capturing her in quiet moments at house together with her grandchildren and canine, as nicely in public moments, like visiting troopers wounded within the Indo-Pakistani Battle of 1971.

Her style images, which she began within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, got here at a fortuitous time, with the rise of ready-to-wear, which introduced the work of couture designers to the lots. However even when capturing for haute style magazines like Vogue, she introduced a street-photographer’s style for the genuine, posing fashions in Chanel and Givenchy, for instance, in entrance of graffiti-strewn partitions of Paris. She was delighted, she instructed The Occasions, to be referred to as “a reverse snob” by the style editor of Le Figaro.

“I used to be by no means concerned about studio work,” Ms. Stafford mentioned in a 2018 interview with Photomonitor, a images website, “as a result of my actual feeling was out on the planet on a documentary and storytelling foundation, slightly than simply photographing the garments.”

Marilyn Jean Gerson was born on Nov. 5, 1925, in Cleveland, the eldest of two daughters of Maurice Gerson, a pharmacist, and Dorothy (Soglovitz) Gerson, who offered antiques.

As a youth, she studied on the Cleveland Play Home. However she grew to become conscious of human struggling throughout the Nice Despair by way of documentary images, equivalent to Dorothea Lange’s pictures of migrant households escaping the Mud Bowl.

“From an early age, I used to be conscious that horrible issues might occur,” she mentioned in a 2021 interview with Digital Digital camera World, a images journal. “But in addition, that one thing could possibly be completed about them if there was the desire, and finally it appeared to me that images is likely to be a solution, though that realization solely got here quite a bit later.”

Ms. Stafford studied English and drama for a time on the College of Wisconsin earlier than transferring to New York in 1946 to pursue a stage profession. She made ends meet as an assistant to the style photographer Francesco Scavullo. In 1949, she adopted a pal in a transfer to Paris, which might turn into her house for greater than a decade.

Touchdown a coveted singing gig at a dinner membership off the Champs-Élysées referred to as Chez Carrère, Ms. Stafford befriended entertainers like Noël Coward, Maurice Chevalier and Piaf in addition to giants of photojournalism like Cartier-Bresson and the fight photographer Robert Capa, who had been among the many founders of Magnum Photographs.

Ms. Stafford instructed Mr. Capa that she was shedding her singing voice and in search of a brand new profession course. He prompt that she work as an assistant to a different Magnum founder and fight photographer, David Seymour, who was identified professionally as Chim. Ms. Stafford had no need to dodge bullets in warfare zones, Ms. Jeffs mentioned in an e mail. As an alternative, she took a job in style public relations. (Mr. Capa was killed in 1954 when he stepped on a land mine whereas masking the First Indochina Battle; Mr. Seymour was killed by Egyptian sniper two years later whereas masking the Suez disaster.)

Ms. Stafford would, nevertheless, quickly journey to bother spots world wide together with her husband, Robin Stafford, a overseas correspondent for the British newspaper The Day by day Categorical, whom she married in 1958 after a quick marriage to Joseph Kohn, a filmmaker.

She was six months pregnant with their daughter, Lina, when she adopted Mr. Stafford on an project to cowl the warfare in Algeria. Ms. Stafford thought of the journey a piece project of types for her as nicely. She took harrowing photographs of Algerian refugees in Tunisia. “No person appeared involved in regards to the refugee disaster that was unfolding,” she mentioned within the Occasions interview final 12 months.

Upon returning to Paris, she despatched her images to Mr. Cartier-Bresson, who chosen the perfect and despatched them to The Observer, one other British newspaper. It printed two of her images on the entrance web page, one in every of a refugee mom, caked in grime, nursing her little one. The photographs helped increase consciousness of the disaster.

The Staffords subsequently settled for intervals in Rome, Beirut and New York. After the couple divorced in 1965, Ms. Stafford moved to London and co-founded an company specializing in style, partly as a method to fund her photojournalistic work. Trend “has its enjoyable aspect,” she instructed Photomonitor, “in order that balances my severe aspect, if you’ll.”

She is survived by her daughter and a grandson. Her third husband, João Manuel Viera, whom she married in 2001, died in 2016.

In 2017, she based The Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award, in collaboration with FotoDocument, a nonprofit group that helps environmental and social images world wide.

Ms. Stafford retired within the Eighties to be taught Mandarin, write poetry and assist human rights initiatives. Or perhaps her razor-sharp photographic imaginative and prescient had misplaced a little bit of readability. “A few years in the past,” she mentioned, “a photographer in New York instructed me, ‘Photographers don’t develop previous, they only develop out of focus.’”

Lifestyle

The first 'Jinx' ended with a hot mic murder admission. 'Part Two' shocks as well

Published

2 hours ago

April 20, 2024

Press Room

The first 'Jinx' ended with a hot mic murder admission. 'Part Two' shocks as well

Robert Durst was arrested in 2015, the night before HBO televised the final episode of The Jinx. He was later convicted of murder, and died in prison in 2022.

HBO

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HBO

Robert Durst was arrested in 2015, the night before HBO televised the final episode of The Jinx. He was later convicted of murder, and died in prison in 2022.

HBO

In 2014, the producers of This American Life presented a podcast called “Serial,” examining the facts, and loose ends, involving a cold murder case. A year later, HBO followed with a TV equivalent: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. Together, those two wildly popular programs helped ignite the true-crime documentary and podcast craze – a genre that itself became so imitated that it was spoofed by Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building.

The Jinx recounted the story of Robert Durst – a wealthy man suspected, over many decades, of the murders of several people. The documentary series was made with Durst’s cooperation – specifically, several on-camera interviews with filmmaker Andrew Jarecki. The final episode climaxed with some stunning remarks made by Durst while he was alone and talking to himself, still wearing a hot mic.

Robert Durst, real estate heir, dies in prison at 78

Durst was arrested the night before HBO televised the final episode of The Jinx, and later was convicted of murder, and died in prison in 2022. On April 21, Jarecki returns to HBO with a sequel documentary series, The Jinx – Part Two, which also will stream on Max. I highly recommend you see the original Jinx, first if you haven’t – it’s available on most streaming sites. But it’s not required.

The Jinx – Part Two is amazing right from the start, because filmmaker Jarecki never stopped filming. In the original series, it was the accidental recording of Durst, muttering to himself in a bathroom after Jarecki confronted him with a damning piece of physical evidence, that helped lead to the wealthy man’s arrest. The Jinx – Part Two swoops right back in, using phone wiretaps recorded by prosecutors, interviews with investigators and even conversations with witnesses on both sides at the trial – some cooperative, some hostile.

The Jinx – Part Two starts its behind-the-scenes narrative just as the original Jinx is days away from premiering on HBO. Events are captured in real time, revealing themselves like elements in a thriller.

Halfway through the run of the original Jinx, Durst, watching from home, is feeling kind of cocky. But then, because of a spelling error in his handwriting that seems to connect him to an anonymous note sent to police after one murder, he shifts gears. FBI agents and Los Angeles district attorneys track him withdrawing large sums of money, then fleeing before the final episode – but as The Jinx – Part Two shows, he’s cleverly tracked down in a New Orleans hotel, and captured.

LA deputy district attorney John Lewin is the first to interrogate to Durst in a recording that we see in The Jinx – Part Two. What follows is a story with as many twists, turns and shockers as the original. Jarecki is as good an interviewer as he is a director, and what he gets out of his conversations with people – from Durst’s friends and lovers to his investigators and prosecutors – is unexpected, and sometimes is almost laughably candid.

As it turns out, there’s a great story in the continued telling of the Robert Durst saga – and there are some lessons to be learned, too. Don’t commit murder. If you DO commit murder, don’t cooperate with a documentary filmmaker. And if you DO kill someone, and talk about it on camera, learn how to spell.

Lifestyle

Here’s your fashion horoscope for what to wear this Taurus season

Published

2 hours ago

April 20, 2024

Press Room

Here’s your fashion horoscope for what to wear this Taurus season

pet-tree-kor’s Green Helicteres Isora Jacket.

(Photo Illustration by Beth Hoeckel)

We find ourselves in that time of year dedicated to the most sensuous and worldly of the earth signs — that is, Taurus season. We are so grateful for our baby bulls, because they remind us that food, drink, sex and money exist to be experienced in all their glory. And what better way to indulge in all these things than by traveling? Liberate your carefully selected and impeccably preserved vintage designer purse strings (we’re talking Taurus, after all) and go somewhere.

The ritual of travel is as visceral as it is spiritual. It’s the sweat collecting under your collar while you speed-walk to your gate (just to make sure it’s there, right?) as much as it is a 4 a.m. kiss on a starry beach accessible only by motorcycle. And the ritual before the ritual — packing — becomes a delicate, fraught dance of selection, a personal curatorial Everest that requires the traveler to dream, first and foremost, of how rainy the breeze might be on the way up the Eiffel Tower, how they might dress for both a rooftop dinner and a volcanic hike just outside San Salvador, if they’ll long for a stiletto boot at the Beijing opera or be too entranced by the show to care that they brought the flats instead. The careful balance of environmental factors in wardrobe selection, however, comes secondary to the crown jewel of functionality: the all-purpose travel jacket.

Trip jacket selection is an art and a science, best done elegantly, with attention paid to form, function, aesthetics and viability — as a pillow when folded into fourths or eighths on a long-haul flight. It should be able to take you to a museum and a visit to the botanical gardens with street food in hand on the same day. For this, may I suggest pet-tree-kor’s Green Helicteres Isora Jacket. The Shanghai-based imprint’s name is a nod to “petrichor,” a functionally and mystically perfect word that exists solely to describe the divine perfume that greets your nostrils after a rain (a smell that, allegedly, humans can detect more astutely than a shark’s nose can detect blood).

This garment, rendered in a tweed blend with a gorgeously mossy sheen, is both architectural in its structure and fluid in its silhouette. It looks at once inviting and familiar — almost like your most gallant grandfather’s jacket from the days he used to go out dancing with your grandma — and polished and elegant. It wouldn’t look out of place in a cozy diner on a rainy night in San Francisco’s Chinatown or on a dewy morning at the Rhode Island beach house of your friend with generational wealth. The shade of the jacket is an oft-underrated neutral, pairing nicely with virtually any other piece in your suitcase, maybe even amethyst or royal blue too. The Helicteres isora, the jacket’s namesake, is a vibrant plant from northern Oceania whose leaves dry in tawny-green curlicues, like nature’s fractals.

And nature’s most esoteric fractal you shall be in your pet-tree-kor travel jacket, cruising through the liminal space of LAX on the way to your next adventure. Does your manic pixie dream girl complex fantasize about an ethereal-looking stranger mesmerized in reverie as they gaze upon the dapples of fluorescent Tom Bradley terminal lights reflecting off this sumptuously swamp-hued fabric? Mine too. For all the grounding and presence that resets our nervous systems, our earthly vessels would be naught without the dream of a shimmery green.

Goth Shakira is a digital conjurer based in Los Angeles.

Lifestyle

What's Making Us Happy: A guide to your weekend viewing, listening and gaming

Published

9 hours ago

April 19, 2024

Press Room

What's Making Us Happy: A guide to your weekend viewing, listening and gaming

This week, Taylor Swift delivered some tortured poets, Quentin Tarantino changed his mind, and at least one Oscars hangover went on and on and on.

Here’s what NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out this weekend.

Koreaboo, on Audible

Audible has a romantic fiction podcast called KoreaBoo that is too cute. Shayla is an English expat in Korea and you expect her to do the stereotypical romance thing and fall in love with a K-Pop idol, but she ends up falling for her landlord’s son. It’s incredibly cute and sweet and funny. It’s written by Shenee Howard. The episodes are about half an hour long — super easy, delightful, and so cheery. — Joelle Monique

The Wiz on Broadway

Wayne Brady as The Wiz

Jeremy Daniel

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Jeremy Daniel

Wayne Brady as The Wiz

Jeremy Daniel

I am delighted to say that the revival of The Wiz has brought me so much joy. I saw it in previews and it just opened on Broadway. It is a multicultural, multicolored delight. Folks who go to see it will be clamoring for the cast recording album because, more than anything, I think what stuck with me is just the wonderful vocal arrangements and orchestrations from this new version. I think people will really enjoy it. — Soraya Nadia McDonald

Balatro

YouTube

Balatro is a deck building video game, which means it’s basically poker that you play by yourself. You’re dealt this hand, and then you try to build straights and flushes and things of a kind, etc. What makes it addictive is its elegant simplicity: Between hands you get a chance to buy random Jokers and other cards that do different things. And as you go through each run, the amount of points you can get, you have to earn on that hand increase. So, once you don’t make it, that’s it. You start over, your Jokers go away, you start from zero. You keep playing, and playing, and playing, because moments happen when the Jokers you have assembled interact with each other, and when they do, you see the points multiplying exponentially and you feel completely invulnerable. Producer Liz Metzger mentioned this game so I checked it out and when I looked up, it was the next day. — Glen Weldon

More recommendations from the Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter

by Linda Holmes

50 years ago, 'Come and Get Your Love' put Native culture on the bandstand

Don’t miss Elizabeth Blair’s piece for NPR marking the 50th anniversary of Redbone’s “Come And Get Your Love.” It was the first song by an all-Native and Mexican American band to make it into the Billboard Top 10, and she collects some terrific reminiscences. It’s a really good piece both to read and to listen to.

At six million views on YouTube, the dance video of the CDK Company interpreting Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” is hardly a hidden gem. But the choreography is fascinating, and it’s highly recommended if you’re in the mood for a little mind-blowing movement.

The Hulu series Under The Bridge is based on the true story of a Victoria, B.C. teenager who was killed after going off to meet a bunch of other teenagers. And while that’s a dynamic that’s been explored before (going back at least to River’s Edge), this is also an opportunity for recent devotees of Lily Gladstone to see her play the cop who’s determined to figure out what happened. Riley Keough plays a journalist who grew up in Victoria and has returned to write a book, only to get very much mixed up in the case.

Beth Novey adapted the Pop Culture Happy Hour segment “What’s Making Us Happy” for the Web. If you like these suggestions, consider signing up for our newsletter to get recommendations every week. And listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.