We Can’t Paint

Unknown photographer

Anyone who knows me is aware that I’m a Kubrick freak. I love his quality over quantity, his inability to accept that something was impossible, and his pure originality. Most of his films were based off of literature but they still felt like his stories. This was a man that was one of the most intelligent, exacting, inventive and stylelistically unique directors that the cinema will ever see, a director that is clearly absent from our present time. What is interesting about Kubrick is that many people are not aware that he started out as a photographer.

© Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick often talked about his transition from a photographer to a director and how he could not have been the filmmaker that he was without a “photographer’s eye”. His initial facination with the photographic (I use this term becuase it applies to film and photography) started when he recieved a Graflex camera from his father. Kubrick was eventually able to land a job taking photos for Look Magazine after staging a photograph of a newspaper vendor reacting to Roosevelt’s death.

© Stanley Kubrick 

I’ve often thought of Kubrick’s photography as a cross between Winogrand and Weegee, a raw and playful approach to image making. What mark would Kubrick have left on the history of photography if he had not decided to become a director?

Here is a selection of his photography:

© Stanley Kubrick

© Stanley Kubrick

© Stanley Kubrick

© Stanley Kubrick

© Stanley Kubrick

© Stanley Kubrick

© Stanley Kubrick

Here are some of his more ”editorial” photos:

© Stanley Kubrick

© Stanley Kubrick

© Stanley Kubrick

© Stanley Kubrick

If youwant to find out more about Kubrick’s photography you can check out these links:

• Photo essay for Look Magazine: Chicago - City of Contrasts
  
• Look inside the book Stanley Kubrick Drama and Shadows: Photographs 1945-1950
• Review of Drama and Shadows
• Traveling exhibition of Kubrick’s career in film and a small section of his photography is shown as well

For those of you who live in Canada and have Mpix (I’m not sure if it is available in the US) there is a Kubrick movie every night at 9pm until January 19 spanning all of his films. On the 25th and 26th there is a Kubrick marathon starting at 6:30pm with Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. As opposed to some of the other documentaries that profile this great director, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures does not assume to make claims about a very personal and misunderstood man. The film is created by one of Stanley’s closest friends and has insights about his life from the people who knew him best, a truly great tribute.