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November 25, 2005
Fabricating Kubrick: Raphael on the LOOK pictures
Frederic Raphael, collaborator on Eyes Wide Shut was one of the first after Kubrick's death to cash in on his memories in the Guardian, he has his way with the new coffee table volume, "Stanley Kubrick: Dreams and Shadows, Photographs 1945-1950," from Phaidon Press, which draws from Kubrick's work in the archives of LOOK magazine. The selection, claims Raphael, "reveals a command of camera angles which it is tempting to call "instinctive", but is more likely to have been planned as consciously as chess moves. The photographs show an appetite for the dark side... The camera suggests confident familiarity with local life, which the monoglot down-there-on-assignment Kubrick can never have had...
"Never an ambulance-chaser or a crime-scene specialist like the great Weegee..., young Kubrick was not content to catch life on the fly... If Kubrick often honoured the ethos of the on-the-spot observer, he also cheated; one of the earliest prints is of a newsvendor, in his kiosk, framed by April 1945 newspapers announcing the death of FDR. The very image of America's bereavement, the guy appears ineffably sad. It looks as "natural" as a picture-desk editor would require, but in fact the vendor was coached to adopt his sorry expression. What looks to have been caught on the fly is a set-up." [More know-it-all guff at the link.]
Posted by pride at November 25, 2005 07:33 PM
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