Douglas Kirkland — whose movie star portraits turned almost as iconic because the celebrities themselves, and whose images doc a number of the most necessary movie shoots in Hollywood historical past — died Monday at his residence in Los Angeles of pure causes. He was 88.
Kirkland made portraits of the most important stars of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, together with Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Elizabeth Taylor, Charlie Chaplin, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brigitte Bardot.
He was the particular photographer on greater than 100 movies together with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child, 2001: A Area Odyssey, The Sound of Music, Sophie’s Selection, The Final Image Present, Fiddler on the Roof, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Saturday Evening Fever, Alien, Midnight Run, Rain Man, The Nice Gatsby, Out of Africa, Titanic and Moulin Rouge!
Kirkland by no means labored as an official unit photographer. His work on these movies was primarily for publications resembling Look and Life magazines.
“It was a time when the unit photographers had been usually taking pictures black-and-white with Rolleis and only one focal size,” he as soon as defined to American Cinematographer journal. “There was a sure type of picture the studios wished, however they couldn’t get dramatic results or actually seize the essence and the look of a movie,” however that’s what the shiny magazines wished.
In 2011, Kirkland was honored with the ASC’s Presidents Award in recognition of his contributions to advancing the artwork of filmmaking. He additionally has obtained a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Working Cameramen (S.O.C.).
“Douglas is a particular expertise, particularly by way of his superb portraiture,” mentioned Richard Crudo, ASC, chairman of the Society’s Awards Committee on the time. “He has been a terrific pal and supporter of administrators of pictures and a terrific promoter of the ASC. We felt it was applicable to acknowledge this with our Presidents Award.”
Kirkland was an affiliate member of the ASC.
His work has been collected in 10 monographs, many printed all through the world in a number of languages, together with the enduring An Night/1961 With Marilyn and the retrospective Freeze Body: 5 A long time / 50 Years / 500 Pictures, which was printed in 2008.
He informed CBS This Morning that Monroe, whom he described as “gentle and nearly playful,” requested for 3 issues earlier than the shoot.
“I would like white silk sheets, Frank Sinatra information and Dom Perignon champagne,” Kirkland remembered the actress saying. Watch the interview beneath.
Kirkland’s pictures resides within the collections of the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian, the Nationwide Portrait Gallery in Canberra Australia, the Nationwide Portrait Gallery in London, the Eastman Home Museum in Rochester, the Houston Middle for Images and the Annenberg Area for Images in Los Angeles.
When requested in 2017 which of his works he would change if he may return and create them once more, Kirkland informed CNN, “All of them. There is no such thing as a purpose to consider that the one picture captured is the most effective you may have performed. I all the time consider that I may have performed higher.”
Born in 1934 in Toronto, Kirkland moved to New York in 1957 and landed a job helping legendary photographer Irving Penn. He obtained into print by taking pictures for an eclectic group of publications resembling Chemical Week, Enterprise Weeokay and Common Images.
In 1960 on the age of 26, he turned a employees photographer at Look journal. One 12 months later, Kirkland requested Elizabeth Taylor if he may shoot her portrait, explaining that he was new to the journal.
“She paused,” he later remembered, “then mentioned, ‘Come again tomorrow evening at 8:30.’
A type of pictures turned his first Look cowl.
Kirkland went on to work for Life and Time magazines.
“The underside line for me is: I see the world higher with my digicam,” he informed Gallerie Gadcollection in 2018. “And that’s how I’ve all the time seen the world, since I used to be a younger boy in Canada.”
Kirkland is survived by his spouse Françoise, his son Mark and his two daughters Karen and Lisa.
