Twists of fate
The life and career of Marilyn Stafford has been a series of fortunate, and sometimes bizarre events, as Amy Davies discovers
The life and career of Marilyn Stafford has been a series of fortunate, and sometimes bizarre events, as Amy Davies discovers
Marilyn Stafford’s talk at this year’s Hull International Photography Festival (HIPFest) was one of the highlights of the show. After watching the 93-year-old legend of photography command the stage like a woman half her age, if not younger, it was further privilege to sit down with the inspirational figure for a chat.
Considering Stafford didn’t really want to be a photographer – harbouring early ambitions to be a ‘great American actress’ – the Ohio native has had an extraordinary career. Now living near Brighton, her life and work seem to have followed a serendipitous path of incredible opportunities.
Amazingly, it all started with a photograph of none other than Albert Einstein. Having a camera thrust into her hand on the car journey over to Einstein’s house in New Jersey, where he was working in 1948 at the Ivy League Princeton University, it would be Stafford’s first professional photograph, and one which she is still asked about.
‘I was simply handed a 35mm camera,’ she recalls, ‘which I’d never used before – I’d always used a Rolleiflex, which is a bigger camera with a bigger frame. With the 35mm you looked through the viewfinder in a completely different way so it was a totally different method. I was
just given the camera in the back seat of this car and was told, “You are going to be the stills lady – we will set the lighting and do everything for you, all you have to do is look through the lens, focus it and click the button.” And that’s what I did – I listened to directions… that’s how I took Albert Einstein’s photograph.’
In 1949, Stafford headed for Paris. Here her life would dramatically change, and her photographic career would begin in earnest some years later. ‘One of the stories I love is that I went to Paris because of the infidelity of a man,’ she says. Cutting a long story short, the trip was the demand of a friend, whose husband had cheated and forced the guilty party to pay up for the duo’s jaunt across the Atlantic. Were it not for this twist of fate, we may not actually have the Stafford archive to look back on at all.
Photography was not the first career Stafford embarked on once in Europe, however. During her early days there she had various jobs including singing at a dinner club on the Champs-Élysées. It was here that she would meet Robert Capa – who she refers to as ‘Bob’. ‘I became his “little sister”, and he would come in every night with his chums and we would talk,’ she reminisces.
The next step
Sadly, the singing career was not to be after Stafford was told that she’d never make it professionally owing to a problem with her vocal chords. In the end, it was getting a new pet cat that would start her new career. As she explains, ‘I was with friends and I happened to mention I wanted a cat. Somebody said they knew someone with a litter – an American woman who was a fascinating lady. I remained friends with her until her death a few years ago.
‘She was from Texas and was one of the early journalists who had come over during the Second World War. She went round in a jeep all over Europe when it was being bombed to death, writing stories. I didn’t have any work at the time, and I didn’t know what to do. She asked me if I’d like to take some pictures with her – and so I did. She also helped me get a job with a PR agency who had clients in fashion.’
In the 1950s, a new type of ready-to-wear fashion was becoming much more prominent than the haute couture of previous decades. As such, Stafford’s approach to photographing these clothes was unique for the time. She pioneered the idea of taking pictures of women wearing garments in the street – as they might wear them in real life – and used the opportunity to explore her new home in Paris.
‘I was thinking, I don’t like to shoot in a studio – I can’t be bothered with the technology of all of that – the cords, the electricity, lights and organising. I don’t like flash because I can’t figure that out either. So I just thought natural daylight, that’s easy.
‘Because I was still exploring Paris, I just took them [the models] out into my favourite spots in Paris and had fun. I was exploring while I was taking the pictures.’
Such expeditions opened up opportunities to shoot other documentary projects,
something which Stafford had a passion for, and would go on to specialise in. She remembers, ‘Something quite memorable was getting off at the Bastille and finding myself in a rather derelict, once beautiful, Edwardian centre of town which had become a slum.
‘I was just wandering around and suddenly some kids popped up and started following me – when they pop up, they bring life to the whole thing. I photographed all of them, had a marvellous time and left. I later realised that I was in the worst slum in Paris – it was eventually taken down by the government in 1984 and is now the site of the Opéra Bastille opera house.
‘What’s exciting is that those pictures were shown in an exhibition in Toronto, and they’re on my website – things converge and the people who I photographed, the kids, are coming forth and saying, “That’s me.”’
In the mid ’50s, Stafford married a British foreign correspondent based in Paris. While heavily pregnant with their daughter, she travelled to Tunisia to document Algerian refugees. On returning to Paris, she showed the work to another friend – one Henri CartierBresson, no less – who sent the photos off to The Observer. With two images published on the cover, this became Stafford’s first frontpage feature, and a pivotal point in her career.
Pushing boundaries
Being a young woman working in a male-dominated industry, especially at the time, had its own challenges. She would later move to London. She recalls an incident, not long after she had moved to the UK. ‘I went to a fashion show – I got there early and took my place and waited for the other photographers. The men came and one guy stood on one side of me, and another stood on the other. As the photographers kept coming in, these two blokes next to me started edging me out, very strongly. Two German photographers, standing on the other side of the runway, got up and walked across it – they said menacingly, “That’s not the way you treat a woman”.’
‘I’m terribly sad to say, I’ve been pushed and shoved, pretty badly. When I’ve been crouching for a shot, I’ve been knocked over, off-balance, and hurt, physically.’
Although Stafford says that these days it’s easier for women to pursue a career in photography, including photojournalism, she believes the odds are still stacked against them. ‘You will find that they are often paid less than men, and they often have the additional situation of family and children,’ she explains. ‘Either they make a sacrifice and don’t have family, or if they do, because by and large the culture is that the man is the provider, she’s left having to solve the problem, having to cope with everything – including her own work.’
These days, Stafford doesn’t take pictures. She gave up photography when it went digital. But her role, especially for women, continues to be as important as ever, having set up the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award in 2017 in association with FotoDocument and supported by Olympus.
‘ The object was to give a small amount of money to a woman who was working on a project of social relevance, and to show a solution to the problem, or at least what was being done to help along toward a solution. There were over 60
applicants from all over the world, all of them brilliant photographers. These are women who are caring and deserve to have their stories told. It just tells you when you’re sitting by yourself, plotting away, you’re not alone – we’re with you.’
This year, the Award received extra sponsorship from Olympus, doubling the prize money, as well as making an exhibition of the winners and runners-up a possibility.
For a woman whose career started by photographing Einstein, counted Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa among her friends and went on to take portraits of some of the most famous women (and men) in the world – Stafford remains incredibly humble and self-effacing. Indeed, a gasp rippled through the room when she admitted to throwing some of her archive away. ‘I thought nobody would be interested,’ she says.
Luckily for us, a large bulk of it remains for us to digest and enjoy – we’d highly recommend that you spend some time getting to know it too.