Through a Different Lens – Stanley Kubrick

From 30.10.2021 to 10.01.2022

The exhibition Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick photographs the beginnings of a 17-year-old amateur photographer from the Bronx who would become one of the most important filmmakers of the 20th century.

The beginnings

Organised by ERPAC in collaboration with the Museum of the City of New York and the Stanley Kubrick Archive, it features 130 photographs from the Look archive.
All of the images in the exhibition were taken during Kubrick’s employment as a photographer for Look between 1945 and 1950. Kubrick focuses his lens on nightclubs, street scenes and sporting events, capturing the pathos of everyday life with a sophistication that does not show his youth.

The photographs on display are accompanied by the issues of Look in which they appeared, thus restoring the journalistic context in which the images were received by the general public.

Stanley Kubrick sold his first photograph to Look magazine in 1945: the image of a sad newsagent the day after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
For an up-and-coming photographer at that time, there was no better place than New York City. After graduating in 1946, Look hired Kubrick as an apprentice. His name first appeared on the magazine’s masthead in the 7 January 1947 issue. His first photo shoot, ‘Life and Love on the New York Subway’, was published two months later. Particularly valuable for an aspiring filmmaker are the stories devoted to the post-war forms of entertainment in America: publishing, film, popular music and television. In 1950 Kubrick created a series of celebrity profiles, photographing composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein and boxer Rocky Graziano, among others. As his work for the magazine came to an end, Kubrick began work on his first documentary film Day of the Fight. The film, which can be seen in the exhibition and was first shown in 1951, was based on his 1949 article about the boxer Walter Cartier, ‘The Professional’.

Early films

The epilogue to the exhibition highlights the relationship between photographer and director. In 1950 Kubrick made photographic investigations of adolescent love and relationships and marital jealousy. He effectively directed these proto-cinematic series. His first film, the documentary on Cartier, Day of the Fight, is also presented in the exhibition. The script and shots were based on the boxer’s photo shoot. Throughout his life Kubrick relied on photographs to develop the scripts for his stories. The last section of the exhibition also includes an excerpt from his second feature film, Killer’s Kiss (1955) in which we recognise the themes – boxing, crime, nightclubs and showgirls, ambition and alienation – already the subject of his shoots for Look.