On Photography: Marilyn Stafford, 1925-present

“I like to tell stories, and for me, taking a photograph is like telling a story. I tell it subconsciously, as I take the picture.” -Marilyn Stafford

Advice for women

Marilyn Stafford understands that there are fewer opportunities for women in photojournalism than for men. The media climate in the male-dominated 1960s did not favor women photographers. She has been elbowed off of stools she stood on to be tall enough to shoot fashion shows. Men have stepped in front of her to get their shot.

While things have gotten better some sixty years on, she encourages women who want to be photojournalists with this advice, “I’d just say go for it. Keep fighting for the opportunities that exist, get out there and do some good work. It’s hard, but determination will get you there in the end. Talent is irrepressible and glass ceilings are there to be smashed.”

Theatre and Scavullo

Marilyn Stafford had studied acting starting at seven-years-old. She studied drama at the University of Wisconsin. She loved theater because it was so expressive.

In 1946 she went to New York to work in theater acting and singing. Instead of waiting tables as most aspiring actors do, she took a position assisting fashion photographer Francisco Scavullo. Before he became renowned, he photographed catalogs.

Marilyn’s job was picking up pins off of the studio’s floor. She explains, “to make them fit, the models’ dresses were pinned tightly at the back, and when the pictures were finished the poor girls would give a big sigh of relief and all the pins would pop out.”

Her early apprenticeship was in Scavullo’s darkroom. She mixed chemicals. She developed his film and hung negatives up to dry.

The Rolleiflex

In 1947 she recalls “a friend gave me an old Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex and taught me how to use it. It was a marvelous camera with a great lens, but it had its limitations — with a Rollei you’re either shooting from the other side of the road or you’re right on top of what you’re photographing. Still, I managed.”

First commission: Albert Einstein

Two of her friends were making a documentary with Albert Einstein in 1948. They hoped the greatest physicist in the world would speak against the atomic bomb which he did. They invited Marilyn along for the day’s filming. She said, “on the drive there informed me I’d be taking the stills, then handed me a 35mm single-lens reflex camera. I’d never used one before and I went into a panic.

“He sat down in a chair near the fireplace in his lounge and asked at how many feet per second per second the film went through the camera. The director explained and Einstein very sweetly nodded his head and said, ‘Thank you. I understand now.’

“That stopped me in my tracks. It’s not every day you meet genius and humility, and since then I haven’t suffered fools gladly. So I just did what I had to do — focus and get the shots. Unfortunately, the director kept all the negatives and I got just one large mounted print and three or four little headshots (opening photo, bottom row, last image).”

Paris

Marilyn Stafford went to Paris with a close friend whose husband was having an affair. She fell in love with the city and decided to stay. By that time she was totally in love with photography. She would get on a bus every morning then ride it to the end of the line. She said, “That’s how I found the Bastille slums, where I’d photograph the kids playing, but I wasn’t making any money from photography at this point (opening photo, bottom row, three images in the third section.”)

One evening at a birthday party with friends, she sang happy birthday. A theatrical agent heard her and suggested she audition at Chez Carrère, a smart exclusive dinner club. ” … the only one in Paris Princess Elizabeth was allowed to visit. I said yes and got the job,” she said.

She met many famous people, Maurice Chevalier the actor, Bing Crosby the singer and writer Noël Coward. She also met Elenor Roosevelt. She said, “We spent some time talking but I never once thought about taking her picture. That’s a real regret, as she was the woman I most respected in the world. I still wasn’t really thinking like a photographer at this stage.”

She shot ready-to-wear fashion on Paris streets often with children in the photo continuing the work she did in the Bastille slums (opening photo, top row, first and second images.)

Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson

She knew both war photographer and co-founder of the Magnum agency Robert Capa and street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. She decided that she was not interested in combat photography. She turned to Cartier-Bresson who became her mentor. “I’d go out with him on shoots to observe how he worked. He was very tall and usually wore a hat, and when he brought his little Leica up to his eye, nobody noticed (opening photo, top row, last image). All they’d see was me, this very small woman carrying a very large Rolleiflex at a time when no one really had a camera,” she said of the legendary photographer. “[He] would look at the photographs I’d taken and instead of telling me what not to do, he’d make suggestions — “If you did it this way you’d get a different result.” He simply helped me to see.”

Retirement

In an interview with Nikon School U.K., she talked about her work. She said, “When I retired in 1980 I put all my images and negatives in little bags and shoeboxes under the bed. I figured that nobody would be interested in any of my work, as it was so of its time, so I forgot about it and lived another life. But it turns out a lot of the pictures are now rarities and they are wanted.”

First exhibition

While her photographs were shown a the Lucy Bell Fine Art Gallery in 2017, her first major exhibition happened a bit later.

“Marilyn Stafford: A Life In Photography” premiered at Farleys House, home of the legendary model turned war photographer Lee Miller. The exhibit then moved to the Brighton Museum and is running now through May 8, 2022. The exhibit and the book are the first public showing of her work gathered over decades of photography that started with a whimsical opportunity to photograph physicist Albert Einstein at his home in Princeton, NJ.

Sources: Nikon School, The New York Times, Marilyn Stafford.