The Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles opens the year 2024 with a fine exhibition by Douglas Kirkland (1934 -2022), whose sixty-year career has captured the essence of iconic personalities through his lens. Brigitte Bardot, Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland, Peter Sellers, Sigourney Weaver… Numerous icons light up the walls of the Californian space. The man who trained and assisted Irving Penn from 1957 onwards began his most prolific career when he photographed Elizabeth Taylor in 1961. Since then, this multi-award-winning Toronto native has become a champion of the intimate. He has immortalised the greatest stars of the twentieth century, as well as behind-the-scenes footage of masterpieces (2001: A Space Odyssey, Fiddler on the Roof, Out of Africa, Sophie’s Choice, Titanic, Moulin Rouge!) for Look and Life magazines. A magnificent, luminous career that spanned the golden age of photojournalism in the 1960s and 70s. Whether capturing Marilyn Monroe, wrapped in a silk sheet, a few months before her death, or Brigitte Bardot playing cards on the floor, he extolled the beauty of women, between strength, sensuality and fragility, in settings that were always playful and intimate. What’s more, this affable master, who died at the age of 88, established his models as pure symbols, perpetuating their legendary status.
© Douglas Kirkland; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles
© Douglas Kirkland; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles
Douglas Kirkland: A Life in Pictures exhibition
Until February 24, 2024
Fahey/Klein Gallery
148 North La Brea, Los Angeles
United States – Los Angeles