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Story by Jack Foley
THE
golden age of cinema is being revived at a new exhibition at the Tom Blau
Gallery, to mark the death of celebrated Hollywood photographer Sid
Avery last month.
Avery’s pictures helped to provide a private insight into some of the most publicity-shy stars of the Sixties, helping him to gain access to the likes of James Dean and Humphrey Bogart and access onto film sets such as Giant, Rebel Without A Cause and the original version of the Rat Pack’s Ocean’s Eleven.
The exhibition at Tom Blau represents Avery’s first solo show for more than 10 years and is an absolute must for film fanatics. Images include Marlon Brando looking moody on a pair of bongos (pictured left), Audrey Hepburn on a studio back lot and Rock Hudson, on the telephone when fresh out of the shower, wearing nothing but a towel.
Each photograph provides a real glimpse into the people behind the glamour
at a time when access to them was far more difficult. It catches some of cinema’s
true icons at their most intimate and honest - a feat which would be difficult
to repeat in today’s image-obsessed industry.
Other highlights include Steve McQueen going for a spin in his 1957 Jaguar
and Paul Newman making breakfast for Joanne Woodward.
Signed collectors' prints will be available throughout the exhibition for
purchase at special prices, from £450+VAT. The exhibition runs until
September 7.
Sid Avery's Hollywood Lives, Until Sep 7, Tom Blau Gallery, 21 Queen Elizabeth Street, Butler's Wharf, SE1 (Tel: 020 7940 9171).
About Sid Avery…
One of six children, Sid Avery was born in Akron, Ohio, but moved to Los Angeles
with his family when he was about a year old.
His infatuation with photography began at the age of seven, when his uncle, a landscape and architectural photographer, took him into his darkroom. During his teen years, he found a camera in a rubbish bin, cleaned it up and started experimenting.
At Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles, he was yearbook photographer and swept the camera club's awards and, after graduating in 1937, he studied photography at a trade school and worked as a darkroom assistant at a camera store while attending art school.
By 1938, he was shooting celebrities in nightclubs for Silver Screen, Photoplay
and other fan magazines. And in 1939 he opened a studio specialising in portraiture,
photojournalism and publicity photographs.
During the Second World War, Avery served in the Army Signal Corps and was
stationed in London, where he helped establish the Army Pictorial Service
laboratory, the processing facility for all combat still and motion picture
footage from the European theatre of operations.
Avery was commissioned a lieutenant before the Normandy invasion and helped establish a second division of the Army Pictorial Service in Paris.
After
the war, he returned to Hollywood and took on commercial assignments as well
as doing his celebrity shoots - he counted the likes of Nat King Cole, Ernest
Borgnine, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall among his friends. In the early
1960s he switched to advertising photography and, later that decade, opened
a successful television commercial production company.
In the 1980s he founded the non-profit Hollywood Photographers Archive to
preserve, document and exhibit the work of notable photographers. It later
evolved into a for-profit stock house, the Motion Picture and Television Photo
Archive, which represents the work of dozens of photographers and has more
than 1 million historic Hollywood images on file.
He died in Los Angeles earlier this year, aged 83.
RELATED LINKS: Click here
for the Tom Blau Gallery website...
Click here
to view more of Avery's work...
Click here
for a full obituary on Sid Avery...