Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

ISSN: 0143-9685 (Print) 1465-3451 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/chjf20

Stanley Kubrick: Photography and Film

Philippe D. Mather

To cite this article: Philippe D. Mather (2006) Stanley Kubrick: Photography and Film, Historical
Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 26:2, 203-214, DOI: 10.1080/01439680600691719

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01439680600691719

Published online: 05 Aug 2006.

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Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
Vol. 26, No. 2, June 2006, pp. 203–214

STANLEY KUBRICK: PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM

Philippe D. Mather

When Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, Stanley Kubrick was a 16-year-
old high school student from the Bronx, seldom seen without a camera hanging from
his neck. He persuaded a newspaper salesman to adopt a dejected facial expression,
and then took a photograph composed in a way that uses newspaper titles as a visual
frame and a verbal commentary. He sold the picture to Look magazine for $25, and it
appeared prominently in the June 26 issue (figure 1). After graduating from high
school, Kubrick was offered a staff position at Look magazine, where he worked for
five years, publishing close to 900 photographs.
By 1997, Kubrick had become a renowned feature film-maker living in England,
and he shot a scene for his last film, Eyes Wide Shut (Warner Bros; UK, 1999), that
appears to complete his career as a visual artist. Tom Cruise is shown standing where a
teenage Kubrick might have stood half a century earlier, allowing us to step back and
witness this primal scene, the birth of the artist. Also set in New York City, the scene
includes a newspaper stand, reflexive commentary from the tabloid titles, and the
theme of death.
Despite a number of other similar features, Kubrick’s reputation as an artist is
based on 12 films, not the 900 photographs that appeared in Look magazine. Can the
Look magazine photographs in fact shed light on the aesthetic and ideological factors
that shaped the development of Kubrick’s artistic voice, as well as our own
understanding of his film work? A study of Kubrick’s photographs from a
photojournalistic perspective may provide insights that an art historical approach
would overlook. Moreover, a socio-cultural analysis of the discursive contexts in
which the Look photographs were produced may also help in identifying the source of
Kubrick’s emerging ‘signature,’ rather than positing an always already formed artistic
identity, and using this identity to interpret the photographs from an ex post facto
perspective.
The process of selecting still images in accordance with a shooting script, in the
collaborative environment of a general interest photo magazine, shaped Kubrick’s

Correspondence: Philippe D. Mather, Campion College, 3737 Wascana Parkway, Regina,

Saskatchewan, S4S 0A2, Canada. E-mail: Philippe.Mather@uregina.ca

ISSN 0143-9685 (print)/ISSN 1465-3451 (online)/06/020203–12 ß 2006 IAMHIST & Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/01439680600691719
204 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

FIGURE 1 Stanley Kubrick’s first published photograph (Look, June 26, 1945) and his last released film,
Eyes Wide Shut (Warner Bros; UK, 1999).

emerging talent in combining words and images for story-telling purposes. Since his
later work as a film-maker involved editing multiple images in a narrative context,
establishing precise developmental connections between Kubrick’s Look photographs
and his early documentary and fiction films reveals a consistent use of narrative,
rhetorical and visual tropes which can be shown to originate in Look magazine’s
photojournalistic methods. This essay begins by briefly situating Kubrick’s history at
Look, including relevant creative influences, followed by a comparative textual analysis
of selected photographic and cinematic work and concluding with a critical discussion
of the ways Kubrick’s photojournalistic work may be presented to the general public.
The concluding discussion allows for a rearticulating of my main hypothesis, namely
that Kubrick’s identity as an artist is perhaps best understood as the end result of many
influences, particularly the collaborative teamwork which he experienced for five
years at Look magazine and which likely continued to be a factor during his own
film productions.
Kubrick’s early contributions to Look magazine in the Fall of 1945 were on a
freelance basis. He graduated from high school in January 1946, after which Look offered
him a job as an apprentice photographer. Kubrick’s name is linked to Look in the
photographic credits beginning in June, 1946, but does not appear in the table
of contents as a full-fledged member of the photographic staff until January 1947.
It stands to reason that the young man would have absorbed a considerable amount of
information from the charged, professional ambience of a national photomagazine, with
a circulation of nearly three million copies in the first half of 1948.1 One can easily
imagine the staff at Look providing their apprentice photographer with on-the-job
training, along with a copy of the in-house textbook entitled The Technique of the Picture
Story, written and published in 1945 by Look’s Executive Editor and Art Director, Dan
Mich and Edwin Eberman, respectively. The textbook includes a Life magazine portrait
of a boxer which is praised for its use of frontal flash lighting.2 Moreover, Martin
Scorsese has indicated in a filmed interview that he used the flash photography approach
for his film Raging Bull (MGM/UA; US, 1980) in order to capture the lighting style he
remembered from Life magazine photo stories.3
 STANLEY KUBRICK: PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM 205

Arthur Rothstein, Head of Look’s photo department from 1947 until 1971,
describes the creative process involved in producing photo-essays at Look magazine in
his Photojournalism, first published in 1956. It indicates the nature of the teamwork
required, as well as the space for personal contribution and mutual influence. Look
developed a system of photographer–writer teams, which meant that writers would
often accompany the photographers on location once an assignment had been made.4
John Baxter notes that ‘Kubrick learned early the habit of looking to others for his
narratives, and devoting his energies to illuminating them.’5 As a film-maker, Kubrick
always worked with a writer, even when adapting a novel, with the exception of
Barry Lyndon (Warner Brothers; UK, 1976). According to Rothstein, once a topic
is selected and researched, the editors work with the photographer to develop a
preliminary shooting script. While on location, departures from the script will often
occur.6 The photographer gets to see the contact sheets first, following which he and
the editor make a preliminary selection of photographs. If the photographer is
available, he may assist the art director in producing a layout, otherwise he gets
a chance to suggest changes once the layout is completed.7 Furthermore, it seems
that one of Look’s distinctive advantages over Life magazine was the editorial board’s
willingness to accept story ideas from their photographic staff.8 It is not clear to what
extent Kubrick availed himself of that opportunity, although one can make educated
guesses, but the key factor was the flexibility of Executive Editor Dan Mich’s editorial
style.9 Finally, in terms of the Look staff’s influence, it should be noted that in addition
to working on location with a writer, photographers would occasionally be sent in
teams. Fifteen of the 102 jobs assigned to Kubrick which are available at the Library
of Congress were shared with other photographers, including Department Head
Arthur Rothstein on five occasions.
As a means of illustrating some of the narrative aspects of Kubrick’s photographs
as well as the photographic moments of his films, I now turn to an examination of the
formal and thematic connections between his photographic and filmic work. The
clearest example of a visual and thematic focal point early in Kubrick’s career is the
dramatic aspects of a boxing match. Indeed, not only was Kubrick assigned to cover
boxing events on four different occasions during his tenure at Look, but his first
documentary film, Day of the Fight (RKO; US, 1951), was a direct adaptation of his
1949 photo-essay entitled Prizefighter, and his second feature film, Killer’s Kiss (United
Artists; US, 1955), includes scenes borrowed from his earlier boxing stories.10
What follows is a comparative analysis of these three key texts.
Prizefighter is a seven-page study of 24-year-old middleweight boxer Walter
Cartier.11 Appearing in the January 18, 1949 issue of Look magazine, the photo-essay is
variously described by Kubrick’s biographers as a ‘matrix’12 or a ‘blueprint’13 for the
documentary Day of the Fight, although I will be pointing out other influences below.
The essay is uninterrupted by advertisements, and its photojournalistic structure may
be broken down into three two-page spreads, introduced by a single full-page photo.
This opening picture is a soulful portrait of Cartier, waiting with his manager before
entering the ring.14 The third two-page spread acts as a conclusion, framing the essay
as the two dominant pictures show Cartier triumphantly marching in the ring after
knocking out his opponent, then relaxing with his brother after the fight on the
deserted sidewalks of Greenwich Village by night.
206 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

The introductory portrait of the boxer is followed by a flashback to the morning

of the same day, with a series of smaller pictures showing the many preparations
leading up to the fight. In terms of narrative structure, the decision to begin in media
res and thus to resort to a flashback can be an effective strategy, and Kubrick availed
himself of this device in his early films Killer’s Kiss, The Killing (United Artists; US,
1956) and Lolita (MGM; UK, 1962). At first glance, the essay then appears to adopt a
‘day in the life of’ structure, but it quickly becomes clear that the main rhetorical
trope in the body of this essay is contrast. The first two-page spread opposes a profile
of the boxer praying in church, and a dramatic full-page photograph of Cartier
engaged in battle with an opponent caught drooling, possibly after missing a right
hook.15 The contrast between the fighter’s unexpected spiritual life and the brutality
of his life in the ring is underscored by the soft lighting used on the left page, and the
harsh flash photography, which typifies boxing photo-essays in general, as mentioned
previously.
In the second two-page spread, a large close-up of Cartier resting between
matches on Staten Island beach on page left is pitted against an equally large medium-
shot on page right of the boxer sitting between rounds in a corner of the ring,
bleeding from a cut near his eye. This opposition is echoed by the use of a smaller
photograph placed above that of Cartier in the ring, showing the boxer’s twin brother
Vincent applying Vaseline to Walter’s face and appropriately described by the caption
as an affectionate portrait. In a photojournalistic context, such contrasts in the layout
of photographs is a useful way of creating visually striking and thought-provoking
relationships between images, and it is interesting to note that ironic contrasts through
editing would become a stylistic feature of many Kubrick films. Consider the quick
transition from Kirk Douglas’ impassioned appeal for clemency for his men in Paths of
Glory (Universal; US, 1957) to the dispassionate firing squad preparations which
follow, the famous match-cut in 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM; UK, 1968) from a
prehistoric bone to a futuristic spaceship which mocks four million years of human
evolution, or the contrast between Alex ’s (Malcolm McDowell) private thoughts in A
Clockwork Orange (Warner Brothers; UK, 1971) and the prison chaplain’s hope that the
young man is learning something from reading the Bible.
Another recurring feature in Kubrick’s films appears on the second page of
Prizefighter. Five small pictures list the events leading up to the fight, including the
twin brothers waking up, breakfast with Aunt Eva, the weigh-in and the physical
exam, and waiting at home for a ride to the arena. Most of these events are reprised in
the documentary Day of the Fight, and their function is to indicate a careful and
meticulous preparation, as well as building up tension before the main event. When
the fighter is left to wait, the documentary’s voice-over narrator refers to ‘the
pressure of the last waiting,’ and the photo-essay’s text informs us that ‘time drags
heavily.’ The Kubrickian protagonist is often methodical in his preparations, and Davey
in Killer’s Kiss is shown having his hands taped and being given a rubdown by his
trainer. Most thorough is Sterling Hayden’s character in The Killing, who plans
everything possible to ensure a successful heist. This protagonist is also an obsessive,
single-minded individual, a feature that can be traced back to another picture from
Prizefighter: while Cartier is having his gloves fitted, the caption mentions that the
boxer plans his strategy ‘coldly, impersonally.’ The strong use of top lighting, which
causes the boxer’s eyes to disappear into the dark shadow cast by his brow, creates the
 STANLEY KUBRICK: PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM 207

impression of a cool, determined focus. Similarly, when Cartier is putting on his

gloves in Day of the Fight, the narrator elaborates on the creation of the fighter
persona, ‘the man who cannot lose, who must not lose . . . a fierce new person . . . the
arena man, the fighting machine.’
Related to the notion of persona in Kubrick’s oeuvre is a striking theme also
inaugurated in Prizefighter, that of the double. The presence of Walter Cartier’s twin
brother Vincent throughout the photo-essay and the documentary film provides these
two texts with an eerie sense of being able to see the same person from two angles
simultaneously. For instance, on the second page of Prizefighter, a picture shows
Vincent sleeping in the foreground while Walter stands in the background, stretching
prior to his morning jog. Twins are also featured in Kubrick’s The Shining (Warner
Brothers; UK, 1980), as a vision of two dead sisters likely inspired by a Diane Arbus
photograph, taken in New Jersey in 1967, showing twin girls standing side by side
(figure 2). The aforementioned portrait of Vincent applying Vaseline on his brother’s
face almost looks like a mirror image, and in the opening scene from Killer’s Kiss, a
mirror provides Davey with a false twin as he checks his brow and nose for signs of
injury. The mirror is a means of articulating the doppelgänger theme, as an expression
of the Kubrickian struggle between reason and emotion,16 as well as a self-referential
comment on the artifice of representation.
Rather than creating a series of contrasts like the photo-essay on which it is based,
the documentary Day of the Fight follows a ‘day in the life of’ structure, and introduces
other photojournalistic features such as providing the boxer with a dog, a human-
interest touch Kubrick clearly picked up from his years at Look.17 Contrast is
maintained nonetheless in the form of an ironic juxtaposition between the cheerful
images of Cartier playing with ‘his’ dog and the voice-over narrator’s characterization
of the boxer’s devastating knock-out punch. This incongruous combination adds to the
dualistic theme of the composed yet driven hero, the seemingly two-faced protagonist
who can give a killer’s kiss.
Day of the Fight also includes a number of images not found in the photo-essay, but
retained for the boxing scenes in Killer’s Kiss. Anticipating the fight itself, Kubrick
includes shots of Walter shadow boxing into Vincent’s open hands, a training
technique also adopted by Davey in the feature film. A few minutes later, the two
fighters are sitting on their respective stools, and the camera is positioned at a low

FIGURE 2 The Brady twins in The Shining (Warner Brothers; UK, 1980), and Identical Twins by
Diane Arbus (Roselle, NJ, 1967).
208 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

angle behind the opponent, looking through his legs to reveal Cartier as he waits
patiently in the opposite corner of the ring. The bell rings to announce the beginning
of the match, and the boxers jump into action. This stylish take is repeated verbatim in
Killer’s Kiss, and provides a dynamic sense of depth to the image, in addition to an
original perspective. The same applies to a striking low-angle shot placed between the
fighters on the ground floor and looking straight up at them as they trade blows. Film
scholar Bernd Kiefer argues that this is a staged shot, skillfully edited into an otherwise
strictly documentary fight sequence, on the grounds that Kubrick could not have
extended his camera between the fighters, and that Cartier is not wearing his mouth-
guard.18 If Kiefer is right, this would be in keeping with Kubrick’s experience in
creating staged photographs to illustrate Look magazine’s how-to articles, as well as
indicate that the budding film-maker was perhaps leaning towards full-fledged fiction.
Another interesting link between Day of the Fight and Killer’s Kiss is the use of
cutaways to individuals experiencing the boxing match second-hand, rather than in
person. In the documentary, two shots depict men listening to a radio broadcast of the
sporting event. The first shot features a very young-looking Kubrick working on some
chewing gum as he listens to the broadcast, a clear example of staged filming, as well
as the film director’s only on-screen cameo, it seems, in his oeuvre. The broadcast
medium is upgraded to television in Killer’s Kiss, when cutaways show sleazy dance-hall
owner Vince Rapallo getting excited by the fight as he grabs onto a much less
interested Gloria. Killer’s Kiss opens with a flashback to the day of the fight, and several
posters advertising the match between Davey Gordon and Kid Rodriguez. One of the
posters hangs from a lamppost, reminiscent of an identical shot at the beginning of Day
of the Fight. To situate Walter Cartier’s apartment, the documentary’s next shot pans
on New York City rooftops, an image expanded into a poetic long take as Davey is
pursued by Rapallo and his goons at the conclusion of Killer’s Kiss. Good photo
opportunities present themselves in the corner of the ring between rounds, since the
fighters must stay put and regroup, with help from their trainers. This stage in a
boxing match has been captured several times by Kubrick, including virtually identical
compositions in Prizefighter and Killer’s Kiss (figure 3).19
My analysis thus far may appear to merely confirm the characterization of
Prizefighter as a kind of generative Urtext, but as we look more closely at Killer’s Kiss, a
film which includes but also moves beyond the topic of boxing, it becomes evident
that Kubrick’s films follow in the footsteps of many other photo-essays the soon-to-be
film-maker worked on between 1945 and 1950, in addition to which Prizefighter itself
was only one among several boxing stories assigned to him. Indeed, Kubrick was first
sent on an assignment entitled Boxing Story in October 1947, but the results were
never published. According to the description from the Library of Congress’ Prints
and Photographs division, where most of Look’s negatives have been located since the
magazine ceased publication in 1971,20 the photographs on this assignment include
individual portraits of boxers, and trainers attending to a boxer in a corner of the ring.
These two specific subjects reappear in his published photo-essays as well as his films,
as discussed above. One month after the publication of Prizefighter, the February 15,
1949 issue of Look includes an article also photographed by Kubrick entitled Fight
Night at the Garden, which does not feature the athletes, but focuses instead on
audience reactions to the match, as well as the journalists covering the event. Reaction
shots are standard points of identification for readers, and they enhance Kubrick’s
 STANLEY KUBRICK: PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM 209

FIGURE 3 The boxer’s corner between rounds in Prizefighter (Look, January 18, 1949) and Killer’s Kiss
(United Artists; US, 1955).

expansion on the boxing match topic in Day of the Fight, but it should be noted that the
young photojournalist had on several occasions demonstrated his ability in capturing
the crowd’s emotional expressions at sporting events, beginning in October 1945, in a
short piece entitled Kids at a Ball Game. The famous middleweight Rocky Graziano was
the subject of Kubrick’s last boxing assignment at Look, and was published on February
14, 1950. It reprises several characteristics of the article on Walter Cartier, including
the standard preparations on the day of the fight, a portrait of the boxer as he waits
anxiously for the call to the ring, and a shot of concerned trainers tending to
Graziano’s needs between rounds.
One of Kubrick’s formal trademarks is the use of symmetry and perspective in his
compositions, which usually communicate a sense of uncontrollable fate.21 When
Davey and Gloria leave their respective apartments simultaneously in Killer’s Kiss, they
are framed in a long shot by the building’s front courtyard, walking side by side and
forming the bottom part of a triangle, with Rapallo at the top, sitting in his car as the
third wheel in a doomed threesome. Later, Gloria walks up the stairs leading to the
dance-hall to collect her last paycheck, in another symmetrical shot whose meaning is
made more explicit by the warning sign ‘Watch your step’. The use of onscreen words
commenting on the characters reminds us of Kubrick’s first published photograph
with the newspaper salesman, as well as an intriguing portrait of German
expressionist painter George Grosz, in a two-page article entitled ‘New York:
World Art Center,’ published in the June 8, 1948 issue of Look (figure 4). The
composition is symmetrical, although the artist looks very much at ease and in control
of his destiny, perhaps even mocking the ‘no parking’ sign, which elicited a
congratulatory Look memorandum for Kubrick, pointing out the humour.22
Implicit in the above examination of photojournalism and film is the notion that
one can trace a kind of phylogenetic link between the three different visual forms that
Kubrick worked with: the photo-essay, the documentary film, and the fiction film. All
three deal with narrative and images, and can be shown to point to each other as
members of the same family. Film scholar Garrett Stewart has convincingly argued
that film always contains a trace of its own photogrammatic basis, namely that we are
periodically made aware that the illusion of movement rests upon a series of still
images, which constitutes the film medium’s ‘specular unconscious.’23 The relation-
ship between photography and film as applied to Kubrick’s work can be read both
ways: one can identify filmic elements in his photo-stories, including narrative and
210 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

FIGURE 4 Portrait of German expressionist painter George Grosz (Look, June 8, 1948).

kinetic qualities, as well as photographic moments in his film work, which includes
issues of framing and documentary realism. For a number of his Look assignments,
Kubrick produced series photographs, typically shot from the same vantage point,
which look like individual frames from a film. The serial variations in these multiple
photographs suggest movement, and thus an unfolding event.
An often-cited characteristic of photographs is their indexical nature, which
continues to ensure, even in this digital age, their cultural perception as realistic
documents or traces of a specific past time and place. Film, on the other hand,
provides us with the illusion of the present, of duration, so paradoxically it tends to be
associated with the imaginary and fiction, in part because fiction film is its dominant
form. Kubrick uses the documentary aura of still photographs to add a sense of realism
to his fiction films. The Shining features a growing opposition between the certain past
of Brady, the former caretaker of the Overlook hotel who killed his family with an
axe, and the illusion of the present tense and Jack Torrance’s family (Jack Nicholson).
When Jack suffers from writer’s block, Kubrick provides us with his trademark ‘crazy
stare,’ which Nicholson holds for a long time without blinking. The crazy stare is
treated as a still photograph, much like the opening shot of A Clockwork Orange (Warner
Brothers; UK, 1971), a slow zoom-out from Malcolm McDowell. Also, when private
Gomer Pyle has been transformed into a killing machine in Full Metal Jacket (Warner
Brothers; UK, 1987), we get the same static composition. The characters appear
frozen in time, and the morning after the unsuccessful pursuit of his son Danny in the
hedge maze, Jack Torrance is literally frozen. The final shot of The Shining, a
photograph of a 1921 New Year’s Eve party at the Overlook Hotel, is a confirmation
that the dead, yet real past of photography has defeated the illusion of cinema.24
The issue of the development of Kubrick’s artistic voice can be examined from a
production or a reception perspective. In terms of reception, we can distinguish
 STANLEY KUBRICK: PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM 211

between two distinct reading protocols. The first one emerges from the original
communicational context of the Look photographs as photojournalism, which means
identifying the different kinds of articles or magazine genres in which the photos
appear, as well as the specific nature of the relationship between the editorial text and
the pictures. Are the photos portraits of artists and politicians, man-on-the-street
inquiries, do they appear in articles covering social, political or cultural events,
features on American institutions, social studies on a specific issue, etc.? Does the text
interpret the photos, or do the photos illustrate assertions contained in the article, or
do they provide specific documentary evidence to support the assertions?25 All these
factors may usefully be borne in mind as we will inevitably compare the photographs
with Kubrick’s film work, without necessarily considering how the photojournalistic
discourse may in fact enhance our understanding of the film-maker’s burgeoning
abilities as a visual storyteller. The second reading protocol is the ‘Kubrick-genre,’ an
after-the-fact construct based on a series of thematic and stylistic features culled from
Kubrick’s better-known work as a film-maker, which is then used as an interpretive
grid to read the photographs.
Adding photojournalistic concerns to the process of reading Kubrick’s work for
Look magazine can provide valuable insights which are further augmented by
considering the photograph’s production contexts. This means identifying the relevant
influences that likely came to bear upon the realization of the photo-essays that
Kubrick contributed to as photographer. For instance, we may focus on ideological
and artistic trends in New York City in the late 1940s and to the culture at Look
magazine in particular, in order to gauge the extent to which Kubrick’s later work as a
film-maker remains indebted to this formative period in his life. Such research would
revolve in part around biographical issues, which might appear to focus on uncovering
the artist’s private personality rather than understanding the public discourse that is
communicated via the photographic and filmic texts, but there remains a crucial
difference in emphasis. Methodologically, it may be helpful to critique the otherwise
remarkable work conducted since 1998 by the ICCARUS group, an international
project based at the Institute of Art History at Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian
University.26 The group’s underlying aesthetic philosophy affects two key issues: the
nature of Kubrick’s Look photographs as a corpus, as well as the kinds of influences
which are deemed worthy of analysis.27
As regards Kubrick’s corpus of photographs, the journalistic nature of his oeuvre
creates a problem for an analytical approach keen on highlighting the individual artist’s
personal expression. The 900 photographs that appeared in the pages of Look magazine
were necessarily subjected to an editorial process, which can be seen to limit the
unique contribution of any of its team members. One might say that Kubrick was
merely the DOP on photo-essays directed by Look’s editorial staff. In order to alleviate
these semiotic interferences, ICCARUS’ modus operandi has been to organize photo
exhibits presenting Kubrick’s work ‘outside the magazine context,’28 in effect making
curatorial decisions designed to recover (or create?) a voice assumed to be
compromised by the journalistic context. This assumption may overlook the extent to
which a staff photographer may in fact contribute to the editorial process, as regards
his participation in layout conferences with the editorial art director, for instance.29
A further expression of the ICCARUS group’s substitute authorship is manifested by
212 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

their decision to include photographs which were not published, but left on ‘the
cutting room floor,’ i.e. not selected by Kubrick or Look magazine’s editorial staff.
To address the issue of influences in the case of an artist at a formative stage in his
career, members of the ICCARUS group have adopted a twofold strategy. First, they
focus on comparisons with established art photographers such as Henri-Cartier
Bresson, Walker Evans and Robert Frank, which serve the dual purpose of suggesting
an acceptable artistic mentorship and elevating Kubrick’s work to the level of the
masters.30 Secondly, they either minimize any other external influence which may
contradict the perceived nature of the artist’s worldview, or else suggest that this
distinctive Weltbild is enhanced precisely by the artist’s struggle with or opposition to
the potentially normative influence of the institutional context.
For instance, from the catalogue published in connection with the summer 2004
Stanley Kubrick exhibit at the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, the article on
Kubrick’s early photographs cites Weegee and Diane Arbus as positive examples of
artistic influences. It is claimed that Kubrick adopted Weegee’s frontal flash lighting
technique for his portraits of boxers,31 which sounds reasonable given Kubrick’s well-
known admiration for the crime photographer, who was hired as a stills photographer
on Dr. Strangelove (Columbia; UK, 1964). On the other hand, Weegee did not
specialize in sporting events, and it may seem tendentious to single out the art
photographer among other more immediately pressing influences at Look magazine.
The authors of the catalogue article, Rainer Crone and Alexandra Von Stosch, also
credit the Greenwich Village circle of art photographers that Kubrick interacted with
in the late 1940s, particularly Diane Arbus, who became famous for her portraits of
the marginalized.32 The case of Arbus as an artistic influence on Kubrick’s early
photographs is problematic to the extent that her work as stylist and fashion
photographer is not considered influential in that field,33 in addition to which she did
not begin doing serious art photography until 1960,34 well after Kubrick had resigned
from Look.
While admitting that the Look photo-stories were a ‘visual school’ for Kubrick,35
Crone and Von Stosch ‘implicitly denigrate contributions from the social and historical
context in seeking personal signatures.’36 For instance, they imply that Look’s photo
department Head, Arthur Rothstein, had no artistic influence on Kubrick’s work.37
Instead, they prefer to compare Kubrick’s tenure at Look with Rothstein’s as a Farm
Security Administration photographer during the 1930s (along with Dorothea Lange,
Walker Evans and Margaret Bourke-White), arguing that both these institutional
contexts ‘served only as the external framework’ for the photographers’ ‘own artistic
statements on la condition humaine.’38 This analysis is conducted in a way that supports
the running dichotomy between the expressive artist and the organization he worked
for. It may be equally if not more productive to examine areas of common interest and
thus potential influence between Look magazine and Stanley Kubrick. Concerning his
years at Look, Kubrick told Michel Ciment: ‘This experience was invaluable to me, not
only because I learned a lot about photography, but also because it gave me a quick
education in how things happened in the world.’39 It is logical to assume that the
culture at Look provided Kubrick with an alternative to formal education, one steeped
in the commercial and ideological concerns of a general interest popular magazine.
We may come to appreciate the extent to which his training at Look instilled in him a
sense of popular appeal and the importance of marketing.
 STANLEY KUBRICK: PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM 213

Our desire to identify with an authoritative voice or vision of the world will no
doubt continue to fuel evaluative appreciations of films read according to art cinema
or director’s cinema protocols. Nevertheless, I have attempted to suggest the
usefulness of examining the objective and publicly accessible factors which shape our
cultural conception of a discursive intention. There is no reason to engage in an
archeological study of Kubrick’s photographs, nor is there any reason not to do so,
especially if one is interested in achieving a fuller understanding of this visual artist’s
creative output. I would favor an analytical approach that does not establish a specific
hierarchy between textual and contextual factors, but instead rejects normative or
prescriptive aesthetic theories in order to provide a more balanced understanding of
semiotic processes, including such interpretive constructs as the Kubrick-genre. So let
us not shy away from considering Look magazine’s mission to inform and entertain its
readership, and how that mission, in turn, informed Kubrick’s intelligent yet
accessible films.

Notes
1 Gardner Cowles, Mike Looks Back (New York, Gardner Cowles, 1985), p. 111.
2 Daniel D. Mich and Edwin Eberman, The Technique of the Picture Story (New York,
McGraw-Hill, 1945), p. 63.
3 Visions of Light: the art of cinematography (USA, 1993, Arnold Glassman, Todd
McCarthy and Stuart Samuels).
4 Arthur Goldsmith, Photojournalism, in Willard D. Morgan (ed.) The Encyclopedia of
Photography, Vol. 15 (New York, Greystone Press, 1963), p. 2781.
5 John Baxter, Stanley Kubrick: a biography (New York, Carroll & Graf, 1997), p. 28.
6 Arthur Rothstein, Photojournalism (New York, AMPHOTO, 1979), p. 120.
7 Arthur Rothstein and Douglas Kirkland, The Editor-Photographer Team, in R.
Smith Schuneman (ed.) Photographic Communication (New York, Hastings House,
1972), p. 97.
8 Rothstein, p. 115.
9 Cowles, p. 190.
10 Vincent LoBrutto, Stanley Kubrick: a biography (New York, Da Capo Press, 1997), p.
64. There appear to be two versions of Day of the Fight, running 12 and 16 minutes
respectively. My analysis is based on the shorter version, which skips the opening 4
minutes, described by LoBrutto as ‘a tabloid history of boxing.’ Day of the Fight is
not available commercially on home video, but copies may be obtained by
contacting private collectors.
11 My analysis of Prizefighter and all other Look magazine photo-essays is based on back
issues of Look magazine purchased from private collectors, or microfilm copies
borrowed from American university libraries via inter-library loans.
12 LoBrutto, p. 58.
13 Baxter, p. 36.
14 Paul Duncan, Stanley Kubrick (Köln, Taschen, 2003), p. 19.
15 Ibid., p. 18.
16 Norman Kagan, The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick (New York, Continuum, 2000), p. 18.
17 LoBrutto, p. 61.
214 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

18 Bernd Kiefer, Chess games in the boxing ring, Kinematograph 20 (2004), 29–43.
19 Susanna Ott, Reshaping life, in Rainer Crone and Petrus Graf Schaesberg (eds)
Stanley Kubrick: still moving pictures, photographies 1945–1950 (Munich, Iccarus/
Schnell & Steiner, 1999), p. 207.
20 Negatives and contact sheets for Look magazine ‘jobs’ assigned to Stanley Kubrick
are stored at the Library of Congress and the Museum of the City of New York. The
LOC has 102 Kubrick jobs, and the MCNY has 129. Online information on the
Library of Congress’ Look Collection may be obtained at: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/
pp/lookhtml/lookabt.html
21 Michel Cieutat, Précis d’initiation à l’esthétique kubrickienne, Positif 464 (Octobre
1999), 86–90.
22 Alison Castle, ed., The Stanley Kubrick Archives (Köln, Taschen, 2005), p. 268.
23 Garrett Stewart, Between Film and Screen: modernism’s photo synthesis (Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 1.
24 Ibid., pp. 182–184.
25 Jean-Marie Schaeffer, L’image précaire: du dispositif photographique (Paris, Seuil, 1987),
pp. 139–147.
26 http://www.podgallery.com/html/iccarus/pages/iccarushome.html/
27 Alexandra Von Stosch and Rainer Crone, Kubrick’s kaleidoscope: early photographs
1945–1950, Kinematograph 20 (2004), 19–27.
28 Ibid., 21.
29 Rothstein, p. 122.
30 Crone and Schaesberg, pp. 18–27.
31 Von Stosch and Crone, 22.
32 Von Stosch and Crone, 26.
33 Patricia Bosworth, Diane Arbus: a biography (New York, Knopf, 1984), p. 115.
34 Ibid., p. 81.
35 Von Stosch and Crone, 21.
36 Janet Staiger, Authorship approaches, in David Gerstner and Janet Staiger (eds)
Authorship and Film (New York, Routledge, 2003), p. 37.
37 Von Stosch and Crone, 24.
38 Ibid., 21.
39 LoBrutto, p. 34.

Philippe Mather is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Campion College, University of

Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. He has degrees in film studies from Concordia University, the
University of Iowa and the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle. His Ph.D. dissertation is
entitled ‘Cognitive estrangement: towards a semiology of science fiction film.’ His areas of
research include science fiction, film music, authorship and genre theories and the works of
Stanley Kubrick.