I did not study Marilyn Stafford’s work as a photojournalism minor in college. Virtually nobody did. That was our loss.
In fact, I had never heard of the superb British photojournalist and fashion photographer, who recently died at age 97, until last year. It took the missionary zeal of photography curator Nina Emett to bring Stafford’s work to the public. She literally propelled the photographer’s images documenting meaningful slices of 20th Century history from shoe boxes into an acclaimed 2022 retrospective. The rest was herstory, documented with a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera.
Milieu can define so much of a photographer’s perspective and subject matter. The erstwhile actor and singer was no exception. She came of age journalistically and artistically in post-war Paris, working and socializing with the likes of Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. This was the context in which she gained confidence and grew in what was certainly a male-dominated club.
Over time, her social connections and quality work gave her access to portraiture opportunities with Le Corbusier, Italo Calvino, Sharon Tate, Lee Marvin, Richard Attenborough, and Alan Bates. These works are wonderful, though Stafford toiled in relative anonymity compared with, say, Richard Avedon whose images were not necessarily better but who parlayed portraiture into a career of epic proportions.
I’ll take that level of societal engagement and impact over fashion photography any day. Not bad for somebody tagging along with a journalist friend who was about to interview Albert Einstein in 1948. Stafford knew nothing about 35mm cameras, but she was handed one and asked to shoot among the world’s most famous people.
Images courtesy of Marilyn Stafford.