— ① ② — — At Look , Kubrick mastered the skills of framing, composing, and lighting compelling images. His experiences at the magazine also offered him opportunities to explore a range of artistic styles. While Look’s editors often promoted straightforward composition and natural lighting typical of contemporary photojournalism, Kubrick frequently imitated the dark, brooding style of the Hollywood film noirs he so admired. Many of these early photographs foreshadowed the dispassionate view of life he would adopt in his films. — ③ — Postwar observers were obsessed with the impact of organizations on American life, and Kubrick encountered many complex organizations while working for Look —both at the magazine itself as well as on his various photo shoots. He photographed behind the scenes at television and radio networks, at the circus, and at elite universities. Working at a company that employed teams of people who varied from assignment to assignment, Kubrick came to understand and take advantage of a collaborative work environment. He also learned how to advance his personal vision in such a system—skills that prepared him for success in the motion picture industry. — ④ — Kubrick’s work for Look advanced his ways of seeing and his fascination with human relationships. He sometimes photographed unsuspecting subjects engaged in intimate interactions or caught others in the act of looking. His ability to see and translate an individual’s complex psychological life into visual form was apparent in his many personality profiles. Kubrick’s most openly voyeuristic photographs rarely made the pages of the family-oriented Look, but are presented in this exhibition as evidence of how powerfully human idiosyncrasies captured his gaze. — ⑤ — Of the many topics Kubrick covered for Look, none aligned more closely with his burgeoning interest in film than his explorations of media: stage, radio, and movies. His numerous personality profiles gave him firsthand experience of the ways that celebrities crafted their public personas, and he was often on the set, seeing the production process up close. Kubrick’s photographs about America’s newest medium—television—prefigured the fascination he had with cutting-edge technologies throughout his film career. — ⑥ 1945
— ⑦ 1946 — ⑧ Published: August 20, 1946 — Published early in Kubrick’s career at Look , this story laid the groundwork for a recurring motif—people in the act of observation—that characterized many of his later assignments for the magazine and underscored his interest in the voyeuristic pleasure of watching movies. Look’s photo essays often contained images by multiple photographers. This piece opened with a picture of a pensive chimpanzee taken by noted animal photographer Ylla — ⑨
Published: November 26, 1946 — After Kubrick took numerous photographs of people conversing on New York City streets, Look published a sequence in which his camera seemingly caught “an offguard episode over a hairdo.” The assignment was photographed with a 35mm camera, possibly with a telephoto lens, which allowed Kubrick to capture his subjects’ interactions from a distance, without drawing attention to himself. The assignment’s files also contain photographic sequences of additional street interactions, some likely taken in Manhattan. — ① ⓪ Unpublished Filed: November 12, 1946 — For this assignment, Kubrick captured the theatrical facial expressions of typical New Yorkers on the city’s streets. Some of his subjects seem aware of the camera, while others do not. The intention behind this unpublished assignment was never documented. — ① ① Unpublished Filed: May 1, 1946 — This series of photographs captured New Yorkers, many unaware of Kubrick’s camera, in romantic situations on park benches, fire escapes, and other locations. Several images were probably taken with infrared film and flash, which allowed Kubrick to photograph in the dark. Kubrick likely learned of this technology, rare among magazine photographers at the time, from the celebrated tabloid photographer Weegee, who used the technique in the early 1940s to photograph seemingly unaware patrons at movie theaters. — ① ②
Published: October 1, 1946 — Depicting people waiting for dental appointments —some with anxiety, others with fortitude, resignation, or boredom—this article described the patients’ expres- sions with clever captions: “Should she wait—or run?” one read. The article’s grid of photographs offered readers a myriad of reactions at a glance. — ① ③ Published: November 26, 1946 — Johnny on the Spot was a New York radio program hosted by 23-year-old Johnny Grant, who did of-the-moment interviews with showgirls, celebrities, and even animals. “I’m just a lucky stiff,” he stated in the article. “I’ve got a nose for news and the inability to be bored.” For this early assignment, Kubrick created photographs that experimented with different, often dramatic, camera angles. These included an image of crawling babies taken from their eye level, which was published, and an unpublished high-angle, vertigo-inducing perspective of Grant hanging from a windowsill many stories above the street. — ① ④ 1947 ¡
¢ — ① ⑤ Published: September 2, 1947 — This exploration of a New York City “5 and 10” store (so named because its inexpensive wares could be bought for nickels and dimes) featured 32 images, all by Kubrick, which focused on the varied expressions of children and adults as they shopped for toys, stockings, stationery, and household items. The magazine generally laid out the images in narrative sequences, the longest of which, at eight images, showed a little girl at the comic-book counter. “While she follows the adventures of Donald Duck and the Katzenjammer Kids, this young 5 and 10 customer absent-mindedly munches a foot-long piece of licorice...Like any reader, she smiles when her story has a happy ending.” — ① ⑥
Published: March 18, 1947 — Post-World War II consumerism and people’s body language and facial expressions as they engaged in everyday activities were recurring subjects of Kubrick’s photographs for Look. This article illustrated children waiting for their mothers to finish shopping. Some got bored, some were caught up in their comics, while others played with whatever they could find on the street. — ① ⑦ Unpublished Filed: September 3, 1947 — Kubrick shared this unpublished assignment with two other photographers, Frank Bauman and Tom Weber. The photographers documented a publicity stunt performed by sign painters and a live female model as they created a billboard for a Peter Pan bra advertisement high above the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Kubrick shot close-ups of the pedestrians on the street, who watched the event with expressions ranging from befuddlement to amusement. Bauman captured the model and painters from the billboard scaffolding, while Weber photographed the whole scene from the street and a nearby building. — ① ⑧ Published: March 4, 1947 — “New York’s subway trains are a reading room on wheels, a lover’s lane and, after 11 p.m., a flophouse,” began this six-page article with 29 photographs by Kubrick. The photographer’s first long-form essay for Look, the article combined staged and candid photographs, as well as images taken surreptitiously with a hidden camera. All were photographed in natural light. The article provided a kaleidoscopic view of New York’s subway system, where almost eight million fares were collected every day, and “practically everything and anything can happen.” — ① ⑨