“I think I should be alone with this boy. I find it usually works better that way.”
– Marilyn Monroe
Izzy Gallery presents the Canadian premiere exhibition of photographer Douglas Kirkland with A Life In Pictures. The show features 21 archival special limited editions of selected photos including 6 from the celebrated 1961 Marilyn Monroe series for Look magazine’s 25th anniversary. Selected photographs on display include portraits of Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Jack Nicolson, Angelina Jolie and Monica Bellucci along with behind the scenes photos of Coco Chanel.
“ I wanted to get some hot pictures of her, but in my shy Canadian way, I didn’t know how to say that. In the end Marilyn was the one to take charge. She said, ‘I know what we need. We need a bed, and we need white silk sheets – they must be silk. Frank Sinatra records, and Dom Pérignon champagne”.
– Douglas Kirkland
It was Kirkland’s professional relationships with Coco Chanel and Elizabeth Taylor that propelled his career as a young man. One of his first assignments at Look found him in Las Vegas accompanying a reporter on an interview with Taylor, who’d stipulated ‘no photos’. Employing what became his signature charm, Kirkland told Taylor that as a young photographer his job depended on him getting a photo. He got the shot and his career took off.
Among his dozens of highly recognized photographs, perhaps Kirkland’s most iconic are a series with Marilyn Monroe taken on November 17, 1961 for Look magazine’s 25th anniversary issue. The stunning photographs of Monroe posed, lying on a bed, enveloped only in a cloud of white silk sheets took on historic significance, with her tragic death just months later.
EXHIBITION
Douglas Kirkland, A Life in Pictures
From May 19th to June 30th, 2016
Izzy Gallery
106 Yorkville Ave
Toronto
Canada
http://www.izzygallery.com
http://www.douglaskirklandphotography.com
