Eve Arnold
A Moment In Time

Eve Arnold is a photojournalist – perhaps the ultimate kind of photojournalist, since her work in the field of reportage includes interviewing and writing to complement her photographs. She was born in the USA on 21 April 1912, the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents: William (born Velvel Sklarski) a rabbi from Odessa, and Bessie Cohen (born Bosya Laschiner). Her birth is often misreported as 1913. When she was a young girl, the chance gift of a camera from a friend awakened her interest in photography and for several years she experimented, taking photographs for her own pleasure.

During the war years she married a graphic and industrial designer, and while he was away she took a job in a photo-finishing plant. Rapidly becoming, first, production manager, and then plant manager. On her husband’s return she gave up her job, had a child and for a brief time was a housewife, yet she still considered herself a photographer and began once again to take pictures. She subsequently took a course at the New York School for Social Research, where her work was admired by the great Alexei Brodovitch, art editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Shortly afterwards she compiled a portfolio of photographs and sold some of them to Picture Post. In 1951 she was invited to join the newly created photographers’ co-operative, Magnum, of which she has since been a full and active member since 1955.

Eve Arnold has traveled the world as a photojournalist, working primarily for Life magazine and the Sunday Times, for whom she spent ten years as a contract photographer. In 1995 she was elected ‘Master Photographer’, the world’s most prestigious photographic honour, awarded by New York’s International Center of Photography. Her work has appeared in most of the world’s major magazines, such as Stern, Paris-Match and Vogue. In 1973 she wrote and directed a film on the harems of Arabia, entitled Behind the Veil. The BBC have produced a film about her work, called The Unretouched Woman. Her favourite project aside from The Misfits is a book on China.

Eve Arnold relocated to England in 1962 to put her son into school (Bedales) and except for a six-year hiatus working in the USA and China, Arnold has been based in the UK ever since.


PART 1: MANHATTAN NEW YORK 1982
By the time I was to meet Eve I had already stayed with Ansel Adams in Carmel and Yosuf Karsh in Ottowa. These shoots had all gone so well, that I put my fears of meeting the famously irascible Miss Arnold aside and agreed to meet on West 52nd Street, the old Magnum building. When I was using a 35mm camera I would always shoot my portraits with a 28mm lens. As I took out my equipment, I saw Eve eyeing my lens with deep suspicion. She let me continue in the hope, I imagine, that I would realise my mistake and change the lens. I stood my ground and proceeded to click the shutter. I got two frames in before she screamed at me: ‘What the hell do you think you are doing, shooting my portrait with a 28mm lens! Have you ever done this before? Are you insane’?

However, in those two frames I got the portrait shot that I needed… and we became friends.


Why did you take up photography?
I became interested because somebody gave me a camera. At that time I wanted to be a doctor and I was actually doing my pre-med. training, so at first I was just an amateur, shooting pictures for myself – and I had a small dark-room. I have never regretted my decision to become a photographer, because it’s the most demanding thing I have ever done. There are so many dimensions to it, and I feel that in photography I’m using my creative ability to the absolute maximum.

Reportage is the type of photography for which you’re celebrated. What is the most important aspect of this work?
Firstly you have to be so much at home with your equipment that you can forget it exists. It’s important, also, to develop a contact with your subject, and to do that you have to be sensitive, open to feelings and attitudes. As my work develops it certainly makes greater and more complex and far-reaching demands, both mentally and physically. I have to travel great distances, which presents all sorts of problems.

Has being one of the few women in photography hindered your career?
No, not really. Most of the time it’s been a blessing. Women don’t suffer from outright prejudice, although they sometimes tend to get overlooked. I’ve recently received a Lifetime Achievement award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers. They’ve been giving the awards for thirty-five years, but this is the first time they have given it to two women – Louise Dahl-Wolfe and myself. Usually they give only one award, but this year they gave two. In my acceptance speech I said that I realised that this was not like the Arab system, in which two female witnesses are the equivalent of one male, but merely that after all these years of oversight they were trying to catch up as quickly as possible!

‘You can’t make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn’t there.’

Would you consider yourself a feminist?
I suppose I am a sort of half-baked feminist, and I do believe in the feminist movement, but I have to say that it’s been an enormous help to me to be a woman. You see, men like to be photographed by women, and women don’t feel that they have to carry on a flirtation, which they often do with a male photographer. However the physical side of photography – carrying bags, for instance – is a problem because I don’t work with an assistant. I find that the tension produced just by revving myself up to get ready for a shoot is very wearing. A lot of psychic energy goes into my photography. I may take only two pictures and work for ten minutes, but when I wake in the morning I worry so much about checking the equipment and getting into the right frame of mind that by the end of the day I feel utterly drained. It was easier in the beginning, I think, when I worked solely in black-and-white and needed only a single camera. I feel that made a big difference. But, who knows, perhaps I’ve just forgotten how difficult it was then, too? Anyway, I’m certainly not prepared to put it down to old age.

Today, your career is synonymous with that of Marilyn Monroe and other movie celebrities…
Marilyn loved to have her photograph taken in a studio. I photographed her in Hollywood in 1960. She was very unhappy that day, but she cheered up when the session started. She had brought with her a retinue of assistants – hairdressers, make-up artists and so on. I had built a paper wall around us so that we wouldn’t be observed during the session, but the team had cut peep holes in it. She knew exactly what was going on and she performed for her audience while pretending at the same time that she was playing to the camera.

What did Joan Crawford think of Marilyn Monroe?
They were, after all, two very different women. When I first met Joan Crawford she was really angry. She had just seen Marilyn at a studio and was scandalised by the fact that she didn’t wear a girdle. I remember her saying that she was a disgrace to the industry. I had never thought of the film business being an industry before. I asked Marilyn Monroe how she saw herself and she replied, ‘The Botticelli Venus’. I don’t think she really knew what she meant because later, when I went to show her the pictures in New York, I gave her some Botticelli prints and put the ‘Venus’ on top. She didn’t seem to recognize it at all.

‘Preparation is the most important aspect of photojournalism – if you know what you want, most people will help you.’

You’ve returned to America after some years abroad. How does it feel?
The funny thing is that I seem to be going back with a new eye, seeing things afresh. America is such an exotic place, with so many regional differences, and that’s the basis of what I’m doing now – I’m preparing a photographic account of my country’s ethnic and cultural diversity.

Where in America did you shoot first?
Well, the American Indians were there first, so I thought it only a matter of courtesy to start with them, and I began on the Navajo Reservations. It’s more of an adventure than work! Despite the fact that I’ve done an enormous amount of research, something is always turning up. I arrive somewhere and someone says, ‘You can’t possibly miss X out,’ and so off I go again. It’s a nightmare and a dream at the same time. It will take three years to complete, and it’s such a daunting project both because every great photographer in the world has shot there and because every body has their own idea of what America is.

America is the most photographed country in the world, and so my material must be a very personal in order to be original. America now has a feel of the fifties, of the McCarthy days, and yet it’s not the same. On the one hand there’s a kind of Fundamentalist thinking, but at the same time there’s a lot of cultural activity too. It’s difficult to know what to emphasis, because everything is so important to me. I’m working only in colour and that’s posing a lot of problems.

Without the confidence of my editor at Knopf and the success of my China project I wouldn’t have dared touch this one. I may be about to fall on my nose, but at least I’ll be seeing my home country with fresh, clear eyes. I’m simultaneously thrilled, appalled and delighted.

The book on China has been a commercial as well as an artistic success?
Yes, it’s done extremely well. It was published in Japanese, French and German, which is rare for a picture book. It was also chosen at the American Book Awards as the best designed book of the year, it won an award for the best cover and it was book of the month.

‘She was going places but she hadn’t arrived. Photography became a bond between us…. Marilyn was very important in my career. I think I was helpful in hers.’

Before the China project I was only known among other photographers – a photographer’s photographer; they knew me from Life and the Sunday Times. Then all of a sudden people in the street had heard of me. That has been important to me in relation to the American project, because people point out to me things that they feel I should not miss, and I value their ideas. The exhibition of my Chinese pictures has been sponsored by Exxon, and will travel to museums throughout America for three years.

I had worked with Knopf on two other books, which were compiled from photographs that I had taken previously, and I discussed with my editor there the possibility of doing a book from scratch. I told him that I would be going to China for a magazine and asked him if he would be interested in a book. He said ‘Yes’, and that was it. The first time I went to China for the Sunday Times I stayed away from the book idea because I wasn’t sure of the potential, but when I returned I stayed up literally for seventy-two hours and went through thousands of transparencies. That for me is the most nerve-racking moment in photography – wondering whether or not I have ‘got it’. A friend called and insisted that I have a break, and so we went into the park on a beautiful spring day to relax and forget about work. We had a bottle of champagne. On the way back I heard my name called and it was my editor, visiting London. He had thought I was still in China. The next day he came to see the photographs, and the book was born. It was funny – everything just fell into place from start to finish. Life did a spread, Paris-Match covered it, Stern did sixteen pages, and the Sunday Times did two issues.

Much of your editorial work, like the China and America projects, consists of photographic essays. How much film would you use on one of these?
On China there were twelve thousand transparencies – it’s not a lot. I shoot roughly five rolls a day. Also of course I do interviews, and that takes up a great deal of time. In China, too, I had agreed to teach; that was one of the stipulations made by the Chinese Government when they gave permission for the venture. It didn’t bother me. They would send people from the official news agency and it was arranged like a workshop: we would have little sessions both before and after the shooting. They would stand on my toes to see what I was doing, to try to see the subject from my vantage point. The problem is that you don’t know what you are going to shoot until you see it – you are always looking, searching – and having a lot of people trying to get as close to you as possible does not help!

What were the Chinese like as students?
They were always surprised by my choice of subject. They would point out the most banal situations, and often I didn’t have time to explain why the subject they wanted me to photograph was uninteresting. I just pulled them along with me. They are still at the stage we were at in the fifties – lots of flash and Rolleiflexes. Though they do have wonderful cameras, such as Leicas and Hasselblads, they use bad Japanese film.

As a teacher, did you learn anything from those students?
On the last trip I was asked to talk to their editors, technicians and so on, and it helped to organise my own thinking a great deal. I began to realize that for years I had been doing all sorts of things that just weren’t in the photographic textbooks – tricks of the trade, as it were. For example, if you want a portrait to appear really sharp you should focus on the eyes – we all know that it’s a big disaster if the eyes are not sharp, but they didn’t know. And they were horrified that I would often shoot – intentionally – directly into the sun. Little things like that.

Do you like commercial assignments?
I love the discipline that they demand. It teaches you great control, and you have to draw on all your technical knowledge. Working with art directors isn’t always easy, and sometimes you seem to be just clicking a shutter, but the organisation that must precede the shoot is very comprehensive. I tend to be a very organised photographer, even when doing editorial work. I like to organise everything first, so that during the actual shoot I can loosen up and ‘play’.

For example, when I first went to China in 1979 I had to rely on the Chinese to show me things, but I’d done my homework and I knew exactly what I wanted to see. So I asked them about religion and their art schools and their millionaires, because I knew that some capitalistic principles had been re-established. They hadn’t been asked those sorts of questions before and, having been asked, they were quite happy to oblige. If I hadn’t known what to ask for I would have seen all the usual sights that they had come to believe foreign journalists were interested in being shown.

Preparation is the most important aspect of photojournalism – if you know what you want, most people will help you.

China is about as far removed from your photographs of the glamour and superficiality of Hollywood as anyone could imagine. Marlene Dietrich is perhaps the epitome of the glamorous woman and yet in these pictures you appear deliberately to have negated that – why so?
In that series of pictures I wanted to show her as she really was – a working woman, quite different from the idealised version. Robert Capa got it right when he said, metaphorically, that my work fell between Marlene Dietrich’s legs and the lives of migratory potato pickers!

How has it helped your career to be a member of Magnum?
Not many marriages last so long! Magnum is a wonderful organisation. There are about thirty of us, men and women with very different personalities, highly opposed points of view and different ethnic backgrounds. It doesn’t work for everyone, and it works better for some than for others. For me it’s a marvelous security blanket. The Sunday Times and Magnum have both acted as my base, from which I’ve been able to decide what exactly I want to do. That sort of security, and the freedom it gives, are a great privilege for any artist. Editorial reportage is wonderful, but it doesn’t always pay the bills, so then Magnum might arrange for me to do some stills on a movie, or some industrial photography. I think I learned more from that kind of assignment than I did from doing editorial work.

What film do you use?
Tri-X for black-and-white, and I like Kodachrome for good colour balance. It’s like playing roulette taking a slow film like Kodachrome on a trip, but I’ve been singularly lucky. I like to keep it simple. I use a 35mm camera. My feeling is that the eye sees with somewhere between a 40mm lens and a 50mm, so that’s what I use. For portraiture I use 35mm, 55mm and 105mm lenses, and I have a zoom, 80-200mm. I don’t use very much film on portraits. During the last few years I’ve come to rely increasingly on an automatic Nikon. I stopped using a meter a long time ago, when I felt that I knew enough about light not to need it. However, an automatic camera is a real bonus to fall back on, especially when you are shooting colour.

For instance I never remember what exposure I have given a picture – I just don’t care. I bracket a lot, taking different exposures of the same subject, and I take pictures in situations and light conditions in which people say it can’t be done. Often it works.

I remember one time when I took a photograph of a black girl in a dark hallway lit only by a 60 watt bulb. It shouldn’t have come out, but it did, and I was happy with the result which was used as a double-page spread. If I had gone by the book and strobed it I wouldn’t have got the picture I wanted.

I play these games because it’s fun to play. After all, it’s only film, and when it works it can be wonderful. I like to work on the edges of the film. With very little light and very slow film you can get some great images. It’s dicey, and it doesn’t always work, but when it does the rewards are enormous. I would far rather do anything than play it safe. I’m a gambler by nature and I think it has paid off. Of course I lose a lot of images, and I use up a lot more film, but it’s vital to get something that is entirely my own.

Do you have any preference for working either in black-and-white or in colour?
I don’t agree with all this nonsense about black-and-white photography being art and colour being commerce – that’s lunacy. I’m greedy. I want to do everything. I want to shoot in black-and-white and in colour. I want to make films, and I want to write. There is no reason why you cannot do it all.

I consider myself primarily a journalist, and I have never found the written word an intrusion as far as the photograph is concerned. I think one owes it to the viewer to provide the additional information.

Can you define your techniques?
My techniques belong to me – you won’t find them in any handbook! If I was to sum up, it would be true to say that I have no technique at all. It’s all intuition. I’ve used myself and my equipment and the same method of working for so long that it’s now second nature to me. I’ve forgotten about it, and now I would be hard pressed to explain it. I just concentrate on ‘seeing’. I don’t use a tripod, or artificial light. I can’t analyze the technique – there is nothing except me.

It sounds extremely difficult to pass on such concepts to other people, and yet you taught photography when you were in China?
I don’t think you can teach people to be good photographers. You can help to develop their power of ‘seeing’, but the moment you try to teach them you encourage them to be derivative. In the whole of Magnum I think that only Bruce Davidson had any formal photographic education. Without the ‘seeing eye’ the student can learn nothing from a teacher.

Let me give you an example. I was once hired by an art director to do some landscapes for a tourist agency. The man wanted to become a photographer and asked me all sorts of questions about cameras and techniques. When I was shooting he would stand beside me and try to take pictures from exactly my vantage point. At the end we compared photographs, and although he had been standing right beside me his pictures just didn’t work. I don’t know why, but they didn’t. You can’t make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn’t there. That’s why I’m not qualified to teach – what I’ve got is something that can’t be passed on.

Even now when I work I may think that I’ve got something really great, only to find that I haven’t. It’s not something I can explain. Perhaps it’s best to let the images speak for themselves at the end of the day they are the only things that matter. I love photography. Maybe mystery is too big a word, but it has that unknown quantity about it. One thing I find interesting, and have only recently started to think about, is that in that split second when I actually press the shutter absolutely anything can happen. Other images are forming that perhaps I hadn’t noticed. In that moment in time a new figure might appear – one that I hadn’t anticipated. So I always get what I see, but often something else as well. Sometimes colour foxes me, too. There can be marvelous surprises, and disappointments, but it’s the element of the unknown that keeps up my interest in photography.

Photography is now an established form of art, and archive prints sell for large sums. What do you feel about that?
It’s sad that a few elitist art pundits have made photography ‘establishment’, and I think that it’s commercialisation in terms of collecting limited editions and signed photographs is pretentious. I would prefer photographs to be cheap and available to everyone – students should be able to buy them to stick on their walls. I once asked a dear friend of mine – a gifted photographer – what the difference was between the photography of the fifties and that of today. He replied ‘That’s easy. Photography in the fifties was about people. Now it’s about photography.’


PART 2: PIMLICO LONDON 7th December 2006
In 2006, I revisited Eve Arnold several times at her home in Central London, some 25 years since that first encounter. She is ninety-five and delicate now, with soft features and pale, translucent skin. Her hair is one grey thick plait which falls down to the middle of her back. You could even be forgiven for thinking that you were in the presence of a sweet granny. But no, she hasn’t changed a bit. Eve is still as feisty as ever and roars like some ill-tempered lion if you ask what she considers to be a sloppy question. Ever the perfectionist, she remains a hard taskmaster – both on herself and on others.


The picture we have used for the cover, was it taken in Nevada – on the set of the The Misfits?(1) Do you have strong recollections of Marilyn at that time?
No. This was a studio shot.(2) I remember Marilyn very well – of course. I felt there was great depth to her. She was very beautiful – intelligent, but uneducated. She had naïve quality in real life. On a bed with white sheets around her... well, the only time I worked on the bay was in Mellor Place. But we certainly did it in a studio. It is nearly 50 years ago…!

Was she married at the time?
No… I mean she was getting married – to Arthur Miller.(3) She was already unhappy. She wasn’t happy at all, she did not want to marry. But, she married him and it was over. Apparently she told Miller: No. I’m nervous, real nervous.

Did you maintain your relationship with her until the end? Was she happy…
… No, I didn’t. Only on the phone. She didn’t seem happy… No. But she… after the girl was killed…

You don’t mean Marilyn? Do you think she was killed?
Yes, I do. She bought a little house, and she was set up. It was a set up to make her appear crazy. It was a politically motivated situation…

Do you think she just got in the way of very powerful people?
I think she got in the way of Miller. She cursed him. During the wedding… but on film she looked beautiful.

‘By seeing her through photographs – the only way most people ever saw her – it may be possible to get some idea of how she saw herself and perhaps to glean some insight into the phenomenon that was Marilyn Monroe.’

What was your favourite Monroe – was there one?
Yes there was – it was one with the denim jacket. She had a blue-jean jacket on. That… and there’s the one of the girl on the beach.

What do you think of the digital age in photography – have you revised your opinions?
I think it’s going to make photography too easy and too familiar and it doesn’t take a lot of work. I have never shot with digital. It’s been ten years since I last took a photograph. Even now though I’m sure I wouldn’t. Digital was just starting ten years ago. I always kept my equipment very simple. Never used any lighting or anything like that.

What was your favourite, your greatest – iconic – image?
I don’t like the term icon. How would you term icon?

OK. Then… say – I got exactly what I wanted to achieve with that particular photograph.

The mother and baby’s hand. Well, that was a set up. We did that in Port Jefferson.

Reflecting on your body of work, do you have any regrets?
I wish I had taken photographs like Cartier-Bresson. I so admire the one of the Indian women praying in the dawn, beautiful. I think Cartier-Bresson was probably one of the greatest of that period. He gave me that one [indicates framed image on the wall]

Did you photograph many photographers?
Yes, I love Eliot [Erwitt]. I feel very close to him.

He’s a great guy, isn’t he...
No… we hated each other!

Has your photography had a religious or spiritual dimension for you?
No. It was work. A practical thing. It was a job that was very important to me. But I am happy with what I have done.

Is there a statement, through your work, that you feel you haven’t made?
Yes, I haven’t photographed any dirty old men! [pause] It’s a bad joke.

It’s a good joke


PART 3: PIMLICO LONDON 21st December 2006

All your material now is with Yale University?
Well, what is stored there is some of the vintage prints. Some. All the transparencies – and all the negatives – and all the contact sheets. And personal papers…

What made you choose Yale? Was your son there?
No. But it’s at the rare book… the Beinecke book department.(4) Apparently it’s a fantastic set up. They were sorting it, archiving it, and they make it available to students to go and have a look. So they can have a look at it under certain conditions, not, you know, not just anyone. And then if there’s something that’s especially needed, we – in theory – can request to have use of the original material. But hopefully we won’t need to do that!

What about the Magnum library?
Yeah, for two years we went through all the material and scanned it all. All the important images.

Did you ever have a printer, or did you use Magnum?
I did… but I usually used the Magnum printers. Glenn Brent printed black & white for me. In the very early days I did do a few myself.

We had a long conversation about it years ago, Eve. Do you remember when I was talking to you about the fact that I had given up photography, because I felt I’d lost my mind’s eye. And you said at the time that you quite agreed. One of the reasons you were giving up – that you felt you had said what you had to say in photography.

Well yes, I agree. Well, it’s not just picking up a camera, I mean it’s that whole rigmarole that goes along with it. You know, I was always accepted by everybody. It’s the rapport with people, the personality. The clicking of the camera was almost incidental. You know, you don’t get people opening up to you unless you’ve got a rapport with them.

That’s the magic of great photography in the end. That’s what it is. It’s the magic of the person behind the camera.
Absolutely.

What is your new book about and when is it coming out?
I don’t actually know what the name of the publisher will be. The first book is a re-issue of the China book which will be very, very interesting. I mean I’m not going to take any more pictures. I think it will be very personal. And then the other one is a book of portraits – which I’ve never done before. I have about 450 good portraits, very, very good portraits. But with my work, I mean all the books are so familiar to we two, but most people are not that aware of them. They are aware of a few key images. There’s a huge wealth of stuff there, and not just famous people either. So I think that’s also very good, I mean the publishers are keen to do it but you know how long it takes, the whole process. You know, I’m always working still. I may not be taking pictures but it’s very good for me, to have a project going. I love it. I love the opening nights and stuff like that. I nearly always turn up and I expect to be there for 15 minutes – but I’m there two hours! Yes, there is still a reason for it all…

What do you think was your most treasured assignment?
I change my mind all the time. One day China, one day Marilyn.

Who is the most impressive person you met in your career?
Marilyn…

[pause]

You seem tired again today. Eve, are you tired?
Yes…


N OT E S
1) Exclusive access to The Misfits was Magnum triumph. Major Hollywood films normally included one photographer for publicity stills. The Misfits, on location in the Nevada desert, was photographed solely by nine photographers from Magnum. Working in shifts of two weeks, which sometimes overlapped, each photographer had complete access to the day-to-day happenings on the set, resulting in powerfully intimate and emotionally compelling insights into the film and its glamorous stars: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter. In addition to a difficult shooting location, the film involved an unruly director, an aging leading man and an unstable leading lady, whose marriage to Arthur Miller was crumbling and who survived an overdose during filming.

2) Photographed in Hollywood 1960. Marilyn Monroe is resting between takes during a photographic studio session at the Paramount Gallery, for the making of the film The Misfits. © Magnum Photos

3) Eve is confused here. Monroe married Miller in 1958 and they divorced acrimoniously in 1961. Monroe and Arnold became friends following a shoot for Esquire magazine in 1952. During their 10 year collaboration she photographed Monroe on six different occasions including the two month-long session for The Misfits.

4) The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library contains the principal rare books and literary manuscripts of Yale University and serves as a center for. Materials do not circulate, but may be used in the reading room. One of the largest buildings in the world devoted entirely to rare books and manuscripts, the library has room in the central tower for 180,000 volumes and in the underground book stacks for over 600,000 volumes; it now contains about 500,000 volumes and several million manuscripts.

PHOTOICON MAGAZINE is indebted to Linny Campbell of the Eve Arnold Studio and Francesca Sears of Magnum Photos for their invaluable assistance with this article.