camera up to his eye. Whereas I
would be short, female, with this
big Rolleiflex on the street in Paris,
where after the war people didn’t
have food, let alone cameras, or
be a woman walking around with a
camera. So in a funny kind of way I
deflected from him, but I was able to
see how he worked and sometimes it
was quite amazing.Can you give an example?
I remember one day we were sitting
at a café, he had a Leica on his lap,
and something happened in front
that he wanted to take a picture of.I would like to audition to sing with
an ensemble in a very smart dinner
club called Chez Carrère? I said yes
and got the job. The club was very
chic, a dinner club, and it was the
only club that the then Princess
Elizabeth was allowed to go to on
her first trip to France, so you
understand the quality of it!
Chez Carrère also had a lovely little
bar and tables for people who didn’t
want dinner, but wanted to have a
drink and that’s where I met Bob
Capa. He would come in practically
every night and sit around with one
or two guys and we met there, got
talking and became very friendly.
What did you learn from Capa?
Well, I didn’t really discuss
photography, we were just friends.
He was a very charismatic man and
I was impressed by the work he had
done. It was only when I felt I was
having problems with my vocal
chords and had to stop the singing
that I talked with him about the
photography and said that maybe I
should photograph children. Maybe I
could earn a living like that, because
I had done a little of that in New York.
He said, “Absolutely not. The French
do not like to have their photographs
taken, they prefer painting, in terms
of portraiture at least.”
At this point they had just set up
Magnum and he said his associate
David Seymour, who was one of the
founders, was looking for an
assistant and he suggested I do that.
But I turned it down, because I didn’t
want to head into a war zone. Of
course, the two of them both got
killed, stepping on land mines.
What about Cartier-Bresson,
what did you learn from him?
Cartier was quite different. He didn’t
have the same kind of charisma that
Capa had. He was a very quiet man
and calm. I met him through friends
who knew his family. He was married
at the time to an Indonesian dancer
named Ratna Mohini, so I was often
invited to their house for dinner – it
was a family friendship. He was a
very nice man, he really was. He
would let me go with him taking
pictures, so I was able to see how he
worked. Because I was very small
and he was very tall, when we went
out I stood out more than him... This
was because he would be there with
a raincoat, a hat over his face and theHe just barely lifted the camera up,
he didn’t even put it to his face, he
just lifted it gently off his lap and took
the picture. So he knew where that
lens was all the time. I learned to be
unobtrusive in street photography.
If you’re a woman you don’t wear
bright beautiful clothes and go out
with a camera to take pictures. That
was then, now it’s quite different,
everybody has a camera, but this
was post-War France and you tried to
hide, as much as possible, what you
were doing and that’s something
that has stayed with me.You later moved to England. How
long have you been living here?
I came to England around the
mid-1960s. The ‘Swinging Sixties’,
that was a culture shock! Everything
was changing and it was a very
interesting time.What were you doing
photographically then?
When I came to England I had been
married. My husband was aAbove: Grand
Boulevard,
Paris 1950. The
gentleman in the
background seems
amazed at seeing a
pretty girl posing
in the rain. Fashion
photography was
usually confined
to the studio, but
Marilyn broke with
convention by
working with
models in the
streets.
Right: Henri
Cartier-Bresson,
Paris 1950.
The master at
work at the Grande
Palais during an
exhibition of home
appliances. “He
was my mentor
and I was often
invited to
accompany him
when he went out
to take pictures,”
Marilyn
remembers.By chance, I met Henri
Cartier-Bresson. That
was the real turning
point for me, because
he became my mentor
THE N-PHOTO INTERVIEW