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Stanley Kubrick

In Stanley Kubrick’s short career as a photojournalist you can find the

roots of the wunderkind director to come. Aditya Nair finds out.

great masters

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great masters

Better PHotograPHy Better PHotograPHy marCH 2015

S

omewhere in the pantheon

dedicated to film legends, there

is a special throne reserved for

Stanley Kubrick. Arguably the

finest auteur in the history of the

medium, his films like A Clockwork Orange,

20 01: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket have

gone on to inspire almost every director who

has come after him.

A large part of his mystique comes from

the fact that this young director seemed to

materialise on the Hollywood circuit with

an almost fully formed visual and narrative

aesthetic. However, before the appearance

of Stanley Kubrick, the director, was Stanley

Kubrick, a young schoolboy, who became

the photographer for Look magazine.

1940s: A Photographic Odyssey

In many ways, Kubrick’s first step into the

visual arts was rather ordinary. When he was

thirteen, his father Jacob Kubrick, gave him

a second-hand Graflex camera. He began

by making images of daily life in New York

and developing them in a darkroom that

he built.

In April 1945, USA lost Franklin D

Roosevelt, widely hailed as the third most

(1928–1999)