Art Calendar 24 February 2022 - by Lizzie M.

MARILYN STAFFORD RETROSPECTIVE

The first retrospective featuring decades of archival photography

by 96-year-old photographer Marilyn Stafford at the Brighton Museum

February 22 through May 8, 2022

Marilyn Stafford in Lebanon 1960

©Marilyn Stafford

Key photographer of the last century

This year marks the opening of the first retrospective of U.S. photographer Marilyn Stafford (b. 1925). She is one of the key photographers of the last century, having documented some of the most significant historical events.

The exhibition features works taken between 1948 and 1980, as well as many images that the public has never seen. Marilyn Stafford's career as a photographer began when, as a young woman, she was invited to take photographs of Albert Einstein. Since then she has photographed personalities such as Indira Gandhi, Edith Piaf, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Twiggy. 

Indira Gandhi boarding plane New Delhi 1972

©Marilyn+Stafford

Stafford also engaged in street photography in the 1950s, documenting the Parisian children of the Cité Lesage-Bullourde neighborhood and the street life of Boulogne-Billancourt.

Marilyn Stafford considers herself a storyteller who speaks through the lens of her camera. 

She wanted to raise public awareness through the lens of her camera to create socially relevant stories and change for the better. Marilyn Stafford was a child of the Great Depression in 1930s America and witnessed impoverished people and early Holocaust refugees come to the door selling all manner of things.

Influenced in part by Dorothea Lange's photographs of migrants fleeing severe drought in the Dust Bowl states, she understood how photography could make a difference.

Marilyn Stafford witnessed some significant periods of modern social and political history - she photographed Algerian refugees in Tunisia in 1958, and she captured Lebanon in the 1960s before civil war devastated the country a decade later.

She also created a unique documentary about Indira Gandhi, India's first female prime minister, during India's intervention in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. 

Streetphotography by Marilyn Stafford

Girl with milk bottle Cite-Lesage-Bullourde-Paris-c1950

©Marilyn Stafford

Edith Piaf Paris 1950

©Marilyn Stafford

Twiggy with press London - 1960

©Marilyn Stafford

Joanna Lumley with models backstage during Jean Muir fashion show

©Marilyn Stafford

Marilyn Stafford was also a busy contract photographer, e.g. at the Observer and co-owner of her own fashion photography agency. She covered fashion shows in Paris, Rome, Milan, London, and New York and was able to finance her own projects.

In 2020, Stafford was awarded the Chairman's Lifetime Achievement Award by the UK Picture Editors' Guild. 

The exhibition A Life in Photography, curated by Nina Emett in collaboration with Stafford's daughter Lina Clerke, will then be on view at Dimbola Museum & Galleries (Isle of Wight, Hampshire) in the summer of 2022. 

Where to find:

Brighton Museum

Royal Pavilion Gardens, Brighton

brightonmuseums.org.uk

marilynstaffordphotography.com

@marilynstaffordphotography

For those unable to travel to Brighton:

An accompanying retrospective book on her work Marilyn Stafford: A Life in Photography is available at www.bluecoatpress.co.uk and www.marilynstaffordphotography.com with an essay by art critic Jennifer Higgie and a foreword by the late photojournalist Tom Stoddart.

By Lizzie Mauer, 24 February 2022