Douglas Kirkland's light years

by Douglas Kirkland

For thirty years Douglas Kirkland's camera has negotiated our relationship with the stars. Light Years is his photographic autobiography --a brilliant constellation of seventy-five of the major performers of our time. In the wild, experimental Sixties, Kirkland's improvisational photojournalism broke with the formal, highly stylized tradition of studio photography. His photo essays on Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor caught an emotional incandescence that suddenly flared before the camera. In the sexually direct Seventies, his photographs of Jessica Lange, Cher, and Sophia Loren showed us a franker, more overtly provocative star. And in the Eighties, with its new obsession with fame, Kirkland's pictures of Jennifer Grey and Debra Winger have captured the decadent, futuristic charm of media--conscious stars as the seek to carve out their territory, their unique image. Along with the great women stars, Kirkland has photographed the major male stars: here is the vivid