Douglas Kirkland's light years

the long version

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 intensity of Jack Nicholson; Orson Welles in all his brooding majesty; and a duet posed by beguiling Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. Through it all Kirkland has been our surest, clearest touchstone for the varieties of glamour that have stimulated us, excited us, provoked our hopes and our fantasies. What makes Kirkland unique among celebrity photographers is not only the sense that he shares our feelings for the stars, but that his subjects are responding directly to those feelings, directly to us. Light Years has been produced on a scale as grandly expressive as its subjects. Accompanying each of the more than one hundred color photographs are Kirkland's recollections--surprising, revealing, intimate--of his encounters with the stars. And Light Years' huge format and sumptuous color brings us literally face to face with the stars as they cavort before us, imploring us, amusing us, shocking us, and delighting us.--From jacket flap