Marilyn Stafford is a pioneering American photographer and photojournalist, who celebrated her 96th birthday last year. Her career got off to an incredible start when she was asked to take stills of Albert Einstein in 1948 — at a time when photography was very much a male preserve. Raised in the depression era, and inspired by Dorothea Lange’s powerful photographs of migrants fleeing drought in the Dust Bowl states, Marilyn has led the way and continues to champion female photographers with her FotoReportage prize.
Marilyn was friends with street photography pioneer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was an early mentor. When living in Paris, she would wander the notorious slums of Cité Lesage-Bullourde (demolished in the 80s), documenting the street life. She brought this into her work as a jobbing fashion photographer, taking models out onto the Paris back-streets, rather than shooting in the luxurious fashion houses.
In 1958, while six months pregnant, she photographed Algerian refugees fleeing France’s ‘scorched earth’ aerial bombardment in the Algerian war of independence — photographs that made the front page of The Observer and helped to alert the world to the plight of the Algerian people.
While in Paris, Marilyn befriended Edith Piaf, and would spend long evenings with her entourage in Edith’s Bois de Boulogne mansion. Marilyn went on to photograph many celebrities of the era including Sharon Tate, Twiggy, Richard Attenborough, Albert Finney and Indira Gandi, but her real passion was for photography that would shine a light on suffering and injustice.
We decided to make a short film about Marilyn, documenting her life’s journey as a highly influential photographer, who’s work spans from 1948-1980 and covers a broad scope of subjects and periods of modern history.
