Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Marilyn Stafford.
Marilyn Stafford was born in Cleveland, Ohio, USA in 1925. She planned to become an actress and singer following her training at the Cleveland Playhouse. In 1947, having moved to New York City where she was given small acting roles off Broadway and in early television, Stafford was given a Rolleiflex camera by a friend. To support herself in between acting roles, she found work assisting US fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo. Her photographic career was formally launched in Autumn 1948 when she took her first portrait of Albert Einstein for friends who were making a documentary film about him. She was given a 35mm SLR camera for the first time and a quick lesson in how to use it in the back of the car on the way to his house in New Jersey.
From the late 1940s to the early 1980s, Stafford accumulated a large and eclectic body of work spanning fashion and street photography, photojournalism and social documentary photography. She has taken portraits of many famous and influential figures including: Edith Piaf, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Indira Gandhi, Carlo Levi, Italo Calvino, Sir Richard Attenborough, Sir Alan Bates, Le Corbusier, Jean Seberg, Lee Marvin, Joanna Lumley and Twiggy. Her work has led her around the globe from her native US, particularly to France, England, Italy, Lebanon, India and Bangladesh.
During the 1960s, Stafford worked as a freelance photographer for The Observer, Vogue (UK) and many other international newspapers and magazines. She was one of very few women to be doing that kind of work at the time. In the early 1970s, she spent time photographing Indira Gandhi, India’s first and only woman prime minister, around the time of India’s war with Pakistan.
The photographs offer a powerful and personal insight into Indira Gandhi’s daily life, not only as a beloved stateswoman but also as a mother and grandmother.
In 2017, Stafford set up the Marilyn Stafford Fotoreportage Award in collaboration with FotoDocument. The award is supported by Nikon, UK and is a social documentary photography award for women that focuses on positive solutions to social or environmental issues. In 2020, Stafford was awarded the Chairman’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the UK Picture Editors' Guild. , the first comprehensive book on Stafford’s work, was published by Bluecoat Press in October 2021. A retrospective exhibition of her photographs will be held at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery from 22 February-8 May 2022.
