Bruce Davidson - Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni during the making of "Zabriskie Point." California. USA. 1968. © Bruce Davidson | Magnum Photos

photograph

18 × 24 in

45.7 × 61 cm

edition no.10 of 200

Although torn apart by critics at the time of its release, the film has since been hailed a cult classic for its authentic portrayal of the hippie zeitgeist, captured through Antonioni’s inimitable lens.

In July of 1968, Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni invited Bruce Davidson to Los Angeles to shoot the making of Zabriskie Point, his first (and only) film to be made in America. The film was a study of the counterculture that had gripped America’s youth during the 1960s, and the American photographer – a master documenter of outsider communities – was a natural fit.

"Zabriskie Point has been widely reappraised as a cult classic, celebrated for its mesmeric cinematography, languorous rock soundtrack, and authentic portrayal of the hippie zeitgeist".

Antonioni was still enjoying the commercial and critical success of his 1966 thriller Blowup, a mystery set in the hedonistic throes of swinging London, and MGM studios had high hopes for his first American endeavor, the final film in a three-part deal. They invested $7 million in Zabriskie Point’s making, hoping to reel in the Vietnam generation with its themes of free love, political activism and anti-consumerism. But when the film was released in 1970, it was a huge flop, lambasted by critics for its vacuous characters and making just $900,000 at the US box office. The film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “This is such a silly and stupid movie, all burdened down with ideological luggage it clearly doesn’t understand, that our immediate reaction is pity.”

Fast forward 50 years, however, and Zabriskie Point has been widely reappraised as a cult classic, celebrated for its mesmeric cinematography, languorous rock soundtrack, and authentic portrayal of the hippie zeitgeist (both of its leads, Daria Halprin and Mark Frechette, were non-professional actors and very much involved in the countercultural movement). Davidson’s on-set photographs, meanwhile – of the film’s creator, its breathtaking locations, and its exceptionally photogenic young protagonists – offer compelling insight into its impressive production and Antonioni’s hands-on approach.

In true Antonioni form, Zabriskie Point’s story is a meandering one, its loose narrative penned by a team of five writers, including Sam Shepard. Mark is an angry young activist who refuses to join the student strike on his local campus (“I’m prepared to die, but not of boredom”), opting for a more violent, one-man approach. He purchases a gun and appears to shoot a police officer during a protest, before stealing a pink private jet and setting off into the Californian desert. It’s here that he meets Daria, a pot-smoking temp on a road trip to Phoenix to meet her real estate tycoon boss.

Mark woos her with a series of North by Northwest-style stunts and the two spend an afternoon frolicking on the dunes of Zabriskie Point – a stunning overlook on the eastern outskirts of Death Valley, near Nevada. They make love, spawning a surreal orgy scene involving a hundred extras rolling around on the picturesque yellow and grey canyons – a moment memorably captured by Davidson. Things take a more sinister turn when Mark decides to return the plane, newly decorated with anti-capitalist slogans, while Daria arrives at her boss’s vast clifftop house in time to witness its explosion – the film’s final, unforgettable protest against Western consumerism.

Interestingly, rather than hone in solely on Zabriskie Point’s most cinematic moments, Davidson quietly engages himself in conveying his own behind-the-scenes take on the filmmaking process, often including equipment in the shots to striking effect. He has a knack for depicting his subjects in a manner that is simultaneously natural and expertly composed and his images of the film’s young lovers (who formed a real-life relationship during filming).

Up-close portraits of Antonioni, meanwhile, as he squints through viewfinders and gesticulates wildly to his cast, further attest to Davidson’s aptitude for blending seamlessly into the woodwork in pursuit of his own artistic goals. The result is an American artist’s take on an Italian artist’s take on American culture – something that the notoriously enigmatic and experimental Antonioni no doubt would have reveled in.

Bruce Davidson began taking photographs at the age of ten in Oak Park, Illinois. While attending Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University, he continued to further his knowledge and develop his passion. He was later drafted into the army and stationed near Paris. There he met Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the founders of the Magnum Photos.

When he left military service in 1957, Davidson worked as a freelance photographer for LIFE magazine and in 1958 became a full member of Magnum. From 1958 to 1961 he created such seminal bodies of work as The Dwarf, Brooklyn Gang, and Freedom Rides.

He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962 and created a profound documentation of the civil rights movement in America. In 1963, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented his early work in a solo show.

In 1967, he received the first grant for photography from the National Endowment for the Arts, having spent two years witnessing the dire social conditions on one block in East Harlem. This work was published by Harvard University Press in 1970 under the title East 100th Street and was later republished and expanded by St. Ann’s Press. The work became an exhibition that same year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1980, he captured the vitality of the New York Metro’s underworld that was later published in a book, Subway, and exhibited at the International Center of Photography in 1982. From 1991-95,  he photographed the landscape and layers of life in Central Park. In 2006, he completed a series of photographs titled “The Nature of Paris,” many of which have been shown and acquired by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Davidson received an Open Society Institute Individual Fellowship in 1998 to return to East 100th Street His awards include the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Photography in 2004 and a Gold Medal Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Arts Club in 2007. Classic bodies of work from his 50-year career have been extensively published in monographs and are included in many major public and private fine art collections around the world. He continues to photograph and produce new bodies of work.

Magnum Photos x Paris Match

For more than seventy years, the photographers of Magnum Photos and Paris Match have been capturing and revealing life on film sets.

A new collection brought together 50 curated images, available for the first time ever as 18×24” luxury pictures, each limited to an edition of 200. Every image comes with an archival-quality label confirming authenticity. 

The unparalleled access to the world of cinema afforded to both Paris Match and Magnum’s photographers over more than eight decades has produced a trove of iconic, intimate, and candid photographs that reveal the magical worlds of film sets and the stars that inhabit them. Together, the archives of these two institutions visually chart the evolution of 20th century cinema.

A number of the images brought together here are instantly recognizable: Dennis Stock’s portraits of James Dean during the filming of ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ (1955) the photographs produced by Inge Morath of Marilyn Monroe, from their first meeting in 1950 to her last film, ‘The Misfits’ (1961), David ‘Chim’ Seymour’s portraits of Sophia Loren. While the figures in many of these photographs are stars, the magic of these images is that they reveal something beyond their subjects’ familiar features. The closeness of relationships between the likes of Stock and Dean, or Morath and Monroe, allow the viewer to go behind the veil of celebrity.

Many of these images were created during the heyday of photographic news reportage assignments – when picture magazines such as Paris Match reigned, before television was ubiquitous – with photographers regularly assigned to the sets of the next big hit release. The selection captures the apex of both the status of cinema idols and of popular culture reportage. Much of the curation also reflects the era’s comparatively relaxed attitude to press access – allowing ample opportunity for nuanced, candid, or truly natural images to be made at the heart of many multi-million dollar productions.

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With an exceptional collection of several million photographs and hundreds of thousands of articles, Paris Match, a reflection of its time in all fields, and more particularly in that of the 7th art, has never ceased to photograph the legends of the cinema who have illuminated its pages for over 70 years. Jane Fonda and Alain Delon at the Villa Torre Clementina of  Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in Alpes Maritimes, Catherine Deneuve in Saint Tropez, Robert de Niro and Michael Douglas in candid shots off screen. These are only some of the emblematic pictures you will also find in this collection.

Gwenaëlle de Kerros, Development Director of Paris Match, said: “Under the lens of Paris Match photographers, stars were revealed, icons were born and myths were written. It is with a special emotion this year that we are very happy to join forces with the emblematic Magnum Photos agency to share with you these exceptional photographs.”

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