Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Photographer and photojournalist, known for iconic portraits of Marilyn Monroe and other stars, and for documenting diverse cultures worldwide.
On the island
Eight records
Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend
I had gotten to know her and photographed her over a ten years' scratch. And she was quite extraordinary, and this song reminds me of her.
My choice of Paul Robeson singing Schlofmein Kind is very important to me because he sings a lullaby in Yiddish. My mother used to sing it in Russian, and it's called Sleep My Child.
Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
In my desert island discs I wanted very badly to have the magic flute. The voice of the flute is very beautiful.
I grew up with jazz and I loved the Bessie Smith recordings. And one of my favorites was Alexander's Ragtime Band. And then it became alive for me when I started working in Harlem.
Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers of 1610): Domine ad adiuvandum
Choir of King's College, Cambridge and the Early Music Consort of London, conducted by Philip Ledger
This is for my son. Do you know I wanted to be a doctor before I became a photographer? My son is now a doctor. And one of the images I have of him is listening to the Monteverde Vespers.
Flute Concerto in D major, Op. 10, No. 1, RV 433 'La tempesta di mare'Favourite
Gastone Tassinari and I Musici Virtuosi di Milano
particularly because it reminds me of something that happened. Early on I had a house in Long Island. And in the summers. We would sit out of doors, and there was a great trellis of roses, and we would play Vivaldi concerti, and birds, starlings would come and settle on the rose bush.
This is for Michael, my grandson who's eighteen and who has lots of hair. just like Jimi Hendrix, and who plays Little Wing a lot of the time.
Lute Suite No. 4 in E major, BWV 1006a: I. Prelude
The last record is one by John Williams, who's a good friend, and I would like friends around me on the island. And he's a remarkable guitarist, so something I would like to hear again and again.
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:36How special was [Marilyn Monroe] in your view? Do you think she deserved to be the legend she now is?
I think she was extraordinary. She had created that figure out of whole cloth, and so she was an original. She embodied so much vulnerability, so much weakness, so much strength. And she seemed a symbol for so much of what was going on in the 50s and 60s that still obtains and carries forward.
Presenter asks
7:49Did you sense her deep unhappiness, and did you have any hint [of her tragic end]?
In a a little bit I remember when I came out for the last film for The Misfits, and I had not seen her in about four years. She said to me, How do I look? And I said, You look wonderful and she did. And she said, Oh, I don't know. She said, I'm thirty four years old. I'm tired. I've been dancing for six months on a film called Let's Make Love. And she said, Where do I go from here? And it was really very touching. She was not talking to me, she was talking to herself about what a trying time she was having her marriage to Miller had just broken up. She was desperately sad.
Presenter asks
18:04What was the best piece of advice you were ever given by those [Magnum] photographers?
I guess it was Kapa who then he said this to many people, but he also said it to me. If you're not good enough, it's because you're not close enough. The idea being that to get at the essence of it. You must get close, whether it's physically or emotionally.
The keepsakes
The book
I think this is an obvious one, a thousand and one nights. Also because I've worked in the Middle East, because it's always interested me, because I've made a film about harems in Arabia. and I thought every night I could turn it on we'd listen to one tale. And I could go on for three years like that.
Presenter asks
25:08How threatening an experience was [assigning you to Malcolm X for eighteen months]?
It was scary because the women would glare at me at the various black Muslim meetings. … George Lincoln Rockwell, who was head of the American Nazi Party. said to me, I'm going to make a lamp shade out of you. And I said, As long as it's not a bar of soap and kept on shooting. That was frightening. … There was one crazed woman in particular who was running around yelling, Kill the white bitch, kill the white bitch But I kept on shooting, walked around the crowd. … when I got back to the life office to have the film processed. I took my sweater off. and unzipped the pockets in which I had my film, looked at the back of the sweater, it was pocket dotted with cigarette burns, because wool doesn't burn it smoulders and as I'd gone around the crowd they've been sticking lighted cigarettes into the back of me.
Presenter asks
26:48Do you feel brave, or do you perhaps not even feel fear at the time because you're doing a job?
It never occurs to me to be afraid. And then I'm a case of delayed reaction. After it's over, I get the shakes. But not not in the beginning. I think the thing that motivated me was curiosity, and even the fear was part of that curiosity, part of seeing how I would react. To different stimuli.
“What the photographer tries to do is to give meaning to whatever it is that he's seeing, and is trying to communicate that meaning beyond his own vision to the person who was viewing that picture.”
“If you want the reality and not imposing your own ideas, then you use the light that is out there.”
“You can teach them technique, but you can't teach them photography. The thing is to learn enough technique, then forget about it and go out and do what you can.”
“When you've looked long enough, then there is sight, there there is understanding.”