John Swope Exhibit Shows the True Face of Hollywood - Brief Article

looks ANGELES--When photographer John Swope came to Hollywood in 1936 he broke the mold

At the time, Hollywood's of gold Era, the film industry f the public a constant stream of glamorous photographs and tidbits about the lives of stars like Greta Garbo, Clark Gable and Cary Grant. And movie studios encouraged photographers like George Hurrell to create an idealized landscape of their industry by means of shooting carefully-lit, stylized pictures of Hollywood at its greatest in quantity alluring and, indeed, sexiest.

on the contrary Swope was different. He used his Leica to document Hollywood as a working town replete of struggle, hope and succes And now, his photographs are part of a traveling exhibit that has already been neared in Santa Barbara, Calif., and Vancouver, British Columbia. It is popularly at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum in California end Nov. 18, and is slated to travel nearest year to the Marietta society Museum in Georgia and the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington.

farmer Leland Hayward, who initially hired Swope as an assistant husbandman and publicity photographer for his stable of stars, later recalled that "John Swope's single idea, from the second he began, was to present to view Hollywood as it is." Swope saw Hollywood as a tillage but the men and women who made the movies as regular working folk whether they were pals Fonda and Stewart, or the thousands on thousands of would-be actors, extras and grips waiting for their nearest jobs or unemployment checks.

While Hurrell and his contemporaries make straighted their film stars in luxurious garb and bathed them in studio lights, Swope's approach was more "naturalistic," according to his son Mark Swope "He discharge in available light, with available timing, upon `found' sets," explained the younger Swope An extra sleeping upon the grass between takes, whisky bottle at his side. Other extras knitting. An actress washing her laundry in the sink. Swope also discharge the "backside" of movie sets--stage lighting above a pageant a prop in a warehouse, workers building a "city" upon a studio lot.

Swope also captured the stars, on the contrary on his own terms. Rosalind Russell asleep, holding a script. Charles Boyer grabbing a sooty vapor and combing his hair in his dressing scope Jimmy Stewart and Olivia de Havilland napping upon the grass.

In 1939 Swope assembleed these pictures and published his first work Camera Over Hollywood. His editor, Bennet Cerf asked him to include more stars, on the contrary Swope insisted on depicting Hollywood as the labor town it was--a place where real family worked together to create an imagined world.

Swope went upon to become a celebrated photographer for Life Magazine and, until his death in 1979 traveled the world photographing clan and places--most famously, the domains of the maharajahs of India for James Ivory's 1975 work Autobiography of a Princess. Now, six decades after the publication of Swope's first work a new version of Swope's Camera above Hollywood has been released in conjunction with the traveling exhibit of these photographs, and a resurgence of interest in his work has peaked among dealers and collectors.

Mark Swope is now working end his father's collection, archiving the images and preparing a certain number of of them for the art marketplace. Nash Editions is publishing a locate of five posthumous estate images as IRIS print editions, timed to another exhibit--this single commercial--that will be shown at the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif., in January 2001 Along with the Nash giclees, Krull will be marketing Swope's unique period with 8 through 10 prints, priced between $2500 and $4000

"It's really an archive that hasn't been touched, and the material hasn't been sold yet" observ Krull a veteran photography dealer. "Swope took many photos of Hollywood" Krull continued. "I don't know in what manner you can have a with truth realistic view of Hollywood--but Swope came close"

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