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On ‘Pictures From Home’ on Broadway, a Family Portrait Full of Secrets
The actor Nathan Lane had been planning to play the American anti-father Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” (1949) when that production fell apart. Restless during the pandemic and casting about for his next project, he read a draft of Sharr White’s “Pictures From Home,” which recalled “Salesman” to him: The two scripts share an almost incessantly angry, backward-looking gaze at the glory days of midcentury American masculinity, embodied by a discontented businessman. Now, as White’s play opens on Broadway this week, Lane, 67, will star as Irving Sultan, a former Schick razor executive who’s supported both emotionally and financially by his doting if frustrated wife, Jean Sultan (Zoë Wanamaker), while sparring with their childish 30-something son Larry Sultan (Danny Burstein, also doting, also frustrated), both of whom tend to Irv in their artichoke-colored Southern California ranch home even as he struggles to return their affection.The show, says Lane, is “about parents and mortality,” the latter of which has been on the actor’s mind since his 2020 cancer treatment. “They’re all fighting to tell their own story, and certainly Irv is fighting to protect this fantasy of his success.” Indeed, many arguments unfurl over 100 or so minutes, often in the form of direct audience address — it’s “part family dramedy, part documentary, part three-way TED Talk,” as Lane describes it — and the sorts of overlapping conversations native to people, like the Sultans, with Brooklyn roots and Palm Springs aspirations.Jennifer LivingstonWhat moves the play beyond that living room drama tradition is the source material: It’s based on Larry Sultan’s 1992 photo memoir of the same name, which the Bay Area-based artist published after dozens of visits to his parents’ San Fernando Valley home in the 1980s. Sultan then combined a decade’s worth of staged photographs and recorded interviews of his mother and father, both of whom died soon after the book’s release, with stills from home movies taken during his childhood to create a vulnerable family portrait that’s as much about aging as it is about accountability — and loyalty — to those we care about most. Photographers like Alec Soth and Stephen Shore still venerate the project, a longer version of which was republished in 2021; White discovered it in 2015, six years after the photographer’s death, as part of Sultan’s first career retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Afterward, the playwright contacted the artist’s widow, Kelly Sultan, and, over dinner, convinced her to let him option the book. She also agreed to open the archives so that White might achieve a new kind of bioplay, one that its director, Bartlett Sher, signed on to for its “multivariable potential,” he says, using found footage from the Sultans’ garage and photographic projections that, onstage, heighten the divide between truth and fiction.White, who also writes for television and has had two other plays on Broadway, both in different styles, says the half-decade he spent finishing this script was, from the start, an “investigation” into the Sultans’ power dynamics. In memoir and play alike, Jean and Irving are willing subjects … until they become skeptical co-conspirators, wondering why their son seems obsessed with chronicling them so harshly. “There’s lots of conflict, but it’s not the end,” adds White, 52, who had a strained upbringing with his own parents and is now raising two teenage sons in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife, Evelyn Carr White, an artist and interior designer. “I was fascinated by this idea that you can say the worst thing, and ultimately nothing breaks.”And yet it’s Irv — depicted by Lane with jocular, egotistic bravado that barely masks his deep fear of irrelevance — who always seems to get the last word: “I’ll tell you about mess, Larry,” he says near the show’s conclusion. “You know what mess is? It’s intimacy. Intimacy is a big fat [expletive] mess. But I’ll tell you another thing. It’s love, too. OK? This thing you think you’re capturing. This evidence? This mess? It’s love.” More
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Henry Grossman, Photographer of Celebrities and Beatles, Dies at 86
He was best known for his formal portraits of prominent politicians and entertainers. Less famously, he took thousands of candid shots of John, Paul, George and Ringo.Henry Grossman, a photographer who was best known for his formal portraits of celebrities and other public figures — but who also, less famously, immortalized the Beatles on film in thousands of unscripted antics while juggling a side career as a Metropolitan Opera tenor and a Broadway bit player — died on Nov. 27 in Englewood, N.J. He was 86.His son, David, said he died in a hospital several months after sustaining injuries in a fall.Mr. Grossman produced paradigmatic portraits of Eleanor Roosevelt, Richard M. Nixon, Elizabeth Taylor, Martha Graham, Leontyne Price, Leonard Bernstein and Nelson Mandela. He photographed new Metropolitan Opera productions for Time magazine and was the official photographer for many Broadway shows.His portraits of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were published on the front page of The New York Times on Nov. 23, 1963, accompanying the news that the young president had been assassinated in Dallas and succeeded by his vice president the day before.The Nov. 23, 1963, front page of The New York Times featured two formal portraits by Mr. Grossman: one of President John F. Kennedy, who had just been assassinated, and one of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had just been sworn in to replace him.Mr. Grossman’s sensitivity to classical portraiture’s interplay of shadow and light was inspired by his father, the artist Elias M. Grossman, an immigrant from Russia whose etchings were acquired by numerous institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.By the time Henry graduated from Brandeis University in Massachusetts in 1958, he had compiled an impressive portfolio of portraits of guest speakers on campus and photographs of stage productions there. His fledgling second career as a singer would imbue him with an empathy for performers that helped him establish an unusual bond with celebrity subjects.He was only 27 — barely older than the Beatles themselves — when he was commissioned by Life magazine in 1964 to cover the band’s American television debut, on the popular CBS variety series “The Ed Sullivan Show.”Mr. Grossman photographed the hirsute quartet juxtaposed against a jungle of television cameras, amplifiers and other backstage impedimenta, and he shot from the balcony to capture their electrifying effect on the audience. His creative eye would be reflected in an archive of some 7,000 photos he would take of the Beatles over the next four years.That only a few dozen were published or even printed at the time — most famously a 1967 portrait for Life of the newly mustachioed band members — left other photographers (among them Robert Freeman, Dezo Hoffmann, Astrid Kirchherr, Jürgen Vollmer and Robert Whitaker) more closely associated with the Beatles than Mr. Grossman was.Only a few dozen of Mr. Grossman’s Beatles photos were published at the time he took them. The best known was this one, seen on the cover of Life magazine in 1967. Henry Grossman/Grossman Enterprises. All rights reserved.But Mr. Grossman’s archive of intimate moments at home, at private parties and during overnight recording sessions amounted to more images of the band taken over a longer period than any other photographer’s, according to his publisher, Curvebender Publishing.In 2008, Curvebender released “Kaleidoscope Eyes,” a limited-edition book of Mr. Grossman’s photographs documenting an evening at Abbey Road Studios in London as the Beatles were recording the album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” In 2012, the company published “Places I Remember,” a hefty volume that included 1,000 of his Beatles photographs.The Beatles’ “Ed Sullivan Show” debut did not transform Mr. Grossman into a fan overnight. But during the band’s American tour that summer, he befriended George Harrison.“After that,” Mr. Grossman told The Times in 2012, “anytime I went to London, I’d check into my hotel, call their office to find out George’s phone number du jour — they had to change them, because the fans would find them out — and I’d arrange to spend a day with them.”“They were accustomed to seeing me with a camera, documenting everything that went on around me,” he explained in “Places I Remember.” “It was simply part of me, part of who I was. More than that, I had become a friend.”“I was first a friend and second a photographer,” he added. “So when I pulled out my camera, no one thought twice about it. No one cared. It wasn’t seen as invasive.”Among the many public figures Mr. Grossman photographed was Eleanor Roosevelt in 1960. Henry Grossman/Grossman Enterprises. All rights reserved.Henry Maxwell Grossman was born on Oct. 11, 1936, in Manhattan. His father died when he was 10, and his mother, Josephine (Erschler) Grossman, helped support the family by selling her husband’s etchings.After graduating from Metropolitan Vocational and Technical High School in Manhattan at 16, Henry earned a scholarship to Brandeis, where he received a degree in theater arts and did graduate work in anthropology — and where he first made a mark as a photographer.After returning to New York City, he began his career as a freelance photographer for Life, Time, Newsweek and Paris Match, among other magazines, and for The Times.His marriage to Carol Ann Hauptfuhrer in 1973 ended in divorce. He is survived by their children, David and Christine Grossman, who are both professional musicians, and his sister, Suzanne Grossman.While in his 20s, Mr. Grossman studied at the Actors Studio. After touring in the 1960s with the national company of the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Grossman, a tenor, made his New York singing debut at Carnegie Hall in 1973 and went on to appear with the Washington Opera Society and the Philadelphia Lyric Opera. In the 1980s, he performed in concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Riccardo Muti, and in the next decade he sang in three productions at the Metropolitan Opera.He also did some acting. He made a brief appearance in the 1978 movie “Who’s Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?” while on location in Italy as film photographer, and he played a scullery worker in the original cast of the Broadway musical “Grand Hotel” for its full run, from 1989 to 1992.Jacqueline Kennedy in 1967. Mr. Grossman waited to be invited rather than insinuating himself into his subjects’ private lives.Henry Grossman/Grossman Enterprises. All rights reserved.Mr. Grossman was gregarious but largely unassuming, waiting to be invited rather than insinuating himself into his subjects’ private lives. That was how he managed to take photos for Jacqueline Kennedy of her children at home, and to accompany George Harrison on his “Dark Horse” tour of North America in 1974.“I learned a lot from the Beatles,” he was quoted as saying in the 2012 Times article. “I was interested in how they took to fame, how they used it. It wasn’t easy for them.“One night in Atlantic City, I asked Ringo how he liked seeing America. He took me to the window of his hotel room, pointed to a brick wall across the parking lot, and said, ‘That’s what we’ve seen.’ They were trapped.”“I guess one reason we got along so well was that they knew I wasn’t trying to get anything from them,” Mr. Grossman said. “And I think I got the pictures I got because I wasn’t posing them. I wasn’t injecting myself into the scene as a participant. I was just watching.“I was like a fly on the wall. I got what was there.” More
- in Theater
Best Arts Photos of 2022
These are the images that defined a remarkable time across the worlds of art, music, dance and performance.Sinna Nasseri photographed Weird Al, left, and Daniel Radcliffe at a playground in Lower Manhattan in August before the release of their biopic, “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesCulture comes to life through a progression of ideas and images: Artists create works, and our photographers then capture these creators and their offerings — in turn creating photography that shares with us moments of intimacy we wouldn’t otherwise witness. Over the past year, photo editors at The New York Times have commissioned thousands of photographs of the movie stars, choreographers, opera singers, musicians and artists who made memorable contributions to the cultural world.In one frame by Chantal Anderson, the actor Caleb Landry Jones sips from a coffee mug at his kitchen counter, last night’s dishes piled high in the sink, as sunlight pours in from the window above. In another, Rosie Marks gives us an inside look at Charo being Charo: working out at home, full hair and makeup, in a gym frozen in time. In Michael Tyrone Delaney’s photograph of Awol Erizku, the artist stands before his work, his gaze set on his toddler. It’s an image that speaks to both his personal relationship with his child and his art’s relationship to her.Together, these photographs capture a narrative about a year in the arts, building a collection of evolving scenes and inner worlds. We asked some of the photographers to discuss the intentions behind these frames and the stories they saw within them. Now that the year is coming to a close, take one more look back at how we saw culture this year. — JOLIE RUBEN, senior photo editorDecember 2021When it comes to comedies, “I don’t get cast in them,” Nicole Kidman told The New York Times late last year about her role as Lucille Ball in the film “Being the Ricardos.” That might be the result of a career spent in dramas or “it might be my personality, too.”Jody Rogac for The New York TimesJanuary“Authentic Selves: The Beauty Within,” the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo’s New York Philharmonic festival, was a self-portrait of the musician, who is also an impresario and a community organizer. “I’m not interested in any artist because of their fame,” he told The Times.Erik Tanner for The New York TimesI like to think about this portrait of Anthony Roth Costanzo in the spirit of early stage plays, a sort of dollar-store version of world building, where rudimentary means of expression invite the smoke and mirrors to be an active part of the world rather than obscure it. I created a stage set as a field of flowers in a perpetual state of bending in the wind. The twine that suspends the flowers was both practical but also meant to dispel any illusion of the wind being real; showing my cards, as it were.— Erik Tanner“When I look back, I don’t remember it as suffering,” Penélope Cruz said of playing Janis in “Parallel Mothers,” because “for me, she was alive.” The film was her seventh collaboration with the director Pedro Almodóvar.Camila Falquez for The New York TimesThe Broadway veteran Kenneth Ard and the jazz vocalist Kat Edmonson were cast in “The Hang,” a jazz opera from the performer Taylor Mac.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesThe way that Kat Edmonson draped her arm over Kenneth Ard’s, the way that his body lay back on this stool, the texture of the stool, the color of their costumes, the lighting overhead and the fog from the smoke machine. As a queer person, it felt like a metaphor for how it feels to walk out of the closet: It’s like an exhale, an aha moment where everything has meaning, feels connective and lush, but only if you allow yourself to experience it in that way. — Justin J WeeFebruaryTo play a superstar at a vulnerable moment in the rom-com “Marry Me,” Jennifer Lopez said, “I had to remind myself in this movie that this was actually a safe place to let those feelings out.”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“It’s so in my bones,” Beanie Feldstein said of playing Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl” on Broadway. “I used to run around the house in my pajamas screaming ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade,’ pretending my dog was the tugboat.”OK McCausland for The New York TimesI brought the flowers as a prop for Beanie. Yellow roses, as featured in “Funny Girl” the movie, starring Barbra Streisand. I wanted to evoke the idea of a torch being passed. — OK McCauslandThe dancer and choreographer Angela Trimbur (squatting) champions low-stakes, accessible and intuitive movement. Dancing, she said, “is the way that I talk to myself.”Cait Oppermann for The New York Times“I wanted this work to focus on joy and celebration and love,” said the choreographer Kyle Abraham of his evening-length work “An Untitled Love,” set to songs by D’Angelo.Lelanie Foster for The New York TimesAs a former dancer and D’Angelo fan, I was inspired by these two worlds of dance and R&B. I only asked Kyle if he could improvise a little bit for me. Soon enough I was in the midst of an intimate solo performance in the BAM lobby. — Lelanie FosterSam Waterston, best known for “Law & Order,” began his career on the stage but soon branched into TV and film, taking on drama and comedy. “I’ve always wanted to prove that I can do all kinds of things,” he said.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesJerry Saltz, New York magazine’s senior art critic, and a figurine of himself. He was photographed for an essay by the New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott about the physical objects of our pop culture obsessions.Daniel Arnold for The New York TimesMarchThe Spanish pop singer Rosalía smashed together new sounds from the Latin world and beyond on her latest album, “Motomami.” “I just want to hear something I haven’t heard before,” she said.Carlos Jaramillo for The New York TimesThe guitarist, singer, actress and comedian Charo has felt underestimated “all the time, all the time,” she said. “But it never gave me a complex. I have fun. As long as people enjoy it, I don’t care. Because once I have that, I have the power of the stage.”Rosie Marks for The New York TimesI wanted to capture the slight chaos of Charo at home on her compound. There is a lot going on in the frame: the artificial grass carpet, the rusty weights, the old TV, a missing piece of the mirror — and then her in the middle, wearing a bright yellow outfit right out of an ’80s workout video, with hair and makeup that could be taken right out of one of her sold-out Vegas shows. She insisted we stay after the shoot and served up several cheese and meat platters. — Rosie MarksSand in Death Valley, Calif., was manipulated in different ways for the soundscape of “Dune,” Denis Villeneuve’s film based on Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesI watched “Dune” three times before heading to this shoot, taking notes on my yellow legal pad each time. The sound engineers did such an incredible job immersing the audience in this alien world, I wanted the images to at least attempt to do the same thing, like we were reporting from the surface of Arrakis. — Peter FisherThe vocalist, flutist and producer Melanie Charles singing at a rehearsal in her Brooklyn home. Her music uses electronics and calls for something heavier than an upright bass. “Musicians like me and my peers, we need some bump on the bottom,” she said.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesInstead of trying to separate different elements in the frame, sometimes I want my photograph’s different parts to connect and flow together to create shapes and lines. The neck of the bass guitar meets the circle of the bass drum, and Melanie Charles’s foot connects with the bass, which forms a diagonal line with Jonathan Michel’s finger. Melanie’s living room was inundated with music, with instruments. You get the sense that there’s not much separating her life from her music. — Sinna NasseriWith an exhibition at the Gagosian this year, Awol Erizku, above in his studio, was able to reach a broad audience. “I want to be remembered for Black imagination,” Erizku said, “to expand the limits of Black art.”Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesWalking into Awol Erizku’s studio is like walking into his mind. It’s a large warehouse, filled with striking imagery and sculptures in progress. He asked to get one photo with his daughter, Iris. A lot of his work is made with his daughter in mind. For me, this image embodies the themes of legacy building and cultivation of Black imagination. — Michael Tyrone DelaneyThe reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian and the prolific drummer Travis Barker, who got married this year, kiss on the Oscars red carpet in March.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAprilThe actor and musician Caleb Landry Jones at his Los Angeles home. His role in the Australian drama “Nitram” earned him a top prize at Cannes.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesBefore the Broadway debut of “Mr. Saturday Night” — a musical version of his 1992 movie about an aging performer who won’t accept that his time in the spotlight is up — Billy Crystal said, “The worst nightmare is, do you wake up one day and you’re not funny anymore?”Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesSarah Silverman during a break from rehearsals of “The Bedwetter,” about a 10-year-old Silverman who suffered from the embarrassing condition of the title. “It will be familiar to so many people,” Silverman said about how the musical explores the emotions raised by divorce.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesNicolas Cage, who starred as “Nick Cage” in this year’s “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” said, “I don’t want to be one of those actors — and there are a lot of them, I won’t mention any names — who are high on their own supply.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesI had about 10 minutes with Nicolas Cage in a Manhattan hotel. The story was about his newest movie, which has a meta quality to it: Nic plays himself at different stages of his life. I thought a mirror would represent that well. The side of his face is the foreground, and there’s also the lesser foreground of his hand. The middle ground shows his circular reflection while the background is another reflection of Nic. And there’s a further background beyond that. The depth of this frame is a big part of its power. — Sinna NasseriAlexander Skarsgard said working on the Viking saga “The Northman” was “the greatest experience of my career but, God, it was intense.”Robbie Lawrence for The New York TimesMay“I don’t want to be a celebrity,” Ethel Cain said ahead of the May release of her debut album, “Preacher’s Daughter.”Irina Rozovsky for The New York TimesWhen I met her, Ethel Cain was living in a small house in a small town somewhere in Alabama. It was a total time warp with no obvious signs of modernity — video tapes, crocheted table settings, wood paneled walls, quilts. In this photo, we were in Ethel’s bedroom, where she sleeps and records, the microphone just a few feet from the bed. We were talking about her childhood in the church. She was lying down, and I was on my knees beside her with the camera, a pious sight in and of itself. — Irina Rozovsky“I’ve made it clear to people that I’m never going to make a record that’s the same as another,” Bad Bunny said. His fourth album, “Un Verano Sin Ti,” was a smash hit.Josefina Santos for The New York TimesMichael Che, known mostly for “Saturday Night Live,” said there had been a certain amount of trial and error in developing his own show, the HBO Max series “That Damn Michael Che,” and in figuring out his career: “Everything looks easy till you start doing it.”Andre D. Wagner for The New York TimesOne of my favorite ways to make photographs is to be out on the streets and in the world; I love playing off juxtaposition and chance encounters. Even the streets know that Michael Che is PURE GENIE-US! — Andre D. WagnerFans respond to Austin Butler, above, the way they did to a young Leonardo DiCaprio, said the “Elvis” director Baz Luhrmann.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesAnson Boon said he “loved the intensity” of playing Johnny Rotten, the Sex Pistols frontman, in “Pistol,” a Hulu limited series.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York Times“I have spent a lot of time with different choreographers, all with different processes, so I also told myself: There are no rules,” said Janie Taylor, a former City Ballet principal, whose dances were featured in the L.A. Dance Project’s Joyce Theater season.Thea Traff for The New York TimesEach morning in Los Angeles, there’s typically a layer of fog (the “marine layer”) that clouds sunlight. We were incredibly lucky the morning of this shoot — there was no fog, only direct, beautiful California sunlight. The light was also low enough in the sky to create a beautiful shadow across half of Janie Taylor’s body. I asked her to dance in a way that felt reflective of her work, and she gave so much expression and movement in this light. — Thea Traff“My job was to capture their genius and not take shots that were superfluous,” said Marty Callner, who directed the first specials of Robin Williams, Steve Martin and George Carlin.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesLars “Bala” Lyons stands by while a red-tailed hawk (magnified by binoculars) perches above near Tompkins Square Park in New York. “For the Birds,” a star-studded, 242-track collection of songs and readings inspired by or incorporating birdsong, was released this year.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesFor this story I embedded myself with New York City’s birders — people who are obsessive about tracking birds, while the rest of us just go about our lives. I wanted to show that difference in one photo, so I split the frame by holding binoculars to the top half of my lens, which I focused on a red-tailed hawk, while the bottom half reveals a man on the ground just walking, unaware of the magnificent creature above him and the fandom surrounding the city’s birds. — Sinna NasseriWhen Oscar Isaac was offered “Moon Knight,” a Marvel series on Disney+, he wasn’t sure he was ready for another action blockbuster. “As fun as they can be, you’re outputting a lot of energy, and then you leave and you’re just exhausted,” he said.Erik Tanner for The New York TimesJuneIf the filmmaker Taika Waititi stepped back and considered all of his projects, “I’d probably have a panic attack,” he said. “I know there’s too many things.”Dana Scruggs for The New York TimesFrom left, Terry Elliott Lamont, Michael Turner Jr. and Von Williams in the McCulloh Homes public housing project, which was used as “The Pit” in “The Wire.” This year, a Baltimore photographer considered the HBO drama’s impact on the city where he was raised, 20 years after the show’s debut.Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesWhen I was a kid growing up in Baltimore, I was lucky enough to have a group of queer friends. We called ourselves “The Pridelights.” The three people in this image, Terry, Michael, and Von, were among the core members of the group and, in many ways, the core of my childhood. The composition is a nod to the iconic “Destiny Fulfilled” album cover, an album that was so central to us when it was released. We fought constantly about who in our group was Beyoncé (Von and me), Kelly (Michael) and Michelle (Terry). There are almost no images of us together when we were children. Looking at this image now, it feels corrective. — Gioncarlo ValentineJuly“I wanted to build a framework for myself, for how to keep art sacred,” the singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers said of her detour to Harvard Divinity School during the pandemic. Her second major-label album, “Surrender,” was released this summer.OK McCausland for The New York TimesAugustDecades in the making, Michael Heizer’s “City,” a massive mile-and-a-half-long sculpture set in a remote Nevada valley, was finally revealed this year.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesIt is nearly impossible to distill the experience of Heizer’s magnum opus “City” in one frame. From dusk to dawn, I had the rare opportunity to wander the immense space, allowing the light to be my guide. Standing in the bitter cold, I made a handful of exposures around 10 seconds long. Seeing “City” under moonlight made me think of how humans have been building mysterious structures on this planet for thousands of years, many in relation to the heavens above. — Todd HeislerThe photographer Sinna Nasseri captured images of present-day New York City as it might have been predicted by science fiction films of the 1980s. Here, a delivery robot serves food at Lilya’s Restaurant & Grill in Staten Island, N.Y.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesAbbi Jacobson’s series version of “A League of Their Own,” on Amazon Prime Video, expanded upon the 1992 film. “The movie is a story about white women getting to play baseball,” she said. “That’s just not enough.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWhat I love about Abbi Jacobson is how relatable the characters she plays are — you really feel like you know her and are friends with her from watching her. When I found out we were going to be taking photos in L.A., I thought of Art’s Delicatessen & Restaurant as the perfect place to meet up. It’s a family-owned spot you go back to over and over again with friends. There’s an intimacy and history there that I wanted in the images. — Chantal AndersonAhead of her album “Hold the Girl,” Rina Sawayama said, “I think the temptation, as an artist these days, is to look online and see what the fans want. But I’m going to write something that’s meaningful and worth people’s time.”Olivia Lifungula for The New York TimesFinishing touches underway on Wolfgang Tillmans’s retrospective, “To Look Without Fear,” at the Museum of Modern Art, which ends on New Year’s Day.Daniel Arnold for The New York TimesWolfgang Tillmans and I shot this couple melting into one viewer before a photo in his MoMA survey at the same time, he on his iPhone and me with my camera. I’m guessing his pic is better. — Daniel ArnoldSeptemberThe choreographer Gisèle Vienne at her parents’ home in Grenoble, France. She returned to New York in October with the U.S. premiere of “Crowd,” a magnetic work that places 15 dancers, consumed with love and longing, at an all-night party.Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesGisèle Vienne had given me a tour of the house, and this room was straight away my favorite. The light through the dirty windows, her mother’s sculptures, the dried plants, the floor. This was taken toward the end of the shoot so she had been dancing for a while, and it was terribly hot outside. I couldn’t tell she was sweating so much, though the flash revealed it. That’s when it began to be truly interesting. She was letting go, and I was finally becoming invisible. — Sam HellmannMoneybagg Yo has grown into the biggest rap star to emerge from Memphis in a generation.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesMost punk shows don’t have an audience that can comfortably fit under the lip of the stage. Or fans that headbang atop the shoulders of their heavily tattooed papas. But that was the scene at a Linda Lindas show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York this summer.OK McCausland for The New York TimesThe sculptor Fred Eversley, an unheralded pioneer of the Light and Space movement, with one of his parabolic lenses that is installed on the ground floor of his five-story building in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. “I don’t like art that you have to know art history to appreciate,” he said.Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York TimesDaniel Clark Smith, a chorister, reviewed sheet music at a dress rehearsal of “Medea” at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan. It was the Met’s first production of the Cherubini work.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesYvonne Rainer, a giant of choreography with more than a half-century of work behind her, went out swinging with “Hellzapoppin’: What About the Bees?,” which took on themes of race and resistance.Erik Tanner for The New York TimesFrom left, the artists Coreen Simpson, Randy Williams and Lorraine O’Grady in the Founders Room of the Museum of Modern Art. Just Above Midtown, an incubator of some of the most important Black avant-garde art of the 1970s and ’80s, was the subject of an exhibition.Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York TimesToward the end of my time with the group, I came back into the darkened conference room to see them arranged in a loose circle as they shared stories. I’d technically finished photographing them, but they were so immersed in conversation and used to my presence. This particular photograph, of Lorraine O’Grady holding court, ended up being my favorite. — Elliott Jerome Brown Jr.Tyler Mitchell in his Brooklyn studio alongside test prints of images from his London exhibition. The photographer is part of a generation that’s “blending fashion into art and art into fashion,” an Aperture magazine editor said.Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York TimesAbel Selaocoe, a classically trained South African artist, is best known for his work on the cello, but is also a singer and improviser. He drew on musical traditions from across the globe for his debut album, “Where is Home (Hae Ke Kae).”Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesOctoberWhether it’s Jamie Lee Curtis’s return to her horror roots in “Halloween Ends” or her buzzy performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” freedom is what the actress is after. “I feel all the feels, all the time,” she said.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesTaking a raw Southern sound to the top of the pop charts, Lil Baby could have come only from one place: Atlanta, where the rap scene is one of the world’s most consequential musical ecosystems.Kevin Amato for The New York TimesThis year, Michael Imperioli, best known for playing crooks and cops, appeared in the comedies “This Fool” and “The White Lotus.” “I don’t really know how to be funny,” he insisted.Daniel Arnold for The New York TimesBest known for playing nice guys, Jake Lacy won acclaim as a privileged jerk in HBO’s “The White Lotus.” In the Peacock drama “A Friend of the Family,” he went even darker.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesThe prolific choreographer Twyla Tharp told new stories with two classic works at New York City Center this fall: “In the Upper Room” and “Nine Sinatra Songs.” “I was looking for some kind of spirituality or personal redemption,” said Kaitlyn Gilliland, dancing here with Lloyd Knight.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesNovemberJeremy Pope, a Tony-nominated actor, segued to the big screen in the gay military drama “The Inspection.” “I feel so blessed that I’m able to do this fully in my Blackness and in my queerness,” he said.Erik Carter for The New York TimesIn the Hulu series “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg play two halves of a splintered couple. “Playing a married person with kids, I was at greater risk of taking it home than I have been with other projects,” Danes said.Thea Traff for The New York TimesIt’s tough to pose two people in a dynamic way when they’re inclined to just stand or sit side by side facing the camera. Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg play a recently divorced couple in the show, so I came to set with the idea to pose them as if they were embracing or slow-dancing, in a pose that felt reflective of their characters. — Thea TraffIn the drama “Causeway,” Jennifer Lawrence played a military engineer who returns home from Afghanistan after a brain injury. It’s the kind of indie she hasn’t really starred in since her breakthrough in 2010. “I don’t know how I can act,” she said, “when I feel cut off from normal human interaction.”Robbie Lawrence for The New York TimesThe choreographer Neil Greenberg at a rehearsal of his dance “Betsy.” His beaded headpiece was inspired by a cast member’s flowing hair. “They’re a little like Las Vegas’s idea of a sheikh,” Greenberg said.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York Times“I think it’s one of the best costumes. It’s so furry and smooth and nice. But it’s also really hot,” said Eleanor Murphy, left. “I like throwing the cheese,” said Taiga Emmer. The two alternate as the Bunny in the New York City Ballet’s production of “The Nutcracker.”Erik Tanner for The New York TimesThe eminent composer Steve Reich, who is in his 80s, released two important albums and a conversations book this year. His next premiere, “Jacob’s Ladder,” is expected in fall 2023.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesLaura Poitras’s documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” tells a complex story of the photographer Nan Goldin’s personal trauma and protest. “It’s my voice telling my story with my pictures, so it has to be true to me,” said Goldin, above.Thea Traff for The New York TimesThe choreographer Katja Heitmann collects the quotidian habits and mannerisms of volunteers — how they walk, stand, kiss, sleep and fidget — for her ongoing dance project “Motus Mori” (meaning “movement that is dying out”).Melissa Schriek for The New York TimesAdditional production by More
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Review: ‘The Treasure of His Youth: The Photographs of Paolo Di Paolo’ Delights
A documentary by Bruce Weber about a nonagenarian Italian photographer is sprinkled with la dolce vita, our critic writes.Late in this charming, exhilarating and revelatory documentary, Paolo Di Paolo, a prominent Italian photojournalist from the late 1950s who quietly and deliberately dropped off the map at the end of the 1960s, recalls a bittersweet love affair. It was with a woman several rungs above him on the social ladder (she is not named, although Di Paolo’s portraits of her are shown) who, when she called off the affair, told him “I will always be who I am. You are just a big paparazzo.”Obviously, Di Paolo was more than that. The American photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber was inspired to direct “The Treasure of His Youth: The Photographs of Paolo Di Paolo” after coming upon some startling Di Paolo prints several years ago, at an Italian gallery. “I had been dreaming about them long before I knew they existed,” Weber said. The subjects included poor children, literati, movie stars and more, captured with an engaged and searching eye.Di Paolo was 94 when Weber started shooting the documentary. Energetic and articulate, frequently with his daughter Silvia, a champion of his rediscovered work, at his side, he is full of stories that directly reflect the artistic temperament he still possesses in retirement. “My luck was to have great relationships with important people,” he says.For that reason, among others, Di Paolo’s images remain breathtaking. Weber assembles them to create mini-essays about some still-startling Italian figures, such as the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini and the actress Anna Magnani.As is his custom, Weber sprinkles the movie with that quirky dolce-vita dust that distinguishes his own sensibility. At one point, he throws in an “Intermission” montage scored with Barry White’s version of “Volare.” It not only fits — it’s delightful.The Treasure of His Youth: The Photographs of Paolo Di PaoloNot rated. In English and Italian with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More
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Nathan Lane to Return to Broadway This Winter in ‘Pictures From Home’
The play, written by Sharr White and directed by Bartlett Sher, will also star Danny Burstein and Zoë Wanamaker.Nathan Lane will return to Broadway this winter, starring in a new play called “Pictures From Home” about the artistic and emotional relationship between a photographer and his aging parents.The play, written by Sharr White and directed by Bartlett Sher, is adapted from an acclaimed memoir by the photographer Larry Sultan, also called “Pictures From Home,” featuring not only staged portraits of his parents, but also interviews with them.Danny Burstein, a Tony winner for “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” will play Sultan; Lane, a three-time Tony winner for “Angels in America,” “The Producers” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” will play the photographer’s father, Irving; and Zoë Wanamaker will play the photographer’s mother, Jean.The Broadway production will be the first for the play, which previously had developmental readings at New York Stage and Film, the Cape Cod Theater Project and the Alley Theater in Houston.White, whose previous Broadway plays included “The Other Place” and “The Snow Geese,” said he became interested in Sultan after seeing an exhibition of the photographer’s work in Los Angeles, where White was working as a writer and producer of “The Affair.”“I was totally captivated, and thought, who are these people?” White said. “The more I read, the more I thought it was an epic story and an intimate story, and one that embodies incredible contradictions.”White described Sultan’s parents as displaying “rejecting acceptance” of their son’s long-running artistic project, which he called “a gorgeous exploration of mortality.” He said the play includes some language from Sultan’s book, and some anecdotes gleaned from interviews with Sultan’s widow, Kelly, but that most of the dialogue was invented by the playwright.Sher, a Tony winner for his revival of “South Pacific,” has been working on the project for about a year, drawn to it, he said, as “an extraordinary exploration of the aging process.” He said the play “is fundamentally about art — who gets to depict what, and how you’re represented,” and said the production would make heavy use of Sultan’s photography.Lane, who last appeared on Broadway in 2019, said he had been unfamiliar with Sultan’s work before reading the play, but that he “thought it was a beautiful piece of writing — very funny and very quietly devastating” and said he hoped that its two subjects, “parents and mortality,” would be relatable to audiences.“It has a documentary feel,” he said, “and yet it’s highly theatrical.”The play is scheduled to begin previews on Jan. 10 and to open Feb. 9 at Studio 54. Although that theater is owned by the nonprofit Roundabout Theater Company, the play will be a commercial production, with Jeffrey Richards as lead producer. More
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‘The Picture Taker’ Review: Civil Rights Photographer and F.B.I. Informant
The documentary, by the director of “Who Killed Malcolm X?,” is a compelling biography of Ernest Withers, whose photographs helped chronicle Black history.After the photojournalist Ernest Withers died in 2007, a bombshell investigation revealed that the respected Memphis photographer, known for taking over a million pictures of 20th-century Black life during his career, had also been a paid informant of the F.B.I.The documentary “The Picture Taker,” directed by Phil Bertelsen (“Who Killed Malcolm X?”), uses this fact as an entry point into a compelling biography of Withers, whose photographs helped chronicle important events in the civil rights movement, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final days spent supporting the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis.“The Picture Taker” presents several perspectives on Withers’s link to the F.B.I. and noticeably does not come down on a particular side — unlike “Judas and the Black Messiah,” a 2021 historical drama about the murder of the activist and Chicago Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, which took up similar subject matter.But the reason to watch the documentary isn’t for the debate about Withers’s motives. It’s to see his impressive archive, which Bertelsen was smart to build the film around.
From his coverage of the Emmett Till trial in Mississippi to the weddings and first communions of everyday Black people in Memphis, Withers’s photographs give the documentary a visual language that coheres from start to finish.“The Picture Taker” artfully plays with rendering the photographic image for the screen. It graphically alters Withers’s likeness, transforming pictures of him into telling animations and cutouts that pull him out of the background in which he so often dwelled and into the foreground.Ultimately, the film immerses viewers in Withers’s considerable storytelling abilities as an image-maker at the same time that it examines his motives for taking those very pictures — that tension is what makes for an engrossing watch.The Picture TakerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters. More - in Movies
Douglas Kirkland, Who Took Portraits of Movie Stars, Dies at 88
His many memorable shots included one of his earliest assignments and probably his most famous: Marilyn Monroe in bed, wrapped in a silk sheet.Douglas Kirkland, a photojournalist and portraitist whose subjects included Marilyn Monroe wrapped in a silk sheet and Coco Chanel at work in her Paris atelier, died on Oct. 2 at his home in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 88.Francoise (Kemmel-Coulter) Kirkland, his wife and manager, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.For more than 60 years, Mr. Kirkland was a leading celebrity photographer, first for Look and Life magazines and then as a freelancer for various magazines, Hollywood studios and advertising agencies. Courteous and exuberant — he was no annoying paparazzo — Mr. Kirkland was welcomed into stars’ homes and hotel rooms and onto movie sets.The tall, dashing Mr. Kirkland “had this magical quality,” said Karen Mullarkey, who worked with Mr. Kirkland as director of photography at New York and Newsweek magazines. “He had this way of making people comfortable — he was so enthusiastic.” For an issue of New York, she recalled, she brought the model Kathy Ireland a bunch of peonies, and as he photographed Ms. Ireland, Ms. Mullarkey heard him saying: “Caress them! Kiss them! They’re your boyfriend!”“I am new with this magazine,” Mr. Kirkland recalled telling Elizabeth Taylor, whom he was assigned to shoot for Look. “Can you imagine what it would mean to me if you let me photograph you?”Douglas KirklandIn 1961, a year after joining Look, Mr. Kirkland had two dramatic encounters. For the first, he accompanied Jack Hamilton, a reporter, to Las Vegas for an interview with Elizabeth Taylor, then one of the biggest stars in the world. When the three met, Ms. Taylor said that she would talk but not sit for pictures.After the interview, Mr. Kirkland recalled to the website Vintage News Daily in 2021, he tried to persuade her to pose for him. He held her hand and said: “I am new with this magazine. Can you imagine what it would mean to me if you let me photograph you?”“I did not let go of her hand; she wore jungle gardenia perfume which I could smell later on,” he continued. “She thought for a while and said, ‘Come back tomorrow at 8 p.m.’”Mr. Kirkland perched himself on a balcony to photograph Marilyn Monroe.Douglas KirklandHiding everything but her face in the sheet and hugging the pillow, she was, it seemed, directing herself.Douglas KirklandThe result — a picture of Ms. Taylor in a yellow jacket, wearing spectacular diamond earrings — appeared on the cover of Look’s Aug. 15, 1961, issue.Later that year, Look sent Mr. Kirkland to Los Angeles to photograph Ms. Monroe. They met at her house, where she told him what she wanted for the shoot: a white silk sheet, Frank Sinatra records and Dom Perignon Champagne.When they met at a studio four days later, she slipped out of a robe and got into a bed, swaddled herself in a sheet and posed for Mr. Kirkland, who for part of the shoot perched himself in a balcony above her. She was, it seemed, directing, herself, with what looked like joy. She hugged the pillow, hid everything but her face in the sheet and turned her back to the camera.“I had everything technically right,” Mr. Kirkland said in an interview with “CBS This Morning” in 2012. “My Hasselblad — click, click, click — but it was Marilyn Monroe who really created these images.”Ann-Margret in Las Vegas in 1971.Douglas KirklandHe recalled that shoot in the 2020 documentary “That Click: The Legendary Photography of Douglas Kirkland,” directed by Luca Severi: “What the pillow represents is what she would like to be doing to a man, and I could have been in there and been the pillow. But I chose to keep taking pictures, because that’s how Douglas Kirkland really, bottom line, is.”Look used only one of the Monroe pictures, inside the magazine, but Mr. Kirkland collected many of them in a 2012 book, “With Marilyn: An Evening/1961.” His other books of photographs include “Light Years: 3 Decades Photography Among the Stars” (1989), “Icons” (1993) and “Legends” (1999).At Look and Life, and then as an on-set photographer, Mr. Kirkland shot pictures during the production of more than 100 films, including “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Sophie’s Choice,” “Rain Man” and several Baz Luhrmann films, starting with “Moulin Rouge!” in 2001. Mr. Luhrmann said in “That Click” that Mr. Kirkland’s photography “captures the romance of cinema.”Sophia Loren in Rome in 1972.Douglas KirklandHis career started at a time when his subjects were accessible to journalists, and it continued into a time when stars and their handlers exerted greater power over the media. “In the ’60s, there was an idea of letting the camera be revealing of truth,” he told The New York Times in 1990. “Today, it’s more like ‘Entertainment Tonight.’”Douglas Morley Kirkland was born on Aug. 16, 1934, in Toronto and raised from age 3 in Fort Erie, Ontario. His father, Morley, owned a shop where he made men’s made-to-measure clothing, and his mother, Evelyn (Reid) Kirkland, kept the books in the store.He took his first picture with a Brownie camera as a young child: his family standing at the front door of their home on Christmas Day. By 14, he was photographing weddings. After high school, he studied at the New York Institute of Photography and then returned to Canada, where he worked for two local newspapers, and then moved to Richmond, Va., to work as a commercial photographer.In 1962, Mr. Kirkland spent three weeks with the designer Coco Chanel in Paris.Douglas KirklandWhile there, he wrote three letters to the influential fashion photographer Irving Penn, seeking a job. In 1957, Mr. Penn hired him as his assistant.“I was paid $50 a week, and even in those days in New York it was not too simple,” he said in an interview with the American Society of Media Photographers in 2017. “But I was with Penn and I was quickly learning.”In 1960 he joined Look. He stayed there until the magazine folded in 1971, when he was hired by Life, where he remained until it stopped weekly publication the next year. For the rest of his career he was a freelancer, working for Time, Paris Match, Sports Illustrated, Town & Country and other magazines.He received the American Society of Cinematographers’ Presidents Award in 2011 for his photographic work on film sets. The next year, he was commissioned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to create a series of official portraits of the Oscar nominees in the four acting categories, among them George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep and Glenn Close.One of them, Michelle Williams, had been nominated for playing Ms. Monroe in “My Week with Marilyn.” In the documentary “That Click,” she said that being photographed by the same man who had photographed Ms. Monroe a half-century earlier had been a moving experience.“Never could I have imagined this sort of circumstance,” she said.Mr. Kirkland with examples of his work at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles in 2009.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn addition to his wife, Mr. Kirkland is survived by his son, Mark, and his daughters, Karen Kirkland and Lisa Kirkland Gadway, from his marriage to Marian Perry, which ended in divorce; five grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter.In August 1962, Mr. Kirkland spent three weeks with Coco Chanel in Paris for Look. At first she was wary of him, permitting him to shoot only the outfits she had designed but not her. But after he showed her his first set of prints, she backed off, letting him observe her at work — always in a hat and usually surrounded by her staff. On his last day there, she suggested that they take a ride to the Palace of Versailles. He took one last picture of her, walking alone in the palace’s gardens.“It was chilly and had started to rain, even though it was August, so I gave her my raincoat,” Mr. Kirkland told The Guardian in 2015. “She put it over her shoulders and it looked almost like a fashionable cape. She said that she often liked to go there because it gave her an opportunity to get lost in time while being surrounded by the magnitude of old French culture.” More
