From the 1920s on, motion picture studios employed photographers to photograph stars, contract players, and hopefuls, as well as scenes from films in production. The images, thousands of them, circulated to magazines, newspapers, and fans. Studio stills, formal portraits, and “candid” shots of stars relaxing defined glamour and established actors’ personas. This exhibition presents photographs from the era of silent film to the 1950s, a selection of the iconic and the forgotten faces of Hollywood’s star machine.
Exhibition drawn in part from the Watson Archive and presented in conjunction with the Hart Institute for American History.
That Star Aura
Photography and the Studio System
On View January 21 – February 23, 2008
