Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine: Authorship and Genre in Photojournalism and Film

From 1945 to 1950, during the formative years of his career, Stanley Kubrick worked as a photojournalist for Look magazine. Offering a comprehensive examination of the work he produced during this period–before going on to become one of America’s most celebrated filmmakers–Stanley Kubrick at “Look” Magazine sheds new light on the aesthetic and ideological factors that shaped his artistic voice. Tracing the links between his photojournalism and films, Philippe Mather shows how working at Look fostered Kubrick’s emerging genius for combining images and words to tell a story. Mather then demonstrates how exploring these links enhances our understanding of Kubrick’s approach to narrative structure–as well as his distinctive combinations of such genres as fiction and documentary, and fantasy and realism. Beautifully written and exhaustively researched, Stanley Kubrick at “Look” Magazine features never-before-published photographs from the Look archives and complete scans of Kubrick’s photo essays from hard-to-obtain back issues of the magazine. It will be an indispensable addition to the libraries of Kubrick scholars and fans.