In honor of the New York Film Festival, which begins this week, we decided to look at some works made by noted photographers on film sets.
Although Chim (David Seymour) is much better known for his war photography, he took a number of pictures on the set of Funny Face, Stanley Donen’s 1957 comedy/drama that chronicles the relationship between a photographer (Fred Astaire) and the reluctant model he discovers in a Greenwich Village bookstore (Audrey Hepburn). The movie is loosely based on the life of the photographer Richard Avedon, who can be seen visiting the set in the photograph below. Interestingly, although the film was made in color, Chim chose to shoot his subjects in black and white.
Chim (David Seymour), Audrey Hepburn with balloons in Davis Park, 1956
Chim (David Seymour), Richard Avedon and Fred Astaire on the set of Funny Face, 1956
Weegee (Arthur Felig) famously took pictures on the sets of Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and Jules Dassin’s The Naked City (1948), which was based on Weegee’s photobook Naked City, published in 1945. All of Weegee’s photographs of these films fit nicely into the documentary style he perfected while at PM Magazine but especially those shot on the set of The Naked City, filmed entirely on location in New York City.
Weegee, [Stanley Kubrick on the set of Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb], ca. 1963
Weegee, [The War Room, from the set of Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb], ca. 1963