Celebrity photographer returns to Fort Erie: Photography Kirkland’s first love in the Niagara Falls Review by Matt Day
Read more at www.NiagaraFallsReview.ca
Douglas Kirkland stops mid-sentence and marvels at a bright-red breasted robin perched in the backyard of the Highland Ave. home he grew up in.He has photographed Marilyn Monroe — probably his most famous set — Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Nicholson, Brad Pitt and almost any other A-list star you can think of during the past five decades, but is still captivated by the colours of the bird.
“We don’t have robins like that in California,” says Kirkland, pulling out a point-and-shoot camera the everyday photographer would keep in a desk drawer. “What really pushes me is the passion and the love I have for doing this. It’s about expressing yourself. My first love is photography at all times.”
Kirkland returned home Thursday to where he lived for 12 years, one day before he plans to lead a discussion at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo.
On display will be famous shots of Monroe lying in a white bed, wearing nothing but a silk sheet.
“It was a very sexually charged session,” he says. “She was the dream of everyone in that era … and I was within arm’s reach of her, that sheet falling off periodically, and she made all sorts of proposals. We were flirting with each other, she was telling me to ‘come here.’”
He laughs when asked how a man in his late-20s kept his composure.
“Something held me back, Fort Erie perhaps, but in a favourable way. I had gone to Sunday school here, was raised on good principles. I had two kids back in New Jersey and this was a pinnacle point (in my career),” he says.
“I felt slightly embarrassed when I acted like I didn’t understand. I had a Hasselblad camera and pushed myself down in that little hole and kept clicking, which probably made the best pictures because she was real.”
If it weren’t for lousy grades at Fort Erie Secondary School, Kirkland admits he probably wouldn’t be where he is today — 78-years-old and still living his teen dream.
A guidance counsellor suggested he enrol in a photography class at Buffalo’s Seneca Vocational High School where he went from “bottom of the class to top of the class because I loved what I was doing,” he says.
He worked at the Fort Erie Times Review and Welland Tribune as a photographer before deciding to broaden his horizons and head south.
Kirkland worked for New York-based and world-renowned photographer Irving Penn after barraging him relentlessly with letters asking for work.
In 1957, he got his foot in the door in the Big Apple and created a one-year timeline to do something big with his photography skills.
“If not, I would come back to work at my dad’s clothing store in Fort Erie,” he says.
His career developed, going from freelancer to shooting for Look Magazine. Look used him to shoot its 25th anniversary cover featuring Monroe.
Later, Kirkland teamed up with Niagara native James Cameron for the film Titanic. His promotional shots were used around the world.
While he’s known for his celebrity work, he enjoys all forms of photography — nature to still-life.
It has been more than 10 years since he returned to his childhood home, now owned by the McCallum family, but Kirkland says not much has changed.
His father’s rose bush still blossoms every spring. A colonial painting still hangs in the living room.
A quick drive down Bowen Rd. and he can point out the spot he took his first picture.
His drive isn’t going away.
“I’m exceedingly lucky. Some people say, ‘Why don’t you retire?’ This is what I always wanted to do. I can’t walk away from it when things are so good.”
Kirkland’s lecture runs from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Friday in the art centre’s Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Auditorium. Admission is a suggested $10 donation.
By the numbers:
1M: pictures in Kirkland’s archives
160: movies worked on
16: Books (Douglas Kirkland: A Life in Pictures will be released in September)
Portfolio:
Marilyn Monroe
Audrey Hepburn
Julie Andrews
Pierce Brosnan
Robert DeNiro
Arnold Schwarzenegger