Michele StuevenBest known for his intimate portraits of Hollywood legends, the late Douglas Kirkland created some of the most enduring images of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, Coco Chanel, and countless others. His photographs are held in the permanent collections of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian, and the National Portrait Gallery.
Kirkland’s work, which captures the emotional language of film and celebrity over decades, is out in a new book, Romance, published by Damiani Books, which offers a rare and personal look at love, glamour, and storytelling through photography, featuring exclusive images and behind-the-scenes moments, behind the lens.
The labor of love was curated by his muse and wife of 59 years, Francoise Kirkland, who traveled alongside him for his decades-long career, which started at Look Magazine. It’s a romantic look at the golden age of photography without assistants or hovering publicists, just an intimate dance between photographer and subject.
“This is the first book I’ve done since Douglas died in 2022,” Francoise told LA Weekly during a book signing at the Leica Gallery in West Hollywood on the day that would have been their 59th anniversary. “I went to a Fahey Klein exhibition of his work three months after he died. I came home and was very sad. Not just because he had died, but sad because he couldn’t take pictures anymore. So instead of crawling under the bed, I started editing hundreds of pictures and looking for those that illustrated relationships, and it made me feel really good. We pulled images and put them up on boards in the studio at the house, and it turned out to be a pretty sexy presentation.”
© Douglas Kirkland, Douglas and Francoise Selfie at L’Hotel, 1972
The result is a sexy compilation of some of his most famous work, like shooting Marilyn Monroe between the sheets and on location with Katherine Ross and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as well as sultry moments between the most romantic couples in history, like Richard Burton gazing at Elizabeth Taylor and seconds before a kiss between Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood. Some of his famous black and white nudes are also in the book.
“Yes, it was a labor of love and also a love letter,” says Francoise, who remembers that Douglas was an incurable romantic. “ I had to think of what spoke to me as romance. We went from the epic romances on the movie screen of couples and romance in the movies like Out of Africa, as well as romance between regular couples, both gay and straight. There was an electricity between us, and we worked well together. Our egos didn’t get in the way. I felt very secure about what my role was in his career, and he always gave me credit. “
Director Baz Luhrmann, whose masterpiece EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert hits screens this month, summed up the Kirkland mystique in the introduction for Romance:
“It is not just what he could do with a camera, but who he was as a person. He had such an acute affinity with people, beauty, and life, and this brought about a mutual love between Douglas and his subjects. Indeed, with Douglas you were not simply a subject, but a relationship. His openness brought out very poignant, very tender, and very nuanced images. He would walk into a room and fill it with light and energy.”
©Douglas Kirkland, Peter Sellers, and Britt Ekland 1965