A portrait of the past

by Jenni Dunning on November 6, 2009

Katharine Hepburn by Cecil Beaton, 1935. Vanity Fair, July 1935 © Conde Nast Publications Inc. / Courtesy Sotheby's, London

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then the Royal Ontario Museum’s Vanity Fair Portraits exhibit has endless stories to tell.

The display of more than 140 of the infamous magazine’s photographs from 1913 to 2008 highlights the brightest scholars, actors, writers, world leaders and athletes of the magazine’s history. Everyone from Albert Einstein and Mary Pickford, to Madonna and Lance Armstrong are pictured in stunning photos.

There’s a story behind each muse and his or her photo shoot, and often another side of the person comes through.

For example, Charlie Chaplin is almost unrecognizable in a photo taken during production of his first film, 1921’s The Kid. He sits at a desk, propped up against a few books, looking demurely toward the camera—hardly his trademark slapstick.

Likewise, a photo of Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, who died in 1931, shows her dressed in gypsy garb, beads and scarves. Looking upwards, with a strong jaw and fierce eyes, she’s beautiful, defiant and strong—perhaps a look into her personality, rather than her profession.

Each photo in the exhibit is accompanied by a short description to provide context. It’s with these that visitors learn the stories behind each subject.

Mick Jagger, Madonna and Tony Curtis by Dafydd Jones, 1997. Variant pose published in Vanity Fair, June 1997 © Dafydd Jones

A 1929 photo of actress and singer Josephine Baker is one of the more shocking examples of this. She stands straight as an Oscar statue, nude, with long beads and scarves draped strategically down her front.

The image speaks to the willingness of Baker and the photographer to take artistic chances with a revealing photo at a time when such a thing would have likely been considered controversial.

And Baker’s openness to risks isn’t surprising when the information with her photo notes how she ran away from home at age 13 to join a vaudeville company. After performing in New York and Paris, she became an almost overnight jazz sensation.

Women, in particular, have some of the most powerful photos in the exhibit, which is refreshing considering a large portion of the collection was shot between 1913 and 1936, a period not hugely welcoming of women’s rights.

Anna May Wong by Edward Steichen, 1930. Vanity Fair, January 1931 © Conde Nast Publications Inc. / Courtesy Conde Nast Archive

The magazine didn’t publish between 1936 and 1983, so many notable people during that time, including actors Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Jack Lemmon, are unfortunately not pictured in the exhibit.

On the other hand, without Marilyn’s star power overshadowing the exhibit, the light shines brightly on others less well known but equally important.

For instance, 1930s actress Anna May Wong is pictured in the exhibit, her head laid delicately against a tabletop next to a flower of the same size. She was an important Chinese-American actress who appeared in silent films and talkies.

Women known as intellectuals, icons or daring adventurers are also in the collection.

There’s a strong photo of the late Susan Sontag, a leading novelist, critic, scholar and human rights activist in the late 1990s, as well as the romantic partner of famed Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Women like Madonna and Diana, Princess of Wales, appear more than once in the exhibit. Diana’s photos look especially relaxed and lovely, not as posed as some of the other shots.

Amelia Earhart was also photographed in 1933 smiling naturally next to her airplane. The exhibit notes that Vanity Fair “praised her as a spokesperson for commercial aviation and an activist for women’s rights.”

Many of the exhibit’s pictures are organized by their photographers, such as Leibovitz and Edward Steichen, which helps give visitors a better idea of who Vanity Fair has put in charge of creating some of its most famous images.

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Mary Pickford by Nickolas Muray, 1922. Vanity Fair, December 1922 ©Courtesy Conde Nast Archive

What’s fantastic about the exhibit’s organization is that some of the older photos are paired with newer ones—a simple way to show how much the magazine has changed.

The first two photos, for example, include one of early-1900s actors and real-life couple Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and another of Conrad Black and his wife Barbara Amiel.

Another section of the exhibit also has two TV screens—one with a silent film depicting Steichen working with a model, puffing on a cigarette, setting up huge lights, and the other showing a modern photo shoot with glossy celebrities posing in front of digital cameras.

It’s a fantastic and visual comparison that adds another level to the exhibit.

Vanity Fair Portraits will be at the ROM until January 3, 2010.