This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 10, 2011 - Sam Shaw (1912-99) was probably the most famous photographer that you've never quite learned about. He was seriously old school, doing black-and-white photojournalism for decades for the big weekly magazines, but he was also wide-ranging and innovative, especially in helping to start the independent-film movement. In essence, he was overshadowed by his own good work.
Shaw has now been memorialized in a new book by Lorie Karnath, his longtime friend. Karnath is a world traveler and president of the legendary Explorers Club, whose members have included explorers, scientists, U.S. presidents and astronauts. She has lived in a rainforest, traveled the Silk Road and led an expedition to the North Pole, besides writing a number of books.
Karnath often traveled with Shaw and took voluminous notes for a book they planned together, presenting and illustrating Shaw's philosophical musings on the art and practice of photography. "Sam Shaw: A Personal Point of View" is the result, a weighty coffee table-size book of 240 pages and about 200 remarkable photos by Shaw.
You already almost certainly know about two world-famous photographs by Sam Shaw. The first was the "shot seen round the world" of Marilyn Monroe standing over a sidewalk grate that blows her white dress up over her knees. The second was the macho portrait of Marlon Brando, as Stanley Kowalski from "A Streetcar Named Desire," brooding in a torn T-shirt. Both photos were conceived and taken by Shaw.
On the other hand, even veteran film fans do not know that Sam Shaw was a major influence in the development of what we now call "indie" films. In the early 1950s, Shaw met young, little-known John Cassavetes and championed him as a creative, new force in the theatrical world. Shaw introduced Cassavetes and his actress-wife, Gena Rowlands, to important theater people in New York, and then went on to produce most of Cassavetes' remarkable string of independent movies. Those films, including "Faces," "A Woman Under the Influence" and "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie," were opening salvos in the independent film movement. "Indie" films have since become a major counterweight to Hollywood blockbusters in the U.S. movie world.
Sam Shaw was a creative force all his life. He began as a painter, then went into journalism, working also as a political cartoonist, before becoming an art director for magazines. He also worked as a sculptor and eventually settled into producing international photo essays for magazines such as "Life," "Look" and "Collier's." His last "professions" included the groundbreaking movies for Cassavetes and taking publicity photos of virtually everybody important in Hollywood, especially concentrating on the great screen beauties.
Sam Shaw not only made Hollywood portraits of stars ranging from his good friend Marilyn Monroe to Deborah Harry of Blondie, he also managed to create stunning character studies of them unlike any other photos you are likely to see: Marilyn, unmistakable even from the back, in a pair of trendsetting blue jeans; Ingrid Bergman as a vicious woman returning to destroy a town in "The Visit"; Sophia Loren as a sweetly sexy force of nature; Liz Taylor as somehow just an interesting American girl, even at the height of her notorious "Cleopatra" days.
Shaw's ability to portray beautiful women uniquely may never be more apparent than in a shot of Natalie Wood, bare-shouldered and freckly, with her head thrown back, neck exposed, hair hanging in a sensuous fall. Until looking at that photograph, I never realized that in every other picture I've ever seen of Natalie Wood, she looks like a Hollywood construct, ridiculously perfected, nearly more plastic than human.
Shaw also created unique photos of Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando, Sugar Ray Robinson and other famous men that can make you re-think what you know about such figures.
In his mid-century heyday from the 1940s into the 1970s, Shaw was one of the best photo-storytellers in the world. His "How America Lives" series compares favorably with the Depression photos by Walker Evans, his portraits could be heartbreaking (Tennessee Williams), brutally true (Greek men in a taverna in Crete), lushly romantic (Venice in the snow). Even his crime-scene photos were masterful. The legendary Weegee, generally considered the greatest crime photographer who ever lived, once signed a photograph, "To Sam, my only rival."
One astounding Shaw photo, "Gitano mother with her child, Spain, 1968," shows a whole family, nearly a clan, of 17 people. Children play, a young couple flirts, another couple washes dishes, a boy plays guitar, a grandmother dances along. At the swirling center of the family circle of wagons and implements is a dancing mother who confidently breastfeeds her baby while she twirls! Shaw himself refers to the scene as "the cosmos of humanity and life."
Shaw deliberately worked to connect his central subjects to their contexts and even tried the nearly impossible task of somehow connecting them to the photographer himself, outside of the picture frame. In what first seems a simple photo of children at play, "Kids playing with marbles, Missouri, mid-1940s," we see five children crouched on the ground, but from the marbles' point-of-view. On closer inspection, we also see that one of the boys is holding, not more marbles, but some of the photographer's used flashbulbs.
The last time I saw a life's-work of photographs comparable to this one was Edward Steichen's "A Life in Photography" (1963), and Karnath's new book may even be patterned after that big, squarish classic. The two tomes could offer a thoroughly instructive and enjoyable experience in photography, if studied side by side.
Not that "Sam Shaw" is perfect. The book has been simultaneously published in an English version and a German version by a German publisher, Hatje Cantz, and could have used one more good going-over by the proofreader. Also, the $75 price is nearly as hefty as the approximately 11"x13" book itself. Still, the copy is not the key to a book of master photographs, and these pictures are unquestionably masterful, in some cases unique, in many cases surprising, always powerful and subtle, and often astounding.
While in St. Louis, author Lorie Karnath will read from her new book on Sam Shaw on Wed., Oct. 12, 5:30 p.m., at Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid, in the Central West End, with a 5 p.m. reception hosted by the St. Louis Beacon.
Karnath will also attend the Lowell Thomas Awards Dinner, hosted by the St. Louis chapter of the Explorers Club on Oct. 15 at the Missouri History Museum, marking the first time the award has ever been given outside of New York.
Nick Otten is a freelance writer who has covered movies, books and other topics for the Beacon.