Hollywood at Home

Growing up a stone’s throw from Hollywood, I regularly traversed sun-bleached streets dedicated to stardom. The proximity gave me an early awareness of the culture of celebrity, evident in the gold stars on the sidewalks, glittering back lots, and grand movie marquees.

I have always been fascinated by how celebrity is created—not by the current stable of reality personalities, whose stardom is possible without talent or reason, but rather by the classical idea of a Movie Star. I had an early realization that the people we fawn over in the movies had childhoods just like the rest of us, as I watched a few of my classmates find their way onto the big screen. But I also came to observe that much of the mystique and glamour came from the marketing machines of Hollywood, where an ordinary Kansas-born kid was transformed into something more in a photograph, through makeup, wardrobe, a striking pose, or a flattering angle of light. Over the years, I’ve pored over hundreds of photographs of Hollywood hopefuls in books that celebrate the efforts of studio photographers such as Clarence Sinclair Bull, George Hurrell, Frank Powolny, and Jack Albin. All of them had the ability to exploit the visual markers of success and produce images that turned a Norma Jeanne Baker into a Marilyn Monroe.

Eventually, I set out to make my own portraits, inspired by the Technicolor images of the nineteen-forties and fifties. I would re-create the look of these vintage publicity photos, but use ordinary people. I recruited men and women I know—family, friends, even a nurse I met during a hospital visit—to join my casting couch. Working alone with my Hasselblad, a single hot light, and some red nail polish and lipstick, I discovered that my subjects were happy to participate in their artificial glorification. I wondered if, through this series of images, I might elevate them into a false stardom—to make them seem, through a trick of my lens, right on the verge of being discovered.