(1913 – 1997)
Peter
Stackpole
(1913 – 1997)
Peter
Stackpole was born in San Francisco and came from a creatively rich family; his
father, Ralph Stackpole, was a sculptor and his mother, Adele Stackpole was an
artist and interior designer. From an early age when a high school friend showed
him how to develop film, Stackpole began exploring the possibilities of
photography in new and diverse ways. A chronicler of everything from soaring
bridges to undersea life to movie stars, Stackpole brought a unique perspective
and buoyant vitality to all of his subjects.
While
still a young photographer, Stackpole used what was then a small 35 mm camera to
document the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as the San
Francisco Oakland Bridge. His magnificent images captivated the members of a
burgeoning new circle of photographers known as Group f/64, which included
photographers such as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Imogene Cunningham. Along
with Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, and Thomas McAvoy, Peter
Stackpole became one of the four original LIFE staff photographers, working for
the magazine and Time Inc. from 1936 to 1960. For fifteen years he also authored
a popular column "35mm Techniques," in U. S. Camera.
Stackpole
captured his subjects in a variety of venues on land and sea, including the 1945
invasion of Saipan, efforts to bring electricity to rural America, as well as
one of his specialties, chronicling the trends and fads that came out of
California, from dance marathons to bathing beauties. Stackpole won a George
Polk Memorial Award for news photography in 1954 for a "dramatic and
unprecedented picture, taken 100 feet under water," of a diver, Hope Root's
tragically fatal attempt to set a new record for aqualung descent in rough
waters off the coast of Florida. The challenges of underwater photography held
particular fascination for Stackpole. As a member of the Circle of Confusion
group in New York, he invented and built underwater equipment for both still and
movie photography between 1941 and 1974.
Spending
half of his LIFE career in Hollywood, Stackpole's portraits of movie stars have
an unmistakable verve. During his tenure at LIFE, 26 of Stackpole's pictures
were magazine covers, many of them shots of Hollywood stars of the day. He told
interviewers though, that the stars were not his favorite part of the movie
world. "What I like about Hollywood is the sidelights and the extras, not
the celebrities," he said. It is this talent for capturing the essence of
his subjects, be they people or buildings or structures, that is the hallmark of
Peter Stackpole's unique images.
After
leaving LIFE's staff, Stackpole taught photography at the Academy of Arts
College in San Francisco. In 1991, a fire at his home in Oakland, California,
destroyed most of his negatives. Friends said that Mr. Stackpole had less than
20 minutes to save what he could and managed to salvage only the work that
established his career, the building of San Francisco's great bridges.
© by Galerie Stephen Hoffman