Goldblatt maintains that the sessions were not planned in any way, but proceeded in accordance with the Fab Four's spontaneous whims. "They were very freewheeling. Don McCullin and I just shot whatever they were doing," states Goldblatt. "They performed 'Hey Jude' and jumped in cars, and then they'd jump out. They were very campy and fun. It was free-form, although they did know what they wanted in the pictures."
For a time, Goldbatt worked as photo editor for the pop-culture magazine London Look. Later, he was offered the post of junior picture editor at the Daily Express, then England's biggest paper. But photojournalism was too solitary a profession for his tastes, and Goldblatt instead applied to the film school at London's Royal College of Art, where he earned admission on the basis of his strong portfolio.
Interestingly, Goldblatt now rarely takes photos while making movies. "I can't really concentrate on still photography while I'm working," he attests. "I did take a few photographs on Batman Forever because the sets were so spectacular, but it's generally not my habit." His only recent professional assignment was a contribution to the 1992 Tinseltown photojournal A Day in the Life of Hollywood.
Goldblatt recently traveled to his native South Africa, where he surveyed some of Capetown's black townships with his Contax and Mamiya cameras. He was dismayed but not surprised by the dire social conditions lingering in the post-apartheid era, particularly given the nation's picturesque beauty. Goldblatt details, "We went to very down-and-out black townships, where refugees [from the homelands that existed during apartheid] lived, and it was very rough — 25 percent HIV infection, tuberculosis, no sanitation, no water, no nothing. There is complete freedom of speech, but there are many problems in terms of the area's racial makeup and the economic base, because of the severe tension between the blacks and the Capetown coloreds [descendants of Indonesian workers who, during apartheid, were accorded higher social status than blacks].
"I was in two townships for four to five hours, and I saw five funerals. The gravedigger digs 15 graves every weekend for deaths due to HIV, gang wars over drugs, disease and old age. And this situation exists cheek-by-jowl with wealthy Capetown, which is basically white. I did get some ideas for photo stories, but they would take months to work out, and that's not something that you can just walk into, because you could get yourself killed."
Seeking a sense of realism, Goldbatt utilized black-and-white stock for his Capetown work. "Color is always deceiving," he maintains. "It has a natural tendency to make things look prettier, and this wasn't pretty by any definition of the word. The kids were wearing bright clothes, but when you see kids in bright clothes, it's difficult to imagine that at least one in four will die from AIDS within 10 years. Black-and-white takes any [upbeat] emotion out of the equation."
With "Still Moving" attracting attention from cinematographers, cinema lovers and art aficionados, Byers and Franks have opened themselves up to a wealth of possibilities. Currently, the duo are in negotiations for shows which will showcase the images of such cinematographers as Peter Suschitzky and his father, Wolfgang Suschitzky, as well as ASC members Roger Deakins and Vittorio Storaro. (The latter's exhibit is scheduled to run in conjunction with a Los Angeles County Museum of Art retrospective of the Italian cameraman's feature-film work.) But future exhibits will not focus solely on the photography of living cameramen. The duo also hopes to present the stills of Nestor Almendros, ASC, and James Wong Howe, ASC, as well as shots of director Krzysztof Kieslowski taken by second-unit cameraman Piotr Jaxa during the making of the Three Colors triptych.
In assembling "Still Moving," its curators have developed a heightened appreciation for the practitioners of motion picture photography. Observes Franks, "What's surprised me the most is how different the cinematographers' personal work is from what you might imagine, having followed their careers on the screen. It's equally as wonderful, but it often has nothing to do with the way you think that they would take a photograph. That element of surprise is really exciting."
