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Dennis Stock
In 1951, Dennis Stock, photographer and documentary filmmaker, joined Magnum Photos, the foremost cooperative international photo agency, where he later served as president of Magnum's film and new media division.
Stock's early photography for Magnum evoked the spirit of America through his memorable and iconic portraits of Hollywood stars, most notably James Dean, whom he met in Hollywood in 1955 and photographed there and on his family farm in Indiana. From 1957 to 1960, Stock made lively and intimate portraits of jazz and blues musicians. His portrayals of Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Sidney Bechet, Gene Krupa, and Duke Ellington won him first prize in the International Photography Competition in Poland and were published as a volume, Jazz Street. Stock also has won first prize awards for his photographs from Life magazine and Advertising Photographers of America.
In the late 1960s, Stock's photography concentrated on California, capturing the attempts of hippies to reshape society. In 1968, Stock took a leave of absence from Magnum to create Visual Objectives, a film production company, and he shot several documentaries, including Efforts to Provoke, Quest, and British Youth.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Stock was based in Woodstock, New York and Provence, France, and often traveled to Italy. During this period, he worked on color books emphasizing the beauty of nature through details and landscape. In the 1990s, he went back to his urban origins, exploring the modern architecture of large cities.
The subject of BBC, French Television, Italian, and NET documentaries, Stock has generated a book or an exhibition almost every year since the 1950s and his work has been acquired by most major museum collections, including the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Musee D'Art Moderne in Paris. He is the author of 15 internationally distributed photography books and his photographs also have appeared in major publications such as Paris Match and Stern.
Stock's desire to continue his work in both still and moving media is now harnessed to his concern for environmental protection, which has resulted in documentary journeys from Japan to Alaska, Hawaii, and back to France. He has lectured widely on related themes, and run numerous workshops across Europe and the United States. Stock currently resides in Woodstock, New York. |
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