Frank Sinatra - one of the 20th century’s biggest stars – stares into the camera. The image is monochrome, but it’s easy to imagine that “old blue eyes” is back.The photo, of the late singer and actor in the studio, is just one revealing portraits in a London exhibition marking his centenary.Proud Chelsea is presenting a personal and intimate collection of pictures from the Sinatra Family Archive.Sinatra’s granddaughter, Amanda Erlinger, began archiving the vintage photographs from her Grandmother, Nancy Sinatra Senior’s, family photo albums alongside hundreds of photographs in Frank Sinatra Enterprises. Remembering the day she first saw the picture that her grandfather took of himself, reflected in the medicine cabinet mirror at his apartment in 1938, Amanda exclaimed: “He took a selfie!” And her grandmother asked her, “What’s a selfie?” In another late 1930s boyish shot, Sinatra sports a pipe and is already wearing the trademark hat.In addition to these family photographs, some of which have only been discovered in recent months, the exhibition will also reveal professional photographs of Sinatra in his heyday, with candid shots taken by a number of lensmen such as Terry O’Neill, Milton Greene, David Sutton, Ed Thrasher, Ken Veeder, John Bryson, Sid Avery, and Allen Grant. They capture Sinatra on stage, in the studio and just relaxing with his friends. These images were used as LP covers and as publicity shots.Many of these photos are being released as fine-art prints after being discovered in the archives of Capitol Records and Warner Music.O’Neill’s discerning eye captures a relationship spanning three decades. Sinatra allowed O’Neill’s camera to follow his every move on the road, at home and backstage. O’Neill remembers his first photograph, probably his most famous shot ever, of Sinatra walking with his entourage to the film set on the Miami Boardwalk. O’Neill passed Sinatra a letter, he opened it, read it, crumpled it up in his pocket and turned to this security men and said, “this kid’s with me”. Experimenting with photography, learning how to use a camera and developing his own photographs was something Sinatra enjoyed and when reflecting on this shoot O’Neill said, “Sinatra was a very good photographer himself. He knew about lighting and composition so subconsciously he might have been helping me a bit in some shots.”“Sinatra at 100: A Century in the Making” runs from December 3 through January 10, 2016 at 161 King’s Road London SW3 5XP
↧