The Vault of Kubrick
From London to Amsterdam
From 2001: A Space Odyssey courtesy of Stanley Kubrick Archives, London.
The Stanley Kubrick Archives
A few years ago I was working at the London College of Fashion, and heard about the Stanley Kubrick Archives housed in the basement of the London College of Communication; another branch of the University of the Arts, London. I got to know Richard Daniels, the senior archivist there at the time, and he invited me to bring my students along so they could witness the depth of inquiry that Kubrick put into the research for all of his films, whether they came to fruition or not.Â
Richard Daniels (right) in the main room, designed to reference the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It also served to show the path that Stanley Kubrick's career took, from his beginnings as a 13 year old boy with a new camera, to a 17 year old who sold an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine. This earned him a place as an apprentice photographer which then led to him being given a staff photographer role with regular assignments.
This was followed by his plan to move into documentaries and film and how he went about developing his ideas, often having several projects in various stages of development at the same time.
Another useful aspect of the trip was to get an idea about the importance of archiving and the organization of files, assets and resources.Â
Behind those remote controlled doors a long corridor, housing assets from each of the films.
Richard is an absolute mine of information regarding Kubrick and his work, and after showing us into the main room he took us into the atmosphere controlled archive itself. State-of-the-art remote controlled doors labelled with each of the film titles, slide back to reveal corridors housing relics from every aspect of Kubrick's career.
Stanley Kubrick, self-portrait, courtesy of Stanley Kubrick Archives, London.
The Archive itself runs to approximately 900 linear metres and includes production paperwork, letters, props, costumes, publicity materials, production photographs, research, photographs, plans, books, audiovisual material, equipment and press cuttings.
Here are a few of the items I was given permission to photograph…
Kubrick's camera. I would KILL to own this Nikon! (okay, slight exaggeration). Below:Kubrick's own well-thumbed copy of Vietnam Inc used as reference for Full Metal Jacket.
The severed head from the final moments of Full Metal Jacket.
Into the Eyes Wide Shut section... and Alice's drug paraphernalia.
The amount of research and the level of detail that Kubrick put into each film and each prop is astounding. The wallet for Dr. Bill Harford, played by Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut was full of credit cards in the character's name and his driving license even had text on the back of the card.
Bill Harford's Driver License.
Danny's clothing from The Shining, nicely boxed and stored at a constant temperature, sans snow.
Two pages from reams of hand-typed documents from Jack Torrance's 'book' in various languages.
Thanks were given at the time also to archivists Sarah Cox and Charlotte Procter for accommodating us and giving the LCF students a comprehensive tour of the archives.
Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition
As a follow-up, in August of 2012, I found myself in Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands just in time for Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition, which was to feature many of the artifacts from the Kubrick Archive in London. Having both a Press and a UAL pass, I was given free rein to take photographs, some of which can be seen here alongside this shot of the museum’s gargantuan billboard.
The publicity states: 21 June – 9 September 2012. At the Eye Amsterdam, a comprehensive exhibition on one of the most influential directors of the 20th century: Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), the genius behind films such as Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining.
The layout of the Kubrick exhibition itself was very well-designed and featured a room dedicated to each of his films.
Accompanying his film work, was an exhibition of prints from his early days as a top-class photographer, working for Look magazine.
Well-preserved, a magazine feature for Lolita, featuring some beautiful photography by Bert Stern, and below, a touch of The Korova Milk Bar for the Clockwork Orange room.
A framed series of Philip Castle's stunning airbrush art.
The Shining - poster proposals by Saul Bass.
Faked newspapers from A Clockwork Orange.
A postcard of the original ‘Overlook' Hotel and the neatly pressed clothes of those creepy little Grady twins.
That Maze, and from 'The Gold Room', a very convincing pre-digital image manipulation of an old photograph, featuring Jack Nicholson's head pasted-in and airbrushed to perfection.
Also on display were these recognizable items from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
What wasn’t in the exhibition, was this photo of Sue Lyon, below.
Shot by Stanley Kubrick himself, I was lucky to win the bid for this a couple of years ago, and have since added it to my vintage Hollywood photo collection, some of which I’ll post another time.
Forgive the vagueness of this, but:
Jon Ronson has an anecdote from the time he spent in Kubrick's archives about a family member (of Kubrick's, not Ronson's) who needed work. Kubrick got him to photograph the entirety of a London street (one of the famous ones, can't remember which), putting up ladders every few metres to capture different levels of the architecture. Having developed what must have been hundreds (thousands?) of pictures he then pasted them up in one of Kubrick's halls--effectively creating a google-street-view-style model of the street that you could walk around. It was months of work. When Kubrick saw it he said, 'thanks--much better than having to go there and look around the street in person.'
Never mind the Stanley Kubrick archives, I’d be keen on a tour of the Steve Cook archives. Great pics, as ever, and almost makes me sorry I didn’t buy that massive Taschen book on the man. And boy he worked with fantastic designers - Ken Adam, Saul Bass, Philip Castle, Eliot Noyes, Milena Canonero, etc., whose fab work was on show at the Kubrick exhibition at the Design Museum a few years ago.