Marilyn Stafford @ Lucy Bell Gallery

“I have always been fond of stories, listening to them, telling them, performing them, singing them. One way or another my life has been that of an observer and story teller”
 Photo-journalist Marilyn Stafford, who now lives in West Sussex, was born in Cleveland Ohio, in 1925. She originally trained as an actress, then studied drama at university and went to New York to act, finding work off Broadway and in television. Her photographic career began in New York in 1948 when she was asked to photograph Albert Einstein for friends who were making a documentary about him.
The exhibition Stories in Pictures 1950 -1960, also features Marilyn’s pioneering photographs, where, for the first time, she took models out of the studio and chic salons into the streets of Paris, using a photo-documentary style to her fashion shots. In the mid-sixties Marilyn Stafford settled in London, where, along with Fay Godwin, Sally Soames, and Jane Bown , she helped  pave the way for future female photographers working on Fleet Street. Marilyn Staffords commitment to supporting female documentary photographers continues today with the launch of the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award Launched in Spring 2017 in Association with Fotodocument.