Thread by @dean_frey

Remembering Martin Munkácsi on his birthday 🎂
📷 Self-Portrait Shooting Fashion in Long Island Sound, 1935
Richard Avedon wrote admiringly about his "photographs of falcons, camels & women striding parallel to the sea, unconcerned with his camera, freed by his dream of them."

Martin Munkácsi
Lucile Brokaw, Harper's Bazaar, December 1933
This is a landmark shot in the history of fashion photography. Munkácsi freed the genre from the studio; he was called "the kinetic man".

Coffee with Martin Munkácsi ☕️
Having Fun at Breakfast, Berlin, c. 1933

Martin Munkácsi
Nude with Parasol, Harper's Bazaar, July 1935

Martin Munkácsi
Fred Astaire for Life magazine, 1936

Martin Munkácsi
New York World's Fair, Harper's Bazaar, September 1938

Martin Munkácsi
California, c. 1935

Martin Munkácsi
Jumping a Puddle, 1934

"He brought a taste for happiness and honesty and a love of women to what was, before him, a joyless, lying art."
- Richard Avedon on the fashion photography of Martin Munkácsi
📷 Harper's Bazaar, 1940

Martin Munkácsi, whose birthday is today, had a younger brother, Menyhert, also a photographer. Since I don't have a birthday for Muky (his professional name), I'll add some of his photos to this thread.
His shot of Piper Laurie & Paul Newman on the set of The Hustler, 1954

Muky, aka Menyhert Munkácsi, was an on set still photographer by trade.
"He was sort of famous for being almost invisible on the set. Still photographers were the invisible men of this industry."
- Richard Koszarski
📷 12 Angry Men, 1957

Anna Magnani & Tennessee Williams on the set of The Fugitive Kind
📷 Muky, 1960

James Cagney & director Milos Forman on the set of Ragtime, 1981. This was one of Muky's last projects; he died in 1999.
#stillonset

Muky worked on 75 films, though IMDb has only 23 credits listed.
"His pictures have this great painterly quality to them, even though he had the job of documenting every important scene in the film."
- Richard Koszarski
📷 Dustin Hoffman & Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy, 1969

Muky began in Hollywood in the mid-30s. "MGM had a European still photographer, so Warner wanted one, too". Here's a shot he took of Orson Welles removing his Citizen Kane makeup.
Muky was busy on the West Coast, but he moved to New York for 12 Angry Men, & stuck around.

"You have to have your own artistic integrity, but you have to serve the film. You can't come up with a bunch of stills that are all Muky. They also need to look like the work of Sidney Lumet."
- still photographer Muky

Muky's photo of Marlon Brando & Maureen Stapleton on the set of The Fugitive Kind, 1960.
Who's that in the sunglasses? Tennessee Williams, of course!
"Muky became the Mathew Brady of New York's movie panorama, of neo-realism transplanted from postwar Europe."
- Charles Strum