Jessica Lange’s inner stillness

Like any other proud parent, two-time Oscar-winning actress Jessica Lange has a “million-and-twelve color snapshots” of her three children.

But when daughters Shura and Hannah and son Walker were little, Lange decided she would document their growing up with more “substantial” portraits.

“I had an old Nikon,” says the star of such films as “Frances,” “Tootsie” and “Blue Sky.”

Then about 15 years ago, her significant other -- playwright-actor Sam Shepard -- returned from a trip to Europe with a Leica camera in tow for Lange. “That really shifted everything,” she said.

Soon the camera became sort of an extension of her. She not only started to shoot black-and-white photographs of her children but also began to chronicle her travels.

Lange recently published several of her studies in the coffee-table book “50 Photographs by Jessica Lange.”

The grainy black-and-white photographs were shot in locales such as Mexico, Ethiopia, Coney Island, New York, Finland, Minnesota, Romania and Utah.

None of the photographs is identified, although she does admit that there is “probably a picture” of each of her now-adult children. But mainly these are offbeat studies of dogs, a bear, interesting plays of shadow and light, and candid portraits of children and adults she captured around the world.

“I’ve always been fascinated with black-and-white photography and cinematography,” Lange said. “It’s very hard to kind of put my finger on it exactly -- I find photography extremely elusive and mysterious. For my kind of aesthetics, shooting in black and white is what really interests.”

Lange has also been an avid collector of black-and-white photos for the past two decades, including works by Walker Evans and Cartier Bresson.

“I think a lot of my approach, a lot of what interested me, is through assimilation of photographs that I have admired.”

She also enjoys the solitary nature of photography. “As an actor the work is so dependent on a number of elements,” Lange explained. “It comes together because of the coordination of many people. With photography, like any solitary art form, you can do it any time. You are not dependent on other people and things coming together.”

Mexico has been one of her favorite locales in which to shoot. The majority of her subjects were unaware that Lange was observing them. She prefers it that way.

“In some of my photographs, the people are looking at me,” she said. “I try to do it as fast as possible if I attract their attention. I have found whenever you turn a camera toward somebody, they are aware they are being photographed and something subtly shifts. I love the thing of not being observed.”

Lange has also discovered that there is an openness with people she’s met around the world. “They have no idea who I am,” she said, laughing. “I am just a crazy white woman on the street taking pictures.”

But that hasn’t been the case stateside. “If I am shooting here in New York, if you raise your camera to take someone’s picture, there is an immediate, I don’t know if I would use the word ‘hostility,’ but there is not the same generosity of spirit.”

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susan.king@latimes.com