Fumbling Photographer Focuses on Famous Faces

For Stathis Orpanos, photography is about intimidation. Not by his subjects, who have included writers Graham Greene and John Cheever, artist David Hockney, movie director George Cukor, screenwriter Robert Bloch (“Psycho”), and actresses Julie Harris and Lizabeth Scott.

It’s the equipment that scares him, the Los Angeles-based photographer acknowledged during an interview at the home of his friend Julie Veee, a San Diego Sockers player who also assists his work.

“Even after all this time, I’m not quite sure of my machinery, so I’m fighting with that and I’m very nervous when I do photo sessions,” said Orpanos, 47. He got his first Rolleiflex in the late ‘50s and taught himself how to use it professionally.

But Orpanos’ fear of the 35-millimeter Nikon and 2-inch Hasselblad that he now uses may be the key to the candid expressions in his black-and-white portraits, which are on view at Cardiff’s Sadler Gallery through Aug. 13.

Perhaps Cukor put it best during a photo shoot with Orpanos.

“I was fidgeting and getting very nervous,” Orpanos recalled, “and he leaned forward with that gargoyle face of his and said, ‘Oh, you’re a clever fellow, aren’t you? Clever!’ And I said, ‘Me?’ And he said, ‘Oh, you make us want to help you.’ ”

Though Orpanos says his nervousness isn’t intentional, he admits that it helps distract his models from their own anxiety at being photographed.

“If you look at the whole string of photographs, you can see that there’s a little concern on their faces, for me,” he said. “So, by not being too sure of myself, I think I make them relax.”

But the anxiety of the photographer isn’t all there is to his photographs. They are severe portraits, augmented by black backdrops and a black cloth “to get rid of something that’s annoying, like necks that go on forever.” They provide unadorned, often harsh looks at people transformed by the camera’s gaze from their customary role as observers to that of the observed.

Orpanos began photographing writers during the 1970s, when he was starting up a book store and publishing business in Los Angeles with a partner. Taking pictures for the store’s catalogue and the jackets of the company’s limited-edition books soon led to extended sessions of natural-light photography with writers whos works he published or invited to photo sessions with letters that included offset copies of his portraits.

His first subject was Christopher Isherwood, who posed for 24 photographs in 1972, five years after Orpanos asked him to sign a book and they became friends.

“He was very English,” Orpanos said of the author, who died several years ago. “He was very giving. He’s been photographed by the best. He seemed to be aware of what I was doing and gave me what I wanted.”

Orpanos--whose shock of white hair and dark, arching brows make him an interesting subject in his own right--found that, as his reputation grew, literary subjects weren’t hard to find.

“The reason they’ll sit for me is there is quality (to his photographs),” Orpanos said. “A lot of authors need photographs for their own purposes, and they’re not often called upon to sit. Most photographers want younger subjects, but to me, they’re wonderful subjects.”

His work now includes portraits of Gore Vidal, John Updike, John Irving, James Dickey, Stephen Spender, Erskine Caldwell and Philip Roth. Some of his pictures have appeared in Vogue and Harpers Bazaar magazines, but his show at the Sadler Gallery is his first.

Photographing writers usually isn’t difficult, Orpanos said. “They’re generally very sweet, sensitive people.”

For example, he said, “Updike, I found shy. He had a stutter, his eyes blinked. He seemed ill at ease, but allowed us to be there for five or six hours.”

And Vidal wasn’t nearly as off-putting as he looks.

“You know of him as his TV persona--an ogre--but he’s not,” Orpanos said. “I was on the floor, putting a (roll of film in the camera) and I got very nervous, and it rolled out and smashed against his feet. And so there I was, and I looked up and there he is. And he cracked a smile. That made me feel very much at ease.”

Likewise, Dickey proved an easier model than Orpanos predicted.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Orpanos said. “He had a reputation for hard drinking and being tough--he wrote ‘Deliverance’--but he wasn’t. He was very mild.”

“I wrapped a black cloth around him and put him in front of the window,” Orpanos said. “and he seemed perplexed. Then I made him put his hands up. He complied,” although Orpanos said, “there was always a slight suspicion that I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Still, a few subjects didn’t hide their unwillingness to be photographed.

“Erskine Caldwell was the only one who seemed very bitter,” Orpanos remembered, “but he was dying. He posed, he did everything he was supposed to do, but the look was ‘Get out!’ you know?”

The resulting photograph captures an angry man whose jaw is set in defiance.

One series of photographs, taken during sessions on the French Riviera, put Orpanos up against political intrigue.

“When we were in Antibes, I photographed Graham Greene,” Orpanos said. “He had a threat against his life because he wrote an essay on corruption in Nice. It was drizzly, fallish, and we went out to dinner. He was leading the way. We were following, and we were looking over our shoulders because we were aware of the threats against his life, and it was the perfect time to do something, alone and in the dark cobbled streets of Antibes.”

Orpanos’ sober portrait of the octogenarian was the last taken of him. After that, Greene refused to allow anyone to photograph anything but his hands.

In addition to photographs of creative personalities, Orpanos has taken some candids on the streets and, most recently, shot a series in the locker room of the San Diego Sockers.

“I was a little bit intimidated by the situation, thinking the players would be suspicious of what my intentions were,” he said, “but I didn’t realize until I was there after an actual game that people came in with TV cameras and they’re all there totally in the nude. They’re used to being around cameras. I could pose anywhere and they never paid one bit of attention to me.”

As for self-portraits, Orpanos is adamant in his distaste for the process behind them, though he has included two in his show.

“‘To me (the camera) is a hostile instrument,” he said. “The lens looking down and knowing that it’s going to capture something--I don’t know what it is--something scares me about it.”

Thus, he was heartened by the results of a recent self-portrait assisted by his publishing partner, Ralph Sylvester.

“I was contorted,” he said. “I tried to get a little bit relaxed and I was surprised that I looked as good as I did, because I was sweating and trying to get into position.”

But Orpanos said he thrives on the most difficult photo sessions, recalling the one where he and his subject, David Hockney, both arrived late.

“We knew that the sun was going to set, and I work only with available light,” Orpanos said. “So very hostilely, we started to work together. I took one roll of film, he posed, stuck a cigar in his mouth and glowered at me and I left. I said (to myself), ‘I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to pick the best picture and I’m going to try to get the rushed feeling of our session.’ ”

The result is a dramatic portrait in which only Hockney’s left eye is clear, while the rest of his face is blurred, as if by motion.

“Out of a disaster, something will come,” Orpanos said. “And it will force me to go a little further into what photography can do.”