John Kobal was very keen to find a way in which he could see his own enthusiasm for photography continued after his death. In 1990 he formed The John Kobal Foundation as a charity to which he donated the photographic negatives and fine art photographs that he had collected o...

24.10.2012[ read full story ]

In the digital age, a simple pleasure persists: inhaling the sweet smell of a book, whether old or new. This is the story of a walk among old printing machines and boxes filled with books. A story that leads to an archive room crammed with little-known photography book...

16.10.2012[ read full story ]

Simon Crocker was Managing Director and, subsequently Chairman of The Kobal Collection, until he sold his shareholding in 1999. He has been Chairman of the John Kobal Foundation since 1991. He worked closely with John Kobal in establishing the Collection as the leading independent f...

24.10.2012[ read full story ]

Eugene Robert Richee headed Paramount's portrait studio from its inception and he worked with a talented coterie of associates including William Walling and Don English. Richee remains the least examined among the top Hollywood photographers although he was one of the finest - ...

24.10.2012[ read full story ]

Only Ernest Bachrach at Radio Keith Orpheum had a career at one studio that rivalled Clarence Bull's tenure at MGM. He joined RKO at its inception in 1929 and stayed until Desilu purchased the studio in 1958. Before coming to RKO, Bachrach worked in New York for Famous Players-Lasky. In th...

24.10.2012[ read full story ]

Kobal also tracked down Laszlo Willinger, Ted Allan's successor, who was living a quiet retirement in Los Angeles. Hungarian-born Willinger came to MGM in 1937 as part of the studio's last European sweep for talent before the outbreak of the Second World War. Hedy Lamarr ...

24.10.2012[ read full story ]

Allan started his career very young as an actor and worked on a number of Cecil B De Mille movies in the early 1930s. When De Mille called on someone to take some portraits, Allan stepped forward and, on seeing the results, De Mille encouraged him to follow a photography career.

24.10.2012[ read full story ]

Clarence Sinclair Bull's long association as a photographer with the studio that would become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer began when producer Samuel Goldwyn hired him in 1919. Managing to survive the commotion of the consolidation of the Hollywood studios in the early and mid 1920s, Bull fo...

24.10.2012[ read full story ]

George Hurrell started work at MGM at the beginning of 1930 and almost immediately transformed Hollywood photography. Brought to MGM at the insistence of Norma Shearer, his task was to make his subjects, especially women, sexy. Not only did he succeed but his work, in this respect, has neve...

24.10.2012[ read full story ]

John Kobal, who died twenty-one years ago this month, was a pre-eminent film historian and collector of Hollywood film photography. The author of over thirty books on film and film photography, he was known for his creative and exuberant personality, as well as his voracious ...

24.10.2012[ read full story ]