Victoria and Gandhi masters of image control

By Mike Collett-White

LONDON (Reuters) – Fifty, or even 150 years ago, longbefore the advent of PR machines and paparazzi, stars andleaders had the kind of control over their image that today’scelebrities could only dream of, a new exhibition shows.

“The World’s Most Photographed” at the National PortraitGallery in London analyzes how 10 famous figures manipulatedtheir image and how that image could in turn be used againstthem, starting with Queen Victoria and ending with MuhammadAli.

“It is about how these figures used photography and in someinstances, how photographers ended up using them,” said curatorRobin Muir ahead of the exhibition’s opening on Wednesday.

Surprisingly, there was no place for Princess Diana, whoseimage seemed to be everywhere and who died when her car crashedhaving been chased by paparazzi in Paris.

“The reason we decided not to include her was because itwas increasingly difficult to find images out there that werenot already well known,” Muir told Reuters.

“Diana … rose to fame at a time when everything was seen,every movement documented,” he said.

One of the first people to realize the power of photographywas Queen Victoria, whose reign began as it was being invented.

She would become the most photographed woman of her age,using the images to connect with her people. Late in her reignshe authorized a rare picture of her smiling, to soften herimage as stern monarch.

GANDHI, MONROE, GARBO AND ELVIS

The exhibition shows Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi as askilled self-publicist who harnessed the media to great effect.

A pair of pictures, taken over 40 years apart, show him asa young lawyer, the picture of British middle class wearing bowtie and winged collar, and later as a bald Indian in ordinarydress who would appeal to the masses.

Adolf Hitler initially kept photographers away, but came torecognize their importance as a propaganda tool. The leader’sfavorite photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, and assistants took anestimated 2.5 million pictures of the Fuehrer from 1935 to1945.

Screen siren Greta Garbo’s relationship with the media wascomplex. She was famously camera-shy, but the more she shrankfrom the limelight the more it sought her out.

Freelance photographer and obsessive fan Ted Leyson pursuedher almost daily in New York during her later years, and tookwhat was probably the last photograph of the enigma in 1990.

At the other end of the spectrum came Marilyn Monroe andher love affair with the lens.

It returned to haunt her when a shot of her naked takenyears earlier appeared in Playboy, threatening her buddingmovie career. According to Muir, she averted disaster by comingclean over the reason for posing; she needed the $50.

After 1956, Elvis Presley’s image was carefully controlledby manager Tom Parker, whose methods of media manipulationwould not be out of place today.

One exception came in 1959, when Elvis was drafted into thearmy and traveled without Parker.

He was photographed in a sleazy European nightclub withwaitresses and dancers draped over him. Incredibly, thepictures were not published until after Elvis died. Insteadthey gathered dust in the club where they were taken.

Ending the exhibition, which also features James Dean,Audrey Hepburn and John F. Kennedy, is boxer Muhammad Ali.

A series of pictures shows him training underwater. Muirexplained that the series was a stunt to get Ali covetedcoverage in Life magazine. He later revealed that he hatedwater and would never use it to train.