Adjacent to the Palm Springs Art Museum's outdoor sculpture gardens is a simple cafe.
The place is currently decorated with candid celebrity photos from the 1950s and 1960s by Sid Avery...
...a Los Angeles photographer who pioneered the transition from movie star studio glamour photos to more candid shots of celebrities going about their daily business. That's Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward above, presumably cooking breakfast.
Avery died in 2002 at the age of 83 after a long career as a photographer, where his career extended from the Army Signal Corps in World War Two to his Hollywood work that was sold to mass circulation magazines, and a subsequent stint as a director of TV commercials at the end of his life. (Above is Tuesday Weld looking at a Tuesday Weld paper doll book.)
Though I had never heard of the photographer before, he was responsible for a famous series of photographs on the set of "Giant" in Texas, including this iconic shot of Elizabeth Taylor above.
He also captured Kim Novak looking vaguely distressed...
...Debbie Reynolds and Fred Astaire conspiring backstage...
...and the incomparable Eve Arden kissing her second husband Brooks West.
No disrespect to the photographer, but find a Liz Taylor picture where she isn't iconic. Even when she looked bad, the camera always magnified who she was.
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