Alan Pappé: In Memoriam
The man who gave us thousands of memorable images from Hollywood and the music scene has passed
Fri., May 16, 2008
Remember that iconic image of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John on the soundtrack album for the movie Grease – her hand on his shoulder, him looking back toward the camera with all the smoldering J.D. sensuality he could muster?
The man who gave us that classic shot – and thousands of others just as striking – has passed. Alan Pappé, who made his name in Hollywood but spent the last 14 years in Austin, died Wednesday, April 30. As a special-projects still photographer, Pappé worked with industry giants the likes of Federico Fellini, John Huston, Martin Scorsese, Robert Redford, Robert De Niro, Lucille Ball, and Barbra Streisand, and if you want to know why, you need only look at one of his shots – say, his portrait of Liza Minnelli in the film Cabaret that was used for the cover of Time (and earned him special recognition from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery): The drama, the character, the star wattage are all there in a single frame. Pappé brought that same skill to the music scene in the Sixties and Seventies, capturing historic images of everyone from Hendrix, Zappa, and the Grateful Dead to Aerosmith, Diana Ross, and Neil Young. (Look inside the cover of the Jefferson Airplane classic After Bathing at Baxter's, and the shots are Pappé's.) His move to Austin was prompted by Steven Soderbergh's decision to film The Underneath here – Pappé had just worked with the director in Prague on Kafka. Upon arriving in 1994, Pappé continued to work in film, particularly films shot in Texas, such as John Sayles' Lone Star (see right), but he also became involved in the local visual-arts scene, showing in several exhibitions with Neil Coleman at Pro-Jex Gallery, as well as with Lane Orsak at Manuel's Micro Gallery and Kelly Slade's Galerie Bleux. He became known among Austin visual artists as a colleague and a patron, frequently visiting galleries and supporting other photographers. He contributed an image of Kris Kristofferson that he shot for Lone Star for the poster of a "Texas Film Art" exhibition curated by Coleman.
Coleman, who is in the process of putting together a tribute exhibit for Pappé, estimates that the photographer produced more than a half-million images – and had that many stories to accompany them. He is survived by his best friend, Debbie Perlman; his children, Shaun, Remi, and Rani Pappé; and three grandchildren. – Robert Faires
I remember Alan Pappé as a wiry little guy who took great photos. We hired him for Lone Star because he was relatively local, and his portfolio of film and nonfilm stuff was really interesting. He took up very little space on the set, a vital attribute for movie stills photographers, who are asked to be neither seen nor heard but still get good coverage. Alan "pushed the envelope" though, rarely shooting from behind the camera (the safest spot) but glancing at the video assist and then going out and guessing at the vectors to crouch and shoot at the edge of the frame – and sometimes over the edge. Because he was so professionally stealthy and not that big, it would often be take two or three before the cinematographer/operator Stuart Dryburgh would say, "Has the stills guy been in the shot all this time?" Alan got consistently interesting shots though, with beautiful composition and a lot of Dutch-angle and low-angle stuff up at actors, with the big Texas sky overhead that reminded me of Gabriel Figueroa, the great Mexican Siglo de Oro cinematographer (who started out shooting stills). And unlike many of our crew down on the border, he never backed into a cactus. – John Sayles
