Stanley Kubrick was just seventeen when he sold his first photograph to Look Magazine – a less classy version of Life. Mildred Stagg interviewed Kubrick for The Camera magazine three years later, looking at the his photographic methods. She wrote, “Regardless of what he saw, he couldn’t shoot until the car stopped in a station because of the motion and vibration… Kubrick used a Contex [camera] and took the pictures at 1/8 second. The lack of light tripled the time needed for development.”

In another interview this time with Michael Ciment, Stanley Kubrick said “I worked with Look Magazine from the age of seventeen to twenty-one. It was a miraculous thing for me to get this job after graduation from high school. I owe a lot to the then picture editor Helen O’Brian and the managing editor Jack Guenther. This experience was invaluable to me not only because I learned a lot about photography, but also because it gave me a quick education in how things happened in the world.”

* These featured photos were accompanied by an essay by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Irv Kupcinet which dealt with social and economic contrasts that, in Kup’s view, defined the city at the time. Many of the photos featured weren’t published in Look at the time but can be found in the archives of the Library of Congress.

We’ve previously showcased some of his work here.