经济学人逝者 || 英国著名摄影师泰瑞·奥尼尔

Catching the moment

抓住瞬间

英文部分选自经济学人191123Obituary版块

Catching the moment

抓住瞬间

Terry O’Neill, photographer of the most famous faces of the 20th century, died on November 16th, aged 81

泰瑞·奥尼尔，于11月16日去世，终年81岁，生前曾为20世纪最为著名的人物拍摄照片

注：
英国媒体常用iconic（偶像的）来形容摄影师泰瑞·奥尼尔（Terry O'Neill），他是摄影界泰斗级人物，今年77岁，上世纪60年代红透好莱坞，是当时超极影星与歌星眼中灸手可热的摄影师，镜头人物包括奥黛丽·赫本、伊丽莎白·泰勒、披头士、黛安娜王妃、英国女王、曼德拉等世界重量级人物。链接：

https://www.bbc.com/ukchina/simp/cool_britannia/people_in_uk/2015/07/150728_life_terry_oneill

When brigitte bardot was on the set of “The Legend of Frenchie King”, with a crowd of photographers snapping her, Terry O’Neill was waiting. Not, like the others, for the moment she would turn her gorgeous self towards them and strike a stunning pose with her leather trousers and cigar. Instead he was praying for the wind to blow her long hair over her face, just once more. When it did, he had that frame. He called it his picture in a million.

《尤物对决》的拍摄现场，碧姬·芭铎正被一群摄影师围着拍摄，泰瑞·奥尼尔却在一旁静候。与其他人不同，他并非在等待身着皮裤、嘴叼雪茄的佳人轻转曼妙身姿、面对镜头摆出诱人姿势；他在等待的是一阵拂面清风，再次吹起她的长发、遮住她的脸庞。风如期而至，照片一帧定型。奥尼尔把这张照片看作是万里挑一的作品。

Over a career of 60 years, from hustling cub reportage for the Daily Sketch to gentle portraits of Nelson Mandela at 90, he always had an idea for how to get to the character, and usually, with a dose of luck, it worked. He encouraged Michael Caine to cradle rifles, framed Mick Jagger in a frosty fur hood, turned Dustin Hofmann into a pleading panhandler, and shot Elton John in his sequinned get-up against a huge audience that also sparkled. He let David Bowie, his crazily unpredictable favourite subject, bring in a Great Dane for the album-cover shoot of “Diamond Dogs”; the dog reared up and howled when the strobe went off, while Bowie, zoned out as usual, stayed still, weird and perfect. He convinced Faye Dunaway that if she won an Oscar in 1977 she should bring it to the Beverley Hills Hotel and pose beside the pool in her peach satin robe, with her Oscar on the breakfast table and newspapers scattered round her. His idea was to capture the morning after, when stardom had descended whether she wanted it or not. The shot became an image of jaded celebrity that thousands of people saw.

纵观奥尼尔60年的职业生涯，不管是为《每日小品》拍摄吵吵闹闹的年轻人还是为九十岁的曼德拉拍摄温情肖像，他总是想办法展现拍摄对象的特性，多数时候，他都运气颇佳，办法总能奏效。奥尼尔曾让迈克尔·凯恩手握来复枪；给米克·贾格带上冰冷的皮毛帽；让达斯汀·霍夫曼化身乞丐、哀求不止；还以星光闪耀的满场观众为背景拍了穿着亮片演出服的埃尔顿·约翰。大卫·鲍伊个性独特，绝不按常理出牌，却是奥尼尔最钟爱的拍摄对象。拍摄专辑《钻石狗》封面时，他让大卫·鲍伊带来了一只大丹犬。闪光灯熄灭时，大丹犬又跳又叫，鲍伊却如往常一样魂魄出窍，纹丝不动，鬼魅至完美。他还曾与费·唐娜薇约定，如果她获得了1977年奥斯卡最佳女主角，她要带着奖杯去贝弗利酒店拍照片。唐娜薇穿着桃色的缎子长袍在酒店泳池边摆好姿势，奥斯卡小金人儿放在早餐桌上，而身旁散落着各种报纸。奥尼尔的想法是去捕捉唐娜薇获奖后第二天早上的状态，无论唐娜薇是否接受，名气都已降临在她身上。而这张照片成为了疲惫不堪的公众人物的标志形象，广为流传。

Stars had been his subject since 1962, when he was sent to photograph a new band at the Abbey Road Studios. The older blokes at the Sketch scorned that kind of work, but the young were clearly on the rise, and he was by far the youngest photographer in Fleet Street at the time. At the studios, to get a better light, he took the group outside to snap them holding their guitars a bit defensively: John, Paul, George and Ringo. Next day’s Sketch was sold out, and he suddenly found himself with the run of London and all the coming bands, free to be as creative as he liked. A working-class kid from Romford whose prospects had been either the priesthood or a job in the Dagenham car plant, like his dad, had the world at his feet. He wouldn’t have had a prayer, he thought, in any other era.

奥尼尔从1962年开始拍摄明星。当时他被派往艾比路录音室拍摄一个新的乐队。《每日小品》的老资格的摄影师看不上这种差事，而作为福利特街最年轻的摄影师，奥尼尔却正在上升期。为了获取更好的光线，他把乐队带到录音室外，让他们略带防卫地握着吉他，才拍下了那张照片。照片中的人物是约翰、保罗、乔治、林戈。第二天，《每日小品》售罄，而奥尼尔也突然发现自己在伦敦城里声名鹊起，来找他拍摄的乐队络绎不绝，而他可以自由地发挥创意。奥尼尔来自罗姆福特的工人阶层，对那里出身的孩子而言，前程无非就是做牧师或者像奥尼尔父亲一样在达根汉的汽车厂里谋一份差事。而现在，整个世界都对奥尼尔敞开了大门。奥尼尔觉得，换在其他任何时代，这种事情他肯定想都不敢想。

And obviously it couldn’t last. In a couple of years he would find a proper job, as both the Beatles and the Stones told him they were going to. For it was hardly serious work to point your Leica at someone and go snap, snap. It was only when he went to Hollywood in the mid-1960s, to shoot on movie sets, that he realised how definitively things had changed. The vast new market for album covers, pop magazines, film posters and colour supplements could keep him in work, and in the money, for life. He began to hang on to his pictures then, as he went on to do freelance for Vogue and Rolling Stone and Rave and the Sunday Times, until eventually his archive had 400m negatives in it. There would have been far more if, by the 2000s, modern celebrities hadn’t ceased to interest him. Amy Winehouse was the last one he wanted to photograph.

显然，这份工作不会一直做下去。就连披头士和滚石乐队都说过几年得找份正经工作，何况是他。用莱卡相机对着人咔嚓咔嚓按快门不算份正经工作。但是待到二十世纪六十年代中期，他去好莱坞的电影片场拍摄时，奥尼尔才突然意识到摄影市场发生了翻天覆地的变化。专辑封面、流行杂志、电影海报、彩色增刊带来的广阔新市场可以提供源源不断的工作机会和收入，让他一生衣食无忧。他决定继续拍下去，继续当自由摄影师为《时尚》、《滚石》、《锐舞》和《星期日泰晤士报》拍摄照片。直至退休，他存了有4亿张底片。假如他继续拍到二十一世纪头十年，底片恐怕还会更多，可惜现代名人已经无法激起他的拍摄兴趣。他最不想拍的就是艾米·怀恩豪斯（Amy Winehouse）。

注：

colour supplements: a colour supplement is a colour magazine which is one of the sections of a newspaper, especially at weekends. an illustrated magazine accompanying a newspaper, esp a Sunday newspaper [British](from COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary)

What didn’t change was the nature of the work: catching that moment, being ready. He had scarcely graduated from a Box Brownie in 1959, totally self-taught, when he was sent to the Heathrow VIP lounge to photograph people arriving and departing. He snapped a gent in a bowler hat and suit asleep on a bench with African chieftains in full regalia round him, and it turned out to be the home secretary: a famous man suddenly unguarded.

一直不变的是这份工作的本质：做好准备，抓住那个瞬间。 1959年，泰瑞·奥尼尔被派往希思罗机场，在贵宾休息室里拍摄乘客时，他刚刚全凭自学知道如何使用布朗尼盒式相机。他拍摄了一位在长椅上熟睡的绅士，他西装革履、头戴圆顶硬礼帽，身边坐满了全副武装的非洲酋长。这位绅士原来是位内政大臣——赫赫有名的大人物也有卸下防备的一刻。

That picture earned him 25 quid. More to the point, it suggested a good way of approaching the stars. He would look for their human, vulnerable side, set things up, unobtrusively if he had to (his presence, like his voice, was always soft), and then start shooting. As he did, a dove settled by the bare white shoulder of Audrey Hepburn. Paul McCartney, playing the piano in a bar, suddenly raised his eyes to heaven as if amazed by the sound. Steve McQueen let his features relax as he took a phone call from a friend. Stars lounged and drowsed: Muhammad Ali with a newspaper, Peter Cook in his old mac on a lilo in a Hollywood pool. Best of all was to be allowed to tag along with a star for days, a fly on the wall, until they forgot that a photographer was there. He got such access with Frank Sinatra, who simply told his mafiosi minders, “The kid’s with me,” and whom he snapped strolling on the boardwalk in Miami Beach, still with his guard up but with all his swagger plain.

那张照片让他赚了25英镑。更重要的是，它让他学会了一种接触明星的方式。他会挖掘明星的内在、脆弱的一面。如有必要，他也能在不知不觉间就把一切安排妥当（如他柔和的嗓音一样，他本人也总是那么的不动声色），然后按动快门。在他的镜头下，奥黛丽·赫本雪白香肩上停着一只白鸽；保罗·麦卡特尼（Paul McCartney）在酒吧里弹钢琴，抬眼仰望，惊异于音乐之美； 史蒂夫·麦昆（Steve McQueen）在接听友人电话，全身放松。他在明星闲逛时、沉睡时拍照：穆罕默德·阿里（Muhammad Ali）在看报，彼得·库克（Peter Cook）穿着旧雨衣躺在充气垫上，浮在好莱坞的游泳池里。最棒情况的是，明星允许他跟拍多日，他就像一只停在墙上的苍蝇，明星都忘记了摄影师的存在。他跟弗兰克·辛纳特拉（Frank Sinatra）拍照时就这样，弗兰克·辛纳特拉（Frank Sinatra）直接告诉自己的黑手党保镖，“这孩子是我的人”。他拍下了弗兰克·辛纳特拉在迈阿密海滩的木板路上漫步的画面；照片中的辛纳特拉虽谨慎依旧，但他那十足的派头也展露无疑。

It was easy enough for him to blend in as he worked, for he was short, good-looking and carefully cheeky. His Romford accent thrilled grouchy Lee Marvin, and his horse-racing jokes disarmed the queen into a smile of genuine happiness. Women regularly fell for his china-blue eyes, and he ended up in bed with many of them, including Ava Gardner, the most beautiful woman he ever saw, and Ms Dunaway, to whom he was married for a while. He would probably have bedded Marilyn Monroe, too, since she slept with all her photographers, but he never got the chance. Perhaps that was as well, for when he was with Faye he hated the whole circus. The last thing he wanted was to become a star himself. He was happy just eating fish and chips, listening to jazz, and taking pictures.

拍摄时，奥尼尔很容易就能融入；他矮小英俊，胆大泼皮且有分寸。他的罗姆福德口音让坏脾气的李·马文都兴奋不已，他的赛马笑话消除了女王的戒备，让她露出了真正幸福的笑容。女人们总会爱上他瓷蓝色的眼睛，其中很多人最后都和他滚了床单，包括艾娃·加德纳——奥尼尔见过的最漂亮的女人，还有费·唐纳薇——他们还有过一段婚姻。奥尼尔本可以和玛丽莲·梦露一夜春宵，梦露和她所有的摄影师都上过床，他只是没赶上趟。这可能也是因为当他和唐纳薇在一起时，他讨厌整个演艺圈。他最不希望自己成为明星。只要能吃鱼和薯条、能听爵士乐、能摄影就足以让他感到幸福了。

At heart he was ever the industrious Essex lad, working every day of the week. He didn’t like holidays. He also loathed digital photography, which was junk and a joke, and any sort of touching-up, which made him feel sullied. To the end, he clung to film cameras and to black-and-white as the best there was. Even so, there was always something about the finished print that dissatisfied him. If he had only stayed longer on that day, at that shoot, if he had just…he might have got something better. The wind might have blown a little bit closer to the idea he had in his head.

奥尼尔本质上还是那个勤奋的埃塞克斯郡小伙儿，一周工作七天。他不喜欢假期。他也讨厌数码摄影，觉得那是垃圾、可笑至极，因为对他来说，任何修饰图片的行为都是玷污。到最后，他还是坚持使用胶片相机和黑白胶片，认为那是最好的。即便如此，成品照片里总有让他觉得不满意的地方。如果那天拍摄的时候他能多呆一会儿，多拍一会儿，如果他能……也许就能拍得更好一些。那风吹过的角度也许能更接近他的预想。

注：埃塞克斯郡（英语：Essex）是英国东英格兰大区的郡，位于英国东南部，郡政府驻地位于切尔姆斯福德。

翻译组：

Sheri，坚信可以forever young的老年人

Lixia，女，爱爬山的健身小白，美食狂人

Rachel Zhang，学理工科，爱跳芭蕾，热爱文艺的非典型翻译

校核组：

Mona，悦读悦译，以译会友

Mosy，绘本、演讲、戏剧英文教育践行者

Dave，实力校对，肌肉男大学教师，文学翻译+CATTI一笔二口