Leo Fuchs: Special Photographer from the Golden Age of Hollywood »

Leo Fuchs was born in Vienna to a family of pastry chefs in 1929 and moved to New York with his family at the age of ten. He sold his first picture (of Eleanor Roosevelt) for $5 when he was barely a teenager, then quit school at 14 to apprentice at Globe Photos in New York. He struck out on his own two years later, working in Broadway nightclubs and as a glamour photographer for newspapers and magazines. After serving as a Signal Corps cameraman in Germany in the early 50s, Fuchs stayed in Europe and was hired as a still photographer on his first film, Magic Fire, directed by William Dieterle.

Bruce Weber is a world-renowned art, documentary, and fashion photographer, filmmaker, and clothing designer. Weber came to prominence after being featured heavily in GQ and Interview magazines, and has created iconic advertising campaigns for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Abercrombie & Fitch, among others. He has directed over five films including two full-length features—Chop Suey (2000) and A Letter to True (2004)—as well as a handful of music videos. He is also the author of several books including Branded Youth (Bullfinch, 1997) and Blood Sweat and Tears (teNeues, 2005). 

Alexandre Fuchs is an exhibited fine arts photographer whose work looks at the impact of accelerating change on the human experience. Alex is also a filmmaker whose most recent award-winning documentary film, Hijos de la Guerra, tells the story of the notorious Salvadoran street gang the Mara Salvatucha (MS-13), which has been singled out by the FBI as the fastest-growing and most violent gang in the world. A French-American national, Alex Fuchs grew up in Paris and lives between New York and France.

Leo Fuchs is a Hollywood veteran who spent over 40 years shooting some of the most moving and memorable images ever made of 50s and 60s film icons. Fuchs’ introduction to moviemaking came as one of the world’s leading “special photographers” on movie sets in Europe and North America. Starting as a freelance magazine photographer, he was one of the rare outsiders invited onto movie sets, where he often befriended actors, actresses, and filmmakers and captured candid shots both during shooting and after hours while socializing with the stars. With the support of his dear friend Cary Grant, Fuchs gave up photography in 1964 and spent the next 20 years as a motion picture producer.

Fuchs' photographs of Hollywood’s undisputed heyday are collected for the first time in Leo Fuchs: Special Photographer from the Golden Age of Hollywood, along with a rare essay by photography great, Bruce Weber. Film icons Rock Hudson, Audrey Hepburn, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Sean Connery, Shirley MacLaine, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, and never-before-published photographs of To Kill a Mockingbird’s Harper Lee as well as such legendary directors as Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fred Zinnemann, and Alfred Hitchcock all appear unguarded—unlike any other photographs of the era. These images are complemented by pages of insider details taken from the recorded remembrances of Leo Fuchs himself.

Leo Fuchs: Special Photographer offers never-before-seen, behind-the-scenes photographs of the glamorous world of post-war Hollywood. It serves as a valuable piece of history and a reference for the style, attitudes, and personalities of the dream factory’s elite that define modern-day celebrity. With a career spent steadily rising through the ranks of production, from outsider to boss, Leo Fuchs saw it all. Now his personal vision has been captured for the world to enjoy in Leo Fuchs: Special Photographer.