A day in Montmartre, Paris, photographed by Marilyn Stafford in 1960.

The British actor Albert Finney, 1967, and the British model Twiggy, 1960, photographed in London.

The French singer Édith Piaf, Paris, circa 1950.

French dogs are just as stubborn as their owners, Paris, 1960.

Street sleepers in Boulogne-Billancourt, in the western suburbs of Paris, circa 1950.

*Top,* then prime minister of India Indira Gandhi boards a plane in New Delhi; *above,* Gandhi speaks at a rally in Kashmir. Both photographs were taken in 1972.

The Italian anti-Mafia activist Francesca Serio, 1960.

A haute couture shoot for Christian Dior, Paris, 1960.

Kids in the Parisian slum of Cité Lesage-Bullourde, near the Place de la Bastille, circa 1950. It was torn down in 1984 to make way for the Opéra Bastille.

The Indian writer Mulk Raj Anand, circa 1972.

The 96-Year Itch

At 96, Marilyn Stafford, the masterful yet little-known photographer who shot everyone from Albert Einstein to Sharon Tate and everything from political unrest to war, gets her due

Marilyn Stafford didn’t set out to be a photographer. She was born in Cleveland in 1925, just as Hollywood was emerging as an industry, and her parents saw her as the next Shirley Temple. Instead, Stafford set her sights on Broadway, moving to New York in 1947.

She also started tinkering with a camera. As if fate itself had chosen her path, Stafford found herself on a photo shoot in 1948, in the Princeton home of the physicist Albert Einstein. As she recently told The New York Times, someone handed her the camera and she took the picture. Stafford moved to Paris and forged a style that is sharp-eyed and empathetic. She documented the plights of war in the 50s and the cultural turbulence of the 60s. A skilled portraitist, she photographed India’s first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, while adding all kinds of people to her portfolio—the singer Édith Piaf, the writer Italo Calvino, the actress Sharon Tate, the architect Le Corbusier, and the children who followed her in the streets.

The British writer and activist Brigid Brophy, photographed by Stafford in London, circa 1960.

Despite her extensive output, Stafford remains less known than her male counterparts. A major show at the Brighton Museum, just a few miles from her home in East Sussex, U.K. (she is 96), may change all that. It is the most complete survey of Stafford’s work to date. —Elena Clavarino

“Marilyn Stafford: A Life in Photography” is on at the Brighton Museum through May 8

Elena Clavarino is an Associate Editor for AIR MAIL