A Look Back at Meryl Streep and Mia Farrow’s Ultra-Glamorous 1970s and ’80s, Through the Lens of Eva Sereny
It was mere practicality that led the self-taught photographer Eva Sereny to her career: Midway through her 30s, following a car accident involving her husband that had her expecting the worst, she decided it was time to make the precautionary move of finding some work. Yet even after her husband recovered, Sereny kept at it—rather unsurprisingly, seeing as she had enough initiative to kick things off by hopping on a plane to London, where she strolled into the office of The Sunday Times and implored its staff to take a look at her photos. Decades later, you can see her work for yourself in Through Her Lens, a new book published by ACC Art Books, though it doesn’t contain her early snapshots of children playing sports in her then home of Italy. Instead, it’s a compilation of Sereny’s photos capturing the cinema and celebrities of the 1970s and ’80s, including actresses like Jacqueline Bisset and Charlotte Rampling, who—to give an idea of just how successful Sereny soon became—wrote the book’s introduction. Naturally, then, Sereny had enough material to tell the stories behind her portraits, from catching a fraught moment between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton two years before their divorce to taking a photo of Henry Miller atop his toilet, near which he’d hung his collection of paintings. Over the years, Sereny photographed quite a few industries’ leading men, but it’s the women who appear in her retrospective that really stand out—Audrey Hepburn, Simone de Beauvoir, Jane Fonda, and Meryl Streep among them. See their portraits, plus scenes from the set of films like The Great Gatsby, featuring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, here.
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Charlotte Rampling, photographed by Eva Sereny, with her Cadillac in the early ’90s. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Mia Farrow, photographed by Eva Sereny, during the filming of the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Mia Farrow and Robert Redford, photographed by Eva Sereny, in Rhode Island during the filming of the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Meryl Streep, photographed by Eva Sereny, in her apartment, for the cover of Paris Match, shortly after she won the Academy Award for best actress for her role in the 1982 film Sophie’s Choice, in `1983. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Bianca Jagger, photographed by Eva Sereny, wearing Zandra Rhodes at her house in Cheyne Walk, for a fashion shoot in the Sunday Times magazine in the late ’70s. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Romy Schneider, photographed by Eva Sereny for a promotional shot of the 1972 film The Assassination of Trotsky in the early ’70s. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Clint Eastwood, photographed Eva Sereny, standing on the site in Carmel, California, where he would later build a house and become mayor, in the early ’70s. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Sigourney Weaver, photographed by Eva Sereny inside the Centre Pompidou, for a promotional shot of the 1979 film Alien. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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François Truffaut and Jacqueline Bisset, photographed by Eva Sereny, during the filming of the 1973 film Day for Night. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Simone De Beauvoir, photographed by Eva Sereny for the Sunday Times magazine, playing draughts inside of her home in Paris, in 1974. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Anaïs Nin, photographed by Eva Sereny after the photographer showed a “PR friend” her portraits of Nin’s friend Henry Miller. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Liza Minnelli, photographed by Eva Sereny, on set during the filming of A Matter of Time, in Rome, 1976. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Liv Ullmann, photographed by Eva Sereny, on the set of the 1974 film The Abdication. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Robert Redford, photographed by Eva Sereny, on the set of the 1973 film The Great Gatsby. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Kate Capshaw, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford (from left), photographed by Eva Seren,y on the set of Spielberg’s 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
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Raquel Welch, photographed by Eva Sereny, during a stay in Cannes in the late 1980s. Featured in Through Her Lens by Eva Sereny, published by ACC Art Books.
