Clarence Sinclair Bull photographing Clark Gable and Vivian Liegh for Gone with the Wind, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Label

In this photograph, Clarence Sinclair Bull stands over the scene, directing Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in a carefully staged embrace, while the large camera looms in the foreground. The composition, with the actors framed by Bull and his equipment, highlights the multiple layers of mediation involved in producing this iconic image. The visual loop—where one camera captures another—reveals the artifice of industrial media, making visible the very mechanisms that manufacture cinematic fantasy. Rather than merely immersing the viewer, this recursive framing exposes the labor and power dynamics underpinning mass image production.

From the 2025 exhibition A Space for Dialogue 127, Separation Perfected, curated by Dominic Folkes ’25, Mellon Special Project Intern

Course History

ARTH 28.10, Fashion in Art, Kristin O'Rourke, Fall 2022

Exhibition History

A Space for Dialogue 127, Separation Perfected, Dominic Folkes ’25, Mellon Special Project Intern, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, November 8, 2025 - January 4, 2026

Publication History

Robert Dance, Glamour of the Gods, Photographs from the John Kobal Foundation, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2008, illustration page 197.

Provenance

John Kobal Foundation Limited, London, England; sold to present collection, 2019.

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