The silver screen's restless icon

IN DECEMBER 1954, a 23-year-old actor was the subject of a photo essay for Life magazine. A loner who marched to his own eccentric beat, James Dean was by no means an easy subject. He was considered reclusive, antisocial, and simply was not interested in anything less than his art and craft. Ultimately, he would allow just two interviews during his short career.

Dean only had one condition for the shoot--that the photographer, Roy Schatt, teach him photography. What surfaced from this collaboration was an extraordinary series of photographs of and by Dean.

Long thought lost, these intimate pictures recently were discovered and are available for public view. Here, for the first time in 50 years, we get to see the private world of the man who helped revolutionize American culture. "Marlon Brando changed the way actors acted; James Dean changed the way people lived," suggests actor Martin Sheen.

"I knew James Dean--as a friend and as a student," Schatt noted in 1954. "He was a disrupter of norms, a bender of rules, a disquieter of calm. Through [these images], I hope to transmit a glimpse of his most insistent and, eternal, presence."

Dean had one of the most spectacularly brief careers of any movie star. In just more than a year and, in a mere three films, he became a widely admired screen idol, a personification of the restless American youth of the mid 1950s, and an embodiment of the title of his most famous motion picture, "Rebel Without a Cause."

Dean, 24, was killed Sept. 30, 1955, in a speeding accident en route to compete in a car race in Salinas, Calif. Nominated for Academy Awards for his performances in "East of Eden" and "Giant," Dean left a legacy that only seems to grow stronger with the passage of time.

"There is no simple explanation for why he has come to mean so much to so many people today," writes Joe Hyams in the Dean biography, Little Boy Lost. "Perhaps it is because, in his acting, he had the intuitive talent for expressing the hopes and fears that are a part of all young people.... In some movie magic way, he managed to dramatize brilliantly the questions every young person in every generation must resolve."

Marking the 50th anniversary of his death, The Lowe Gallery Atlanta showcased these extraordinary photographs late last year in the exhibition, "James Dean & Roy Schatt: The Mirrored Psyche," which next is on view at The Lowe Gallery Santa Monica (Jan. 12-Feb. 25).

"The exhibition affords the ... art community a rare and unique curatorial and collecting experience," declares Gallery owner Bill Lowe. "The luster of James Dean's celebrity, coupled with his mythological cultural status, offers an exciting dynamic.... The ... exhibition is historic both in content and context. Its juxtaposition of remarkable vintage and modern prints allows us an unprecedented opportunity to examine the psyche of an artistic figure long considered pivotal among American cultural icons."

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning