Man with a Camera

Sanford Harrison Roth is a short, cocky, square-jawed man who has made a career of taking candid photographs of artists and musicians. This week, after nearly 80,000 people had trooped past a showing of his photos in Chicago's Art Institute, Roth was in an understandably satisfied mood. Said he: "Even if everybody else did not like my pictures, there is always one person who does -- me."

Next to Roth himself, his biggest fans are his subjects. Most of them--Picasso, Utrillo, Giacometti, Cocteau, Dufy, Leger, Milhaud--gave Roth nearly all the time he needed to make his pictures. The result: his portraits have a quality that seems to capture a sense of his subjects' work as well as their personalities.

Bikes & Bags. At 46, Sanford Roth is a relative newcomer to big-time photography. Born in Brooklyn, he went through the public schools and New York University, spending most of his time bicycle racing ("I loved the competition--I like to be better than anyone else--and I liked the glamour and those sweaters we wore"). After college, Roth got a job with a ladies' hat-and-bag retail chain, and in a few years was vice president in charge of the chain's West Coast territory. By 1946, he was making better than $30,000 a year.

But Roth was becoming less interested in hats and more intrigued with his new hobby--photography. Says he: "I looked about me and realized that I was getting old and not having any fun. The other men who were in the hat business were not friends of mine. I liked the arts and good music . . . I decided that I would quit." He talked it over with his wife Beulah, and gave his boss a year's notice. In 1947, on his own at last, Roth took his wife and camera to Europe.

Berserk & Brilliant. In Paris, he met an art dealer friend who offered to introduce him to Utrillo. "So I went out to Utrillo's house," he explained. "We sat around and talked, and pretty soon I was taking pictures." Utrillo liked the pictures and introduced Roth to Vlaminck --and it went on from there.

Roth's acquaintance with well-known artists has given him some interesting footnotes to his pictures. Samples:

Utrillo: "I was able to capture all the violence and the pathos of his life. We don't know many men who started getting drunk when they were only eight months old.* Today, Utrillo is either asleep, drunk or berserk. If it weren't for Lucie Valore [TIME, Aug. 25], he'd be dead. He told me: 'I hate my house. It's full of bourgeois furniture and servants. One day I'm going to run away and go back to Montmartre where I belong.' It was the saddest thing I'd ever heard . . ."

Matisse: "The rudest man I've ever shot. He refused to cooperate. He browbeats his servants and treats his nurse dreadfully. But he's a sick man, and maybe that excuses him in a way."

Picasso. "An old, old man. Because he is so brilliant, he is sad. I shot him in his studio, with sweaters and coats on. He was very solemn."

Dufy: "The first time I saw him he was thin and unhappy. He could hardly move. Then he began taking cortisone injections, and when I saw him again, he was jollier and 60 Ibs. heavier . . . He proudly walked the length of his studio like a child, and he flexed his stubby fingers for me."

*Utrillo's mother, says Roth, "used to soothe him with an occasional dram of Pernod."

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