In Paris with Alfred Hitchcock

Unmistakeably Hitch. Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary film director and master of the most suspenseful thrillers of his time. As always, he wears a dark suit, white shirt and a tie. As inconspicuous as his appearance, as typical his mischievous smile and role-playing repertoire, which he performs with relish for photographer Russell Melcher. During his stay in Paris, the director also visited the police museum: “Of course, everything was studied and looked at closely,” the photographer remembers. “Alfred Hitchcock was constantly on the lookout for new ideas for goose bump moments that would never tire.” All this backstory and more is included in the recently published book dedicated to the photographer’s oeuvre: Russell Melcher – The Golden Age of Photojournalism.

Film stars and starlets, music legends, the greats of politics and royalty: without a doubt Melcher was one of the busiest and most proactive of photo reporters. From the 1950s onwards, his images served the ever-growing needs of magazines and such publications. The American had settled down in Paris, the base from which he travelled over most of the world. Many of his pictures have joined the annals of history, because, more than simply a photographer, he considered himself a storyteller. Despite deadlines and often adverse shooting conditions, he always wanted to deliver more than just a magazine picture. Speed, being well prepared and, above all, having good equipment were the fundamental conditions for the “Russell W. Melcher method”, as Matthias Grenda explains in his text to the new photo book: “Whenever possible, Russ researched or inspected the location, the place, the city or the exact event, the person or persons to be portrayed before thinking about the story to be told. Russ didn’t want to shoot the photos that everyone was shooting.”

Consequently, the encounter with Hitchcock was also set up as a story: Melcher accompanied him through all the rooms in the museum, from the attic to the cellar – though he was not allowed to photograph everywhere. “After visiting the catacombs, where extremely old but still active prison cells were viewed and photography was not allowed, Hitchcock then strode away, just as he preferred to see himself – cunning and mysterious,” Melcher recalls. “I think I recognized one or the other scene in later films.”