Spend time in the company of some Hollywood greats

	Story by Jack Foley

BEST known for her photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Eve Arnold has also been credited for re-defining the glamour of Hollywood, as well as offering a personal insight into the lives of some of the world’s leading political figures of days gone by, such as Malcolm X and Richard Nixon.

But it is her work with the stars that is the focus of attention at a new exhibition at the Zelda Cheatle Gallery in London (W1), running until November 15, which should prove a massive draw for fans of the silver screen.

As Isabella Rossellini once remarked while talking about her time spent on the site of White Nights: "She [Eve] tiptoed around us on the set barefoot, snapping photos. She was a transparent presence. If we noticed her lens pointing at us, she stopped. I never felt she was stealing our images, or that she was exposing us to what we did not want to show. Eve was sort of a guardian angel, invisible and attentive. I liked her around us."

This kind of tribute is typical of the respect with which Eve Arnold is held.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1913, the daughter of Russian immigrants, Arnold's first photographs were taken on a $40 Rolleicord given to her by a boyfriend.

However, apart from a six-week course at New York's New School for Social Research under the late Alexei Brodovitch, art director of Harper's Bazaar, she is self-taught, having been brought to his attention when he saw hand-held photographs she had taken on an assignment among the fashion shows in Harlem.

Describing them as fresh, original and a new approach to fashion, Brodovitch told Arnold: "You do not do class assignments. Go back to Harlem and do comprehensive study."

Arnold did as she was told, spending a y