Syri i Fotografit

Gjon Mili - "Theologian" of Photography
by Artan Kafexhiu
Illyria, April 10-12, 1995


A photograph is a brief collusion between foresight and chance. It need not invite reflection, so much as create a shock which alerts the viewer to the strangeness of the passage. - Gjon Mili

Undoubtedly, it is my special attachment to and passion for photography which led me to the master of the "calculated accident". Gjon Mili. The man Sean O'Casey called, "the genial Albanian."



Mili, born in an Albanian village, spent his youth in Bucharest and at the urge of his uncle, moved to America at the age of 18. He was graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a degree in electrical engineering in 1927 and went to become a lighting research engineer.

It is safe to say that Gjon Mili revolutionized photojournalism; influencing two generations of photographic artists, thanks largely to his innovative experiments which took place in an old deserted church in Montclair, N.J. It was in this makeshift studio, where the strobe light and stroboscopic photography was developed. Mili was the first professional photographer to use the strobe light.

"Mili was a true visionary," said Harold Edgerton, an MIT professor and one of the first to collaborate with him.

"He recognized the strobe's potential and for years led the field in a very imaginative way. He had drive. He pushed us," said Edgerton.


It was Faik Konitza, a fellow Albanian, who drew Mili's attention to a column in the London Illustrated News on the movies and Photography as a significant medium that broaden Mili's interest in the arts.

In 1937, Mili's career as a professional photographer began when his "stop-motion" photos of tennis champion Bobby Riggs were published in Life magazine. It began a 4-year career where he would go on to become one of the most outspoken and committed individuals in the world of photography. Mili eventually became known as "the Pope of photography" living in the cloister abbey of ego that was the old Life magazine. He became a veteran life photographer only by association, on the outside he lived a true professional life.

The continuously Life photo assignments took Mili all over the world - to the Riviera to photograph Picasso, To France for Pablo Casals in exile, to Israel for Eichmann in captivity. He traveled to Florence, Athens, Dublin, Berlin, Venice, Rome , and Hollywood on his assignments. He photographed countries end people, celebrities and artists, sculpture and architecture, sporting events and concerts. Mili's associations with the magazine continued almost until his death but not before taking him to Bucharest to explore the legacy and spirit of his mother.


During his career outside of Life, Mili hosted several individual exhibitions, such as "Dancers in Movement" at the Museum of Modern Art in 1942 and "on Picasso" 1952; the Paris Galerie in and the France's "Musee Arleton" in 1946. He was a part of numerous group exhibitions in New York and London, Mili also became the premier dance photographer of his time.


With a series of flashes, Mili created his famous version of the Duchams classic cubist painting "Nude Descending a Staircase". he is perhaps best known for two exuberant Lindy Hope dancers leaping into the air and one of Picasso, who he "sketched" as a figure in the air with a pen light. It became known as the "definitive picture" of the artist. Mili visited Picasso twice, in 1949 and in later 1960 when he actually lived with Picasso in his house while they worked together.

It was during this time that Mili asked Matisse for an introduction to Picasso, but Matisse suggested that it was better for him to go to the beach, where Picasso frequently bathed. Mili, one day walked right in the artist's way and introduced himself by saying, "Excuse me. I am a photographer and I would like to do your portrait". laughing, Picasso said, "Oh? Go ahead." Mili insisted that he was serious and confronted him with a photograph taken in darkness, showing a skater traced with lights attached to the skates. Picasso instantly and positively reacted.

The need to understand the extraordinary artist brought Mili's mind to that kind of introduction. What went through his mind and struck him was Picasso's famous quote, "After all, a work of art is not achieved by thoughts, but with hands." Picasso taught, "If you want to draw, you must shut your eyes and sing."

David Douglas Duncan of Time-Life said, "The 'Picasso episode' shows that Mili brings intelligence to this place." He explored thoroughly and brought to the international public "the three dimensional Picasso." Both Mili and Picasso remained friends for the rest of their lives.

Mili was respected by some of the most distinguished names in the world of arts and letters, many of whom had posed for his camera and later became his friends. Philosopher and writer Jean Paul Sartre wrote an introduction to one of Mili's Paris exhibitions, "The primitives of the South Seas we are told, refuse to allow themselves to be photographed, believing that thus they are made forever captive to the photographer. To understand their wisdom, you need only to look at Gjon Mili's portrait." Sartre wrote.


Photographers like Saul Steinberg helped create an illustration of Mili's exhibitions, Alexander Schneider used to rehearse the Budapest Spring Quartet in his studio. famous French photographer, Henry Cartier-Bresson, another one of Mili's colleagues and close friends, recalled Mili's Studio, as the "Athens of New York." He characterized Mili as, "Apart from our very animated friendship, Gjon Mili represents to me, a rectitude of spirit, and a clarity of mind. I admire his sense of economy, his respect for craftsmanship, and his distaste for pretensions. All this emanates from a very complex personality full of philosophical wisdom."

At his studio, jam sessions were held, that included at one time or another, such starts as Duke Ellington, Billy Holliday, Gene Krupa and Ted Williams, etc.

The sustained high level of quality that marks Gjon Mili's work can be credited to his breadth of appreciation for literature as well as all the arts, plus history, dance and theater. He looked at photography as a theology and believed in it.

When we look at Rodin's "The Burghers of Calais." lined by the light of setting sun, they seem almost to breathe and talk to one another.

Mili's feeling and respect for stone and metal, if not unique, were certainly rare among photographers. He became known as the master of "the calculated accident." He went on to say of his technique, "Time could truly be made stand still. Texture could be retained despite sudden violent movement."

Mili, however, was a modest individual. he addressed himself to the students at Yale University by saying, "I came here as a humanist. Teaching you photography would be a failure, How can you tech something that took me fifty years to learn and forget? You can't teach that sort of thing in life."

Ironically, Mili's towering achievement are today, more wedded to fashion and advertising photography that to photojournalism. Models now march incessantly to the pit-and-pat of popping strobes, yet the first notes of this "music" were played in his church-studio over 40 years ago.

Mili died at the age of 79, in February, 1984. The New York Times announced his death. It is said that Mili always carried in his wallet a piece of paper with a quote from Heraclitus which read, "Everything is and is not, or everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly being and passing away."