aenigma is all about images from the the worlds of fashion and the movies and the stories behind them.
Short stories is a good place to come if you don’t have time for one of the longer pieces. Below you’ll find a selection of shots that illustrate the range of subjects covered by aenigma. It’s a deliberately eclectic mix with, hopefully, something for everybody.
Use the filter buttons to home in on topics that might interest you, and then the Read more button to go to the whole story.
1945. Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of MGM's stills department, with his thumb on the shutter-release button, looks intently at Ava Gardner. The year is 1945, Ava is 23 years old...
May 1962. Marilyn Monroe sits on the edge of a swimming pool on the set of Something’s Got To Give. In the film she swims naked, and to generate advance...
1956. Odile Rodin is well aware of her greatest assets and dresses to set them off to perfection. Born Odile Bérard, she has adopted the artistic name of Rodin to...
1966. David Hemmings, as Thomas, straddles the writhing Veruschka in a scene from Michelangelo Antonioni's cult film, Blow-Up. It's about a hip fashion photographer who believes he has unwittingly caught...
1941. Ava Gardner and friends at an MGM Halloween party. This is Ava's (front left) first year in Hollywood and it will be another six until she makes her breakthrough...
April 1956. Brigitte Bardot takes time out from the Cannes Film Festival to visit Pablo Picasso in Vallauris. In the sunny garden outside his studio, Picasso, one of the 20th...
November 1945. Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, at the zenith of their careers, are out on the town. But things aren't going well. He is giving her the most furious...
1963. One of the 20th century's greatest, most glamorous and tempestuous romances, played out in the glare of the media spotlight. Lust, booze, diamonds, yachts, jealousy – it had them...
1999. Sophie Marceau steals the show as Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough, the 19th James Bond film. Beautiful, elegant, sophisticated, complex – really just your average Bond...
1959. Dawn has yet to break as Anita Ekberg (as Sylvia in Federico Fellini's iconic movie, La Dolce Vita) wanders into the Trevi fountain in Rome. 'She had the beauty...
26 January 1941. Gene Tierney, dancing with Oleg Cassini, exchanges smiles with actress Ruth Hussey (dressed as a rag doll) and producer Raphael Hakim (a sheik), reputed to be...
11 December, 1969. Salvador Dali and Ludmilla Tchérina attend The Paris Lido's new show, The Grand Prix. Dali, the mad surrealist artist, attributed his "love of everything that is...
8 April 1937. Two Tinseltown stars are caught off guard – no artful lighting, considered poses, careful composition. A true candid and not what the studio ordered. Here's the story,...
May 1956. Richard Avedon looks over photographs with Arlene Dahl. Avedon, one of the 20th century's greatest photographers, is in Hollywood as technical advisor for Funny Face, starring Fred Astaire...