Stunning Portraits of a Young Greta Garbo Taken by Arnold Genthe in New York, 1925

Arnold Genthe (1869–1942) was a German photographer and his series of photographs would be the first serious study of Greta Garbo (1905–1990) as an artist. In July of 1925, Garbo and Finnish film director Mauritz Stiller were waiting in New York to get instructions by MGM. Than one evening they had a meeting with a new friend, photographer Dr. Arnold Genthe. Genthe immediately wanted to make pictures of her. The pictures were taken in the hot summer of 1925 in New York.

After he saw Greta, Genthe immediately wanted to make pictures of her. But Greta wasn’t prepared and pleaded: “Look at the dress I have on and my hair – oh no, not now!” Genthe wasn’t interested in pictures of her clothes or hair. He wanted a portrait of her soul and stated: “You are here and I am here and my camera is ready.” She finally consented and results were breathtaking. Each pose reveals a new facet of her persona: sensual, dramatic, vulnerable, intensely female, always distinctive.

By August 1925, director and friend of Stiller, Victor Sjöström delivered the Genthe pictures to Louis B. Mayer, the Head of MGM. It is said that at first, Mayer didn’t recognize the woman in the pictures as the actress he had signed in Berlin. A portrait from this sitting was published in Vanity Fair in November 1925.

Here Genthe was in the vanguard, one of the early photographers who understood the potential of artistic expressiveness in portraiture. Genthe’s photographs lack Hollywood’s glossy polish; instead, they show raw emotion, whether Garbo looks seriously into the camera or Genthe concentrates on the elegant silhouette of her neck.