Looking at that photo, and comparing it with the image of Kubrick that we all knew from his late 1960s publicity shots until his death, is a reminder at how fascinating it can be to flip through A Life In Pictures and watch Kubrick's image change. He was born in 1928 to a wealthy Bronx physician, whose wife would buy Stanley's suits, even up to his early years of living in Los Angeles in the 1950s. By the time he permanently moved to England in 1965, Kubrick's appearance gradually, but radically changed: as his hair thinned, he grew a thick black beard eventually worthy of a Talmudic scholar, and gradually lost any interest in personal style. He may have been the greatest American film director, but at the height of his career, he looked like a cross between an itinerant college student, and an itinerant hobo.

In addition to numerous photos of Stanley on and off the set, Christiane also assembles several of his most important still photographs, including his 1945 photo of a glum newspaper dealer surrounded by headlines of FDR's death, which landed him the plum assignment of Look magazine's youngest staff photographer. There are also several photographs of Kubrick with another famous New York photographer, Weegee, who would be the inspiration for Peter Seller's voice as Dr. Strangelove. And there are full-color reproductions of some Christiane's paintings, which feature Stanley either prominently, or in their backgrounds.

Only with his death, has Kubrick's legend subsided somewhat. But it's difficult to describe the feeling, while he was alive, of waiting for his next film. Each of which, took successively longer and longer for him to chose a subject matter and complete. Of course, of those films, it's been frequently said that Stanley Kubrick was their real star. Kubrick was rarely in front of the camera, but as his wife's new book demonstrates, he certainly lead a Life in Pictures.