THE HUMANITY BEHIND THE CELEBRITY: Candy Clark’s Tight Heads: An Ingénue’s View of 1970s Hollywood—One Polaroid at a Time.

THE HUMANITY BEHIND THE CELEBRITY: Candy Clark’s Tight Heads: An Ingénue’s View of 1970s Hollywood—One Polaroid at a Time.


HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - The stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, and that includes Candy Clark. Born in Oklahoma, raised in Fort Worth, and made famous in Hollywood, Candy has spent a lifetime in the glow of the spotlight. But in her new book, Tight Heads, she turns the camera around, sharing an intimate and unfiltered look at 1970s Hollywood through the lens of her Polaroid camera.




When Candy first arrived in Hollywood, fresh from Fort Worth, she was wide-eyed and full of wonder. She wasn’t a seasoned starlet or an ambitious photographer with a grand artistic vision—she was just a young woman caught up in the magic of it all. What she didn’t realize at the time was that her casual snapshots would become a time capsule, offering a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into an era of Hollywood that was wild, free, and wonderfully imperfect.




“I never tried to capture glamour,” Candy reflects. “Instead, I caught Warren Beatty mid-thought, Jack Nicholson mid-laugh, and Dennis Hopper mid-something that probably shouldn’t have been photographed at all.” Unlike posed studio portraits, her pictures reveal the humanity behind the celebrity—actors in their messy kitchens, cracking jokes at 3 a.m., living their lives beyond the glitz and red carpets.




Perhaps what makes Tight Heads truly special is the shift in perspective. Ingénues were supposed to be the ones being looked at, but Candy flipped the lens. Historian Sam Sweet, who rediscovered her Polaroids, sees her work as an unconscious act of rebellion. “For so long, men were the ones behind the camera, deciding how women were seen. But here was Candy, a young woman, capturing the biggest men in Hollywood at their most unguarded.”




Of course, Candy never set out to be a photographer. “If Warhol could do it, why couldn’t I?” she laughs. For her, taking pictures wasn’t about making art—it was about documenting the life she was living, surrounded by friends who just happened to be some of the most famous people in the world. The title Tight Heads comes from a phrase she picked up in her modeling days, but looking back, she jokes that it could mean anything—the friendships, the egos, or just the questionable haircuts they all thought were a good idea at the time.




For decades, these Polaroids sat forgotten in a shoebox under her bed, never meant to be anything more than personal keepsakes. But now, as she looks back, she realizes how special they are. These aren’t just snapshots; they’re memories—conversations frozen in time, laughter captured forever.




And for an ingénue who never expected to be behind the camera, it turns out Candy Clark caught something truly