Category Archives: Book reviews

Photography books

Terence Cuneo

Steam train painting master.

Ask me which photography book I would choose if I could only have one and the answer has been unchanged for decades. It’s O. Winston Link’s (1914-2001) Steam, Steel and Stars. A masterpiece of nostalgia, composition and technique, it’s so good that I own two copies, the lighter paperback joining me on my travels:


Everyone should have two.

But a photographer can only go with what is there. Yes, he can change the lighting and composition but he does not have the creative freedom afforded a painter whose limits are those of his imagination. And if you want something of the same caliber as Link’s photographs on a canvas the only choice is the work of Terence Cuneo (1907-96).

High drama is a given in his moving train canvases:


High drama.

Yet the more mundane images are no less powerful and nostalgic:


The signalman.

Cuneo would generally make pen and ink sketches first and completed many commissions for British Railways. In this example, where the cab is being lowered onto the wheels and chassis, he arrived too late. Because he was well known by the operators it was a moment’s work for them to raise the cab so he could complete his sketch:


Preliminary sketch.

And then, Boom!, an absolute masterpiece:


An Engine is Wheeled.

Imagine an advertising campaign today with this ‘backroom’ approach? Pictures of Chinese slave labor assembling iPhones? I don’t think so.

And if you desire Impressionist genius, Cuneo is happy to oblige, as in this image on the Orient Express:


Impressionism on the Orient Express.

These images are from a splendid book titled ‘Terence Cuneo: Railway Painter of the Century‘. It’s long out of print but available from used sellers and the quality of the printing on very thick stock does justice to Cuneo’s canvases.

Saul Leiter revisited

Now famous.

While I was an early aficionado of Saul Leiter’s (1923-2013) work – see Early Color – he has since become renowned and there are now several books of his work in print.

Christmas saw one of those join the library and it’s named The Unseen Saul Leiter. As ‘Early Color’ is now high priced ‘unobtainium’ this is as good an introduction to Leiter’s work as there is, at a modest price.


Click the image for Amazon US.

Leiter’s vision is as fresh today as when he made these images and the book is highly recommended.

Classic cocktails

Of the Prohibition era. Book review.

Churchill, who hated mixed drinks, once remarked that “Americans will always do the right thing, having first tried all the alternatives.” His belief falls down when it comes to mixed drinks for Americans have been mixing cocktails since the Prohibition era (1920-33) and continue merrily doing so to this day. And while Prohibition itself is a shining example of the accuracy of his dictum, mixed drinks survive and prosper.

Indeed, the stupidity of Prohibition was the driver behind many of the mixed drinks profiled in this book (not to mention the foundation of the Mob’s fortune), which I purchased some 25 years ago for Sam Sargent’s outstanding photography. I just rediscovered it in my chaotic, randomly sorted library. That’s the best way to store art books as pleasant surprises crop up daily when a long forgotten favorite surfaces, as in this case.

Why mix drinks? Because when all you have is bathtub gin (made in the Bronx) and yucky sweet rum smuggled in from Cuba, you have to kill the awfulness somehow. Today our ingredients are a tad better and mixed drinks survive and prosper.

Amazingly, a quarter of a century later the book remains available.


Click the image for Amazon.

Here’s another example of Sam Sargent’s work – each libation is displayed in a period glass – and like the book Sam appears to still be ticking along:


The TNT!

Unless you are a purist like WSC, I encourage you to buy this book for the great staging and photography – and maybe for some high end mixology!

For an index of all my book reviews, please click here.

Roger Deakins – Byways

A fine street snapper.

In addition to being amongst the most renowned of cinematographers, Roger Deakins is also a fine street snapper, with a style dating back to the 1950s when the moment was everything and composition mattered. These two attributes of a good street snap no longer exist, destroyed since 2007 by the iPhone which means everyone has a camera and thinks he is a good photographer.

So it’s a special pleasure to look at Deakins’s photobook with many examples of his street snaps over the years. The gentle sense of humor, typical of his generation of Englishmen, pervades many of these images and the book is highly recommended. If I have a favorite it’s this one, a sobering reminder not to associate with people who do not imbibe:


Prohibition lives.

A guide to life

The Steve Jobs Archive.

Rather than go on about a man I miss greatly, I will simply repeat an email I sent to my son:

Winnie –

This came out today.

There is no finer guide to life. The theme which runs through every page is : TAKE RISKS.

You have started well on a life of risk taking, striking out courageously on your own for New England. Soon you will take another risk and spend a semester in France. What could be finer?

The time to take risks is when you are young because you have time to recover from the inevitable failures you will encounter on the way. But if you fail to take risks the only destination which awaits you is mediocrity. Better to be dead than to arrive there.

Love,

Dad.


Steve.
Click the image.