Category Archives: Book reviews

Photography books

Camera Crazy

Book reviews, Photographers

Lots of fun.

You can view my library of photography and art books by clicking here.


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If the original supermodels of the 1950s were Lisa Fonssagrives (later Mrs. Irving Penn) and Wenda Rogerson (Mrs. Norman Parkinson) you will not find them in this book whose focus is on the fashion photography world of the 1970s. Instead it’s models like Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington who feature heavily in the pages of this book and the whole confection is as fun as it gets.

Ostensibly intended to showcase Arthur Elgort‘s large camera collection it focuses on his always light and fun photography for the leading magazines of the day and, yes, it’s the Big Four which feature heavily in its pages. That means Leica, Nikon, Hasselblad and Rolleiflex.

The type is hard to read but you don’t come here for reading. Viewing is the goal. Highly recommended.


A small part of Elgort’s equipment cabinet.

Frank Horvat

Book reviews

Wit and class.

You can view my library of photography and art books by clicking here.

“You’re using a Rollei? Did God put your eyes on your stomach? And a flashlight? It’s an arbitrary interference! And color? I would only use color if I had my own palette, but I certainly wouldn’t rely on Kodak’s!”

The year is 1950, the city is the center of the western world – Paris – and a very young Italian photographer named Frank Horvat (1928-2020) had just received this tongue lashing at a weekly critique session. The lashing came from none other than Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Suffice it to say that Horvat traded in his Rollei for a used Leica and went on to become one of the mainstays of fashion photography in the last great decades of haute couture, the 1950s and 1960s.

Like the Englishmen Duffy, Donovan, Bailey and Armstrong-Jones, Horvat ditched the large format negative swapping it for the much grainier one from a Leica or Nikon and took the model out of the studio and into the streets. Lots of fun. Luxuriate in the host of images contained in the book’s 250+ pages, Horvat’s work filled with wit and whimsy.


Paris, 1958. Givenchy dress.

Terence Cuneo

Book reviews, Paintings

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

Book reviews

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.


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

Classic cocktails

Book reviews, Photographers

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.


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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.