Category Archives: Book reviews

Photography books

The Kodak Girl

Book reviews, Film

A wonderful anthology.

Click here to see my library of Photo and Art books.

Ask any photography enthusiast to name the great manufacturers of the 20th century and most would likely include Leitz, Zeiss, Graflex, Nikon and …. Kodak. There’s a strong case to be made that if you had to name just one it would be the latter for without Eastman Kodak of Rochester, New York none of the others would likely have come into existence.

Kodak, of course, was not just the dominant film maker of the past century, it was also a major manufacturer of cameras and its advertising frequently speaks to both businesses. Vertical integration at its best.

And much of that early advertising is to be found, in abundance, in the book aptly named ‘The Kodak Girl’. Neither Kodak nor the book’s title were into the poison of Political Correctness, thank goodness.


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As with all the best books about photography text is sparse and the illustrations are everything. Here are a couple of favorites:



Very early advertisements.



Graflex gets in on the act,
in the style of Bouguereau.

Nantucket

Book reviews, Photographers

An outstanding picture book.

For an index of all my book reviews click here.


Gorgeously illustrated.

Nantucket Island, once a stronghold for whale hunters after the animals’ oil, used for interior lighting, lost that monopoly when Rockefeller’s Standard Oil started refining crude to make much cheaper kerosene, much to the relief of the whales. The island is only accessible by boat or light aircraft:


In the Atlantic.

Perhaps Robert Gambee’s outstanding book is Wall Street Christmas which beautifully illustrates the corridors of financial power but also supplements each image with details and trivia which make for a fascinating reading and viewing experience.

So when I discovered that Gambee had also published a volume of images taken on Nantucket Island I snapped one up. It’s long out of print but mint copies can be had for pennies.

Not only is the photography up to Gambee’s high standard, full of warm interiors in yellow paint and even warmer woods, there’s a wonderful hidden surprise to be found. You see every third image or so includes a 1950s vintage American automobile, the last era in which America made the world’s finest cars. And, as with the Wall Street book, each image is accompanied by fascinating text which fleshes out many historical facts.


Note the woody station wagon.

The homes are described in detail …. as are the wonderful vehicles. Robert Gambee’s ‘Nantucket’ is recommended without reservation to all photography, vintage car and early American history buffs.

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.