A great LIFE photographer.

By 1965 television had replaced LIFE as the primary source of news for households. LIFE folded soon after. Yet the weekly, created by Henry Luce in 1936, once enjoyed a circulation of over 13 million, and it was during those years that John Phillips worked for the magazine.

I confess that when I first saw this massive tome, all 572 pages, I was immediately reminded of the great American novel – something seemingly devoid of any editing and consequently tedious and boring. Nothing could be further from the truth in the case of Phillips’s illustrated autobiography where the writing simply sparkles.

Phillips (1914-1996) worked for LIFE during the years 1936-1959, where his career included publication in the very first issue. As a child at school, when asked what he wanted to be, the unquestioning answer was “I want to be a photographer when I grow up” and that is what he became. With a Welsh father and American mother, born in French occupied Algeria, it’s no wonder he had wanderlust. His travels took him to most of the trouble spots of WWII and, as he worked in the days when photographers did the words and the pictures, the standard of writing in his book is exceptional. You are always left wanting more and the book is a real page turner.

Some extracts:

Four days later we put into Port Taufiq. The authorities there were surprised to see us. We had been reported sunk by the Germans. Leaning over the side of the ship waiting to disembark, I reflected there was no satisfaction in photographing a munitions ship. If nothing happened, you had no story. If something did, you had no photographs.

Taking advantage of our conversation, I asked Mr. Kram (Churchill’s aide) about the Prime Minister’s drinking habits. “He never has a drop of whisky before 9 am” Mr. Kram said. “And before that?” I inquired, half-seriously. “Vermouth”

The King (Farouk of Egypt) and Queen’s private apartments were crammed with Louis XIV and Louis XV furniture. Seen ‘en masse’ it went a long way to explaining why the French Revolution came with Louis XVI.

Curious about the novelist (Evelyn Waugh), I joined him on his constitutional. He talked about education. “My father was better educated than I am, and I am better educated than my son.” This he put down to the decline in Greek studies. “What about engineering?” I asked. “Do you expect my son to be a taxi driver?”

Well, now you know why the British Empire collapsed.

While out of print, the book is readily available on the used and remaindered market and if you like good writing by a photographer who was there when history unfolded, you should pick up a copy. Some of the pictures are pretty hard to take – especially the ones of German atrocities in WWII – but Phillips never pulls his punches.

A fascinating chronicle

When it comes to fashion – the great years of fashion through 1960, that is – the interested student can indulge in one stop shopping with no fear of missing anything of importance. And that one stop is Paris. Throughout the first sixty years of the twentieth century the domination of this creative center of the world was all you needed to know about, a natural magnet for the best and the most innovative in the world of women’s clothing and accessories. Poiret, Vionnet, Chanel, Gres, Balenciaga, Dior – the list is a Who’s Who of the nucleus of clothing design.

Naturally, the greatest photographers of the age gravitated to this force of nature, and it certainly didn’t hurt that their city of choice was the most beautiful the western world had to offer. It remains so to this day. While the British were busy trying to hold on to a fading empire and the Germans were busy killing everyone, the French devoted their efforts to what the French do best. Great clothes, great design and great food. A casual visitor to the City of Light need only glance at the delicious filigree cast iron entrance to any Metro station and he will know that there’s something special in the air.

So the best photographers either ended up in Paris or were to be found photographing Parisian fashion for Vogue and Harper’s. If you liked high-end kitsch Baron de Meyer and Beaton were your first port of call. High style romantics gravitated to Hoyningen-Huene. Ascetics to Penn. And the cubist set settled on Horst P. Horst. That was the top end. But Vogue needed to fill its burgeoning page count with more than any one of these exemplars of taste and quality could produce so they went to the journeymen of the fashion photography world, the Seeberger brothers. Unlike the Penns et al of the photo world the Seebergers never made it into society or the salons. They were tradesmen photographers and traded quantity, in the guise of snaps of the latest fashions, for quality. And the magazines bought their work throughout the period.

This book is a fascinating look not only at the fashions of the era but also at the gargantuan output of the three brothers – you cannot distinguish the work of one from that of the others. It’s production line quality. Invariably taken at the racecourses of Paris, where the smart set liked to show off its finery, the pictures show both the rich and the ‘plants’ (models masquerading as society to better show off Chanel’s latest) in a functional way. The emphasis is totally on the clothes, gowns often photographed from behind to show off the details. If there’s a sea change in photographic style here, it occurs in 1935 when the brothers migrated from 5″ x 7″ glass plate ‘portable cameras’ (the book’s words, not mine – tripods were forbidden at racecourses, so these monsters had to be hand held!) to the Rolleiflex. Depth of field suddenly changes from isolated to contextual, and for the better. You can make out the setting without being distracted by it, whereas in the earlier plate camera pictures, backgrounds are completely blurred, often to distraction. Witness the pre-Rollei cover picture, above.

This is a lovely book, with a compelling, well informed narrative. In 1970 the Seebergers’ collection passed to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France where, mercifully, it safely remains to this day.

Perish the thought

One of the simple, yet sublime, pleasures in life is to stroll past a bookcase and be rewarded with some gem long forgotten. A moment later and you are on a trip to a place unknown, basking in California’s late sun.

The thick art paper invariably used in photography books permits high quality reproduction and the tactile and olfactory pleasures, coupled with the user’s choice of sequential or random access …. well, there’s a lot to love about Gutenberg’s invention.

As machines go, the printing press has had a decently long life of 570 years and counting, though it’s a piker compared to, say, the catapult (an elegant, simple tool) or the wheel. Compare those to the lives of sound reproducing media – wax cylinders, shellac 78s, LPs, stereo LPs, Cassettes, 8 Track, CD, iPod – none has lived more than a couple of decades.

Yet while I am committed to getting clutter out of my life (my ideal being Woody Allen’s place in Sleeper), I still cannot get worked up about looking at photography books on a screen. I recognize that some media – black and white comes to mind – benefit greatly from transillumination – but the magic of a book compares favorably to the netbook warming my lap as I type this. I would have said ‘frying’ but I got rid of my MacBook in the interest of my testicles.

The transition to reading news, analysis and fiction from paper to screen is accelerating, so you can bet that we will have full color Kindles, or whatever, before long. Maybe the screen will become a flexible pellicle with pictures sent wirelessly for it to display; that might work, I suppose, but I think this is still a bit sci-fi.

Meanwhile, I am going to stroll past my bookcases.

Really, really Big.

‘Really, really Big’. Thus starts the introduction to this book of photographs by Lynn Davis, authored by Witold Rybczynski. Rybczynski’s 4 page introduction is alone worth the price of admission to this book, which features pictures of American Monuments – be they gas stations or the Lincoln Memorial – all in gently printed monochrome. The whole production reeks of class and presents the viewer with subtle images which let you do the thinking. Not that common in photo books where the images frequently scream for attention.

If your interests include architecture and fine photography then there is every reason to own this beautifully made book.