Pure joy.

The undistilled, unalloyed pleasure of a new book is one that remains a perennial source of excitement. But until now I confess I have never opened a book with such an immense grin on my face as this one.

You see, the whole thing looks like a giant carton of cigarettes and you have to find the peel strip on the cellophane to get into the book – just like opening a pack. Then when you finally get the wrapper off, the book emerges from the box in much the same way a cigarette would. Brilliant!

Let’s get the moralizing out of the way, first. In no way is this piece remotely adulatory of one of the more dangerous drugs around. However, it’s a free country and if you want to smoke go ahead. I own cigarette stocks now and then so have at it. Your lungs are my dividend. Just don’t blow the smoke in my direction or exhale in my home.

This book is all about how cigarettes were the glamor accessory over much of the twentieth century in Western culture, especially in the movies. It also shows pictures of how tobacco became increasingly demonized as that century drew to a close and how inept the advertising to curb consumption of the addiction that is nicotine really was.

The photographs span the century as do the many graphic illustrations and there’s something for everyone her – great photography, skilled drawings, exceptional advertising. Too bad that the frisson one gets from peeling the cellophane wrapper can be enjoyed but once!

And when you have had enough, rush out and get Thank you for Smoking with the wonderful Aaron Eckhart as the tobacco industry lobbyist who could sell cigarettes to a terminal lung cancer victim. Wonderfully acted and very on topic for our image obsessed and sound bite fixated society with its negligible attention span.

Smoke away. Just don’t make me pay for your cancer and coronary.

A fine German fashion photographer.

The words “wit” and “photography” are rare companions when the photographer in question is German, but Regina Relang is an honorable exception to the rule that has it that humor has yet to be discovered in Germany.

The Elegant World of Regina Relang, by Esther Ruelfs

Relang’s career spans the immediately pre- and post-WW2 periods, the latter perhaps the greatest outpouring of great fashion and photography we have yet seen.

Her oeuvre is both light hearted and witty and never less than totally sophisticated. And while many of her German models look as if someone took a floor brush to them to reveal a new layer of perfect, unblemished epidermis – what else to expect of the Master Race? – that detracts little from the charm and beauty of her photography.

The book is frustratingly written in both German and (stodgy) English, with the English version in very light print on a light background (conspiracy theorists can have at it here) but as it’s the only monograph out there on Relang, I’m going to button my lip. No book on photography should have a ‘must read’ text and this one certainly more than espouses that dictum. The writing, or maybe it’s the translation, is beyond pedantic.

Wit, class and sophistication. Suzy Parker photographed by Regina Relang, Berlin, 1954.

Relang was also a fine photographer in the more general sense and a selection of her non-fashion work is also on display here. Some of her later work is in color and she has as fine a sense for a simple color palette as she does for monochrome.

A few points of technical interest. Reading between the lines I conclude that Relang was mostly a Rollei twin lens reflex user. What makes this remarkable is that while the small size and low weight of the Rollei liberated the camera from the studio, nothing could suit a waist level Rollei less well than Relang’s style. Relang, you see, was all about motion and action, movement blur and so on. If you have ever tried using a TLR Rollei to follow action (in her time the eye level frame finder was not yet available, being introduced on later models) you will know why I say this. It’s near impossible as the image in the viewfinder is reversed.

Unlike her contemporaries Avedon and Penn, who typically adopt an “everything must be sharp” style, it is rare to find a Relang picture which does not use selective focus. The varied use of this technique in the many pictures in this book speaks to a very high level of technical skill on the part of the photographer. With the depth of field equivalent to a 75 or 80mm lens on a 35mm camera, (but with the field of view of a standard lens), selective focus is easily available at larger apertures, of course.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in beautiful photography, gorgeous women, haute couture or great technique.

In my case that’s all of the above.

Don’t waste your money at Amazon – get a remaindered copy. Mine ran $20 from Edward G. Hamilton.

Yes, dear, NYC does have five boroughs.

To the average Manhattan dweller who, like the cartoonist Steinberg, believes civilization is bounded by 96th Street, Water Street, the Hudson and East rivers, it will come as a shock if I write that some of the most charming architecture and open spaces in New York City are to be found in the Borough of Brooklyn. And, of course, the best views of downtown from the Promenade on the East River.

I was fortunate to live there for a while when I first moved to New York in 1980 and liked much of what I saw – vibrant cultural diversity, a burgeoning progressive arts scene and all those great parks and churches. And it’s closer to Wall Street by subway than much of Manhattan.

These thoughts came flooding back upon opening the pages of this quite splendid book:

On opposing pages we see pictures of identical sites in Brooklyn with the old ones typically taken fifty to a hundred years ago. What is so striking is that, almost without exception, the old Brooklyn looks a whole lot better than the new, the latter invaded with ugly mass housing and devoid of the welcoming warmth of trolleys and trams.

It is only appropriate that the Brooklyn Bridge adorns the covers for there is no finer architecture to be found in America.

It’s a great way to wile away a couple of hours for very little – my remaindered copy ran a few dollars.

In a class of one.

The cover says it all

If you love severe sculptural form – whether in your women, buildings or clothes – then there’s a strong argument to be made that fashion starts and ends with the Basque designer Balenciaga.

If you love great photography of the most beautiful women and clothes ever seen, then there’s every reason to get this very large and very expensive book about the designer.

The core of the book addresses Balenciaga’s output through 1968 when he closed his eponymous couture store in Paris. The last third deals with the resuscitated Balenciaga name from 1999 on and it is rubbish – ugly people in T shirts and poor make-up. The book is still worth it for the first two thirds.

The 1950s saw the nascent flowering of the supermodel who would henceforth have a name and with it fame and fortune. The only snag is that Balenciaga’s designs demanded a perfect figure. Size 8 and up need not apply. And in the likes of Lisa Fonssagrives (Mrs. Irving Penn), Suzy Parker and the impossibly perfect Dovima (she of Avedon’s ‘Dovima with Elephants’) Balenciaga had all he needed to best show his creations. The Basque with French and Spanish in his blood and the sureness of line last seen in Matisse tolerated nothing less than perfection.

There was another significant change in the 1950s – the rise of the supermodel coincided with like ascendancy of star photographers, and their work is on show in a big way here – Cartier-Bresson (some priceless dressing room snaps which are new to me), Avedon, Penn, Clarke. The best of the best.

Here’s my favorite of Dovima in a stunning Balenciaga creation, appropriately taken by Richard Avedon.

Balenciaga and Dovima, 1950

And if the following raises a question it is a simple one – Where have all the lovely women gone?

Balenciaga and Georgia Hamilton by Avedon, 1953