Book review

While Cecil Beaton was the ‘go to’ photographer at British Vogue in the 1930s, his counterpart at French Vogue was the aristocratic and temperamental George Hoyningen-Huene. (Cecil was temperamental but, try as he might, no aristocrat).

Where Beaton’s tastes tended to the frou-frou, Huene’s were solidly based in Greek classicism, as the wonderful pictures on display here show. His fascination with Greek sculpture and architecture is everywhere to be seen in his photographs, which are marvels of careful composition and lighting. The most reproduced is probably this one from his bathing costume series. The author William Ewing does a great job of explaining exactly how this picture was made (you will be amazed and I’m not telling!) and when you realize that the male model is none other than Huene’s long time companion and ace pupil Horst P. Horst, well, it’s icing on the cake.

Published some ten years ago in paperback, this book remains available from Amazon. When I tell you that all of Huene’s negatives went up in a house fire and the ones here are reproduced from prints, your heart may sink. No need. The quality of the reproductions is fine, including some dazzling color plates – I’m guessing on early Kodachrome – and the book is an absolute essential for anyone interested in the development of twentieth century photography (I almost wrote ‘fashion photography’ but Huene’s work is far more than that).

As for the equally wonderful work of Horst, well, more of him later.

Huene was also a major influence on the Vogue photographer John Rawlings, whom you can read more about here.

Book review

A photographer whose vision matches that of the best, but with none of their technical limitations, Ilse Bing deserves the renaissance her work is currently enjoying. Like Cartier-Bresson she did her best work in the thirties and, like him, insisted on using the small negative Leica, even using it exclusively in her studio advertising work.

From the cover photo to the colophon, this is one splendid display of the work of a great pioneering photographer. Like Kertesz and Cartier-Bresson, there is the wonder at all things new, the joy of discovering the sheer liberating qualities of a portable, small and fast snapshot camera. Just check the picture of Greta Garbo – I’m not telling the story here! You need this book.

Everything about this book, available from Amazon, is special. Whether the great photography, the impeccable reproductions, the erudite and well written essay by Larisa Dryansky – well, the whole production exudes quality, style and perfection. The quality Bing managed to extract from the poor monochrome films of the time has to be seen to be believed. I have not encountered so exciting a book of photography in ages, and it has replaced my well worn copy of Cartier-Bressons’s ‘The Man, the Image and the World’ as the ‘book on display’ in the ancestral home.

Book review

Taken in moderation, a sip here, a nibble there, these sixties diaries of Cecil Beaton are a blast to read. A sort of cross between the National Enquirer and the Tatler. Indiscreet, vicious, bitchy, funny, warm spirited, mean, generous, spiteful, the full panoply of human emotions, both good and base, is on parade for all to see here. And Beaton is rarely without his camera, conjuring up some new piece of fluff for all to enjoy.

If you like this sort of thing, and I wouldn’t put it on the recommended reading list without at least some prior exposure to his earlier, less gossipy writing, it’s a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Book review

This slim volume has been on my bookshelf for some ten years now, a gift when it was first published. Amazingly, it remains in print, which says something for the appeal of these light-as-air sunny snaps from a great French amateur photographer who did his best work in the 1930s.

This collection makes for a pleasant way to spend an hour or so on a sun filled Sunday afternoon. Nothing deep here, just pure confection, and worth it for that fact alone.

Book Review

Click the image to go to Amazon.

With a Hungarian expatriate about to win the French elections – not hard when you are running against an idiot who never read Economics 101, meaning an opponent whose cure for unemployment is to create half a million new government jobs – it seems appropriate to focus today’s journal entry on a Parisian expatriate photographer who also happened to be Hungarian, none other than the great André Kertesz. Kertesz at least had the good sense to leave Paris before the forces of evil took over, a similar sitiuation to that prevailing today in the world’s most gorgeous city. The difference this time is that a more insular America is not about to bail out a country cursed with the muddle headed socialism of fifty years of the Fifth Republic. Like the worthless doorman in my New York apartment of days yore, the only thing most French workers seem good at is walking around, hand outstretched, palm upwards.

The Paris of Kertész’s day was a better place.

This large format 302 page book, available from Amazon, is not cheap but as, to my amazement, I had no definitive Kertesz monograph in my library, I paid up the not inconsiderable price of entry and have to say it was worth every penny.

The book has its frustrations – the difficulty of finding the right illustrations to match the text, the sheer pig headed idiocy of reproducing miniscule prints of his early work sorrounded by acres of white – are the two worst. However, the narrative, broken into the three main periods of Kertesz’s life, is priceless, something you will rarely encounter in any art book. Special note has to be made of Sarah Greenough’s writing in her two essays which address his formative years in Hungary (1894-1925), and the key years in Paris (1925-1936). Erudite, deeply researched and incredibly informative yet never condescending, it’s art writing at its very best.

Anyone growing up with black and white photography – which means largely people my age and older – cannot have but been affected by Kertesz’s work. His unusual compositions, original points of view and tightness of framing all make for compelling imagery.

Kertész by Pindelski, South Bank, London, 1973. Leica M3, 50mm Elmar, TriX

I cannot count the number of my early images I made by looking up or down at severe angles – Kertész’s influence at work.

A key book for any photographer’s collection.