An American master.

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While there is only one very small color reproduction in this massive book, the whole thing is printed in four tone color, rendering the monochrome images in exceptional depth, mostly with a warm tone. As the sparse text points out, the magazine originals from Steichen’s time as the chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair would have masked indications of manual retouching which are clearly visible here. Noses, in particular, appear to get a lot of work! The text also avers that Steichen differed from his successor Hoyningen-Heune and his successor Horst in that Steichen’s work was far more varied. I have to agree. Steichen was much more creative with props and locations, where Hoyningen-Heune and Horst tended to use the same Greek statues and painted backgrounds time and again.

A couple of special favorites include Lee Miller (Plate 100, 114) showcasing the beauty of a woman who would go on to become a great photographer in her own right, and of the peerless Vladimir Horowitz (Plate 107 – dark and brooding) whose Chopin and Scriabin are increasingly the only interpretations I care to listen to.

This book is not just a survey of great clothes and famous wearers, but most importantly it is a showcase for the work of a great American master photographer, the highest paid of his time.

Book review.

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Photographers like National Geographic’s William Albert Allard and Sam Abell pretty much put the nail in the coffin of tired and increasingly pretentious hack monochrome work. We live in a world of color and refusing to see it thus mostly testifies to the skill of the photographer, or lack thereof. Sure, every now and then something works better in black and white but mostly that’s for the artsy-fartsy set or for collectors of vintage images. Yes, HC-B is better without color, but he is in a class of one.

This is a magnificent book. The color photographs, their reproduction, Allard’s text – the whole thing is as good as it gets. Allard never pulls punches but that does not make his work in any way crude. Some of the slaughterhouse pictures will offend tender sensibilities.This is a great color photojournalist at work.

Highly recommended for anyone wanting to broaden his vision.

Allard writes:

“I think I can feel color … I can’t explain it, but I can feel it. In my photography, color and composition are inseparable. I see in color”. Bravo!

My favorite? ‘Outside my window’ taken in, where else? Paris, Le Marais on page 153. The cover picture of the Sicilian beauty Benedetta Buccellato, above, is interestingly not especially representative of his work, so don’t expect a book of fashion pictures. However, I can only agree with his friend’s comment on seeing the actress’s portrait gracing the cover of National Geographic: “A beautiful woman on one cover is worth ten months of monkeys”. You can keep the monkeys and you won’t find any in this book. The work here is that of a color street snapper par excellence.

Book review.

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This book profiles four famous National Geographic photographers spanning the transition from large format glass plates to 35mm Leica Kodachromes. The sense of arduous discovery, the difficulty and danger of the expeditions these men undertook and the unstinting commitment of the National Geographic Society to exposing its readership to the unknown is hard to convey.

The men profiled – Maynard Owen Williams, Luis Marden, Volkmar Wentzel and Thomas Abercrombie – are all exceptional. Whether polyglots, great writers (true photjournalists), technologists (Marden was an expert pilot and scuba diver) or humanitarians (Abercrombie became a Muslim, so committed was he to the Arabic way of life from his travels), all were superb photographers.

There are many fascinating tidbits here, such as NG’s reluctance to take Marden’s Leica negatives seriously. Then Kodachrome came along and all that changed.

But the prevailing memory from reading this beautifully printed book is of the photographs, never less than special, often breathtaking.

You can pay up at Amazon for this $40 tome or get one from Edward R Hamilton, as I did, for all of $3.95. I order books there by the dozen and whether you buy one or a hundred, shipping is $3.95. That’s quite a bargain had you tried to lift the last delivery into your home as I did. I’m going to need the money saved on shipping to pay the chiropractor.

The economics of art books continue to leave me befuddled. Why would anyone want to lose so much money? Thank goodness they do, though, as it makes for an inexpensive library.

A fine street photographer.

The Swiss photographer Rudy Burckhardt (1914-1999) wisely chose New York as his home, well away from the stolid burghers of his place of birth. There he found the excitement of the streets as can only be found in a few of the great metropolises of the world – New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, London – where else is there? His street snaps take three guises – candids, vernacular works (contemporary advertisements and the like) and architecture.

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All are done with a lovely gentle touch, with none of the occasional brutality of fellow traveler Walker Evans.

Recommended for all enamored of the street photography genre. This generously illustrated book is some $32 from Amazon, but I found mine for all of $11.95 at Edward R. Hamilton – they may have a few left, so hurry. The book includes an interesting essay on Burckhardt by Phillip Lopate.