A reprinting of long-lost interviews with photography icons.
As the lead interviewer for the now-defunct Darkroom Photography magazine, debut author Bultman didn’t shy away from approaching high-profile personalities, asking uncomfortable questions, and distilling complex photographic theories into digestible, compelling prose. The author spoke with some now-legendary photographers, such as Gordon Parks, Robert Mapplethorpe, Mary Ellen Mark, Ernst Haas, Barbara Crane, and Lee D. Witkin, and allowed each to speak freely about their practice, without any limitations. “Gordon Parks flirted. Lee Witkin was so likeable, I wanted him to be my new best friend. Robert Mapplethorpe was weak and barely articulate,” Bultman writes. “He hadn’t yet announced he had AIDS…but he was clearly ill. I left his studio, and I cried.” In this book, readers experience intimate discussions that had been lost to those without access to Darkroom Photography—all featuring Bultman’s intelligent questions, engaging repartee, and genuine curiosity. Many interviews published here were conducted in the 1980s, pre–9/11 and pre-digital age. As a result, a lot of their wonder and critical thinking may seem somewhat foreign to modern readers. In her interview with Parks, the photographer identifies “the camera as a weapon against intolerance, injustice, and poverty”; later, Mark says “there’s no such thing as being objective on a personal project. If you care about it, then you have to be subjective. But it’s very easy to make pictures lie, so you have to be fair in that sense.” Although these ideas aren’t novel, reading them here, as they were expressed by masters, may give readers goosebumps—and perhaps even entice some younger readers to consider photography in the same ways. Ultimately, this is a beautiful historical document of a long-gone era.
A magnetic and vital historical restoration.Pub Date: April 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-83443-5
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Quercus Agrifolia Press
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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