An ambitious, glossy, consumer-friendly package that has a wide range of people commenting on photographs that have affected their lives. Heiferman and Kismaric run Lookout Books, a producer of popular photography titles (notably, William Wegman's children's series). Here, they interview some 69 individuals—celebrities, artists, laypeople—after having asked each to choose an image he or she finds powerful. Works of photojournalism, from the old Life magazine in particular, awoke feelings in many. G. Gordon Liddy tells of having a gut reaction at age 11 to a stark WW II image of dead Marines washed up on a New Guinea beach. Benjamin Spock speaks of being shocked to pacifist activism by Nick Ut's 1972 shot of children fleeing a napalm strike in Vietnam. From the other side of the camera, lensman Eddie Adams walks readers through a graphic account of how he happened upon his Vietnam-era picture of the execution of a Vietcong lieutenant. Elsewhere, art photographers such as Bruce Weber, Duane Michals, and Mary Ellen Mark weigh in, personalizing aspects of their craft. Celebrities contribute also, and strive not to sound vapid. These include: Ginger Rogers, Joan Rivers, Tony Bennett, Dennis Hopper, and Naomi Campbell. More lively are the views of everyday folks. Rock fan Gina Greco nimbly explains the ``wild monster'' appeal she finds in a portrait of Guns N' Roses lead singer Axl Rose. For some, family snapshots are the most emotionally loaded, as with convict Aida Rivera, whose HIV-positive sister Yvette poses proudly with her children, presaging her death. Other inclusions run the gamut—high-tech scientific studies, snapshots, advertising imagery, film stills, pornography. The book will accompany a traveling exhibition, which opens at New York's International Center of Photography this fall. Its contents are also being issued on CD-ROM. A slick and calculated crowd-pleaser of a project that ably pits fine art against popular culture.
Pub Date: Oct. 3, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0382-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
Maslowski (History/University of Nebraska at Lincoln) breaks fresh ground with a comprehensive history of WW II's anonymous heroes: its combat photographers. It may be that neither the brilliant general nor the loyal foot soldier was more crucial to America's WW II effort than the lowly combat photographer, who allowed civilians to witness what no one but soldiers had ever seen, and whose work proved invaluable to both generals and military analysts. The obstacles faced by these soldier/photographers were daunting: the weight of a motion-picture camera and film supply could stagger a man or a mule, and the official still camera was a Speed Graphic, so big and shiny that to pop it up from a foxhole invariably drew a hail of enemy bullets. The superior, lightweight German Leica camera was reverse- engineered by American labs but reached the front only in 1945; by then, however, American combat photographers had their own Leicas- -bought from looters. To assure the credibility of their film documentaries, the armed services had a strict policy of no ``reenactments''—but the trouble was, as one Omaha Beach veteran who later became a Hollywood director pointed out, the real thing didn't look as good as the movies: ``To do it right you'd have to blind the audience with smoke, deafen them with noise, then shoot one of them in the shoulder to scare the rest to death.'' The first great combat-movie breakthrough was John Huston's San Pietro, which documented the liberation of an Italian town. It was released to great acclaim (Time magazine declared that Huston's handiwork was ``as good a war film as any that has been made...remarkable in its honesty and excellence''), but in a fascinating display of historical sleuthing, Maslowski shows that many scenes in San Pietro were staged—including reenacted dialogue and ``dead Germans'' that were actually live GIs dressed in enemy uniforms. Virtuoso scholarship, formidably researched and exciting to read.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-920265-5
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
The art critic for The National Review bashes the contemporary art world and rails about the ``general paltriness of most art in our time.'' Gardner complains that the art world is riddled with money and glamour, and blames the ``artistic recession'' on ``art's obsession with art'' and ``nothing other than the pervasive and unchecked reverence in which art is held by critics and public alike.'' He covers the art front from the East Village Scene (``[East Village artists] have been out of fashion for several years, and the pyramids of Egypt seem not as old as they'') to Body Art and German Neo-Expressionism, as well as numerous artists: David Hockney, David Salle, Gerhard Richter (``one of the finest painters alive''), Keith Haring, Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, et al. ``Speaking as an enthusiast rather than as a critic,'' Gardner says, ``I find that what appeals most in the art of my contemporaries is, strangely, its smell...the freshness of acrylic on canvas....'' In addition to going after easy targets like the Whitney Biennial (``a country club from which only straight white males are excluded'') and Jeff Koons, the author dismisses the works of Anselm Kiefer—who ``plays the Sturm und Drang role to perfection''—as ``frail in conception, listless in execution, impressive only because of their size.'' But Gardner delivers a body blow here to his own argument as well by quoting a few phrases of the evocative prose and penetrating analysis of Robert Hughes, who described Kiefer as trying ``to shoulder the content of historical tragedy.'' In general, shallow kvetching. For serious, balanced, and truly provocative studies of contemporary art, see Hughes's Nothing if Not Critical (1990), or Arthur Danto's Encounters and Reflections (1990) and Beyond the Brillo Box (1992).
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-55972-208-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Birch Lane Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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