by Paul Grabhorn photographed by Paul Grabhorn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 2015
A more circumstantial text would have been welcome, but Grabhorn's photographs lend urgency to the ICRC’s important missions.
A photographic record, often moving while difficult to take in, of the humanitarian crises of the last quarter-century.
Related to the Grabhorn family of fine printing fame, Grabhorn here documents the labors of the International Committee of the Red Cross, with which he has worked since 1992. "The ICRC," he writes, "is the only organization with the mission of preserving the dignity of people affected by war and standing up for basic principles and rules of humanitarian law." Presenting images mostly from Africa but also from the Balkans and parts of Asia and South America, Grabhorn details just what that work involves, with all the difficulties of protocol and diplomacy attendant. As he recalls of an operation in Somalia, for instance, American military planes used for convoying supplies had to accommodate unarmed personnel, while the ICRC had to allow an armed escort of the convoys. There are hopeful signs to be seen in the cornucopia of goods that the ICRC has been able to muster in its relief expeditions, as well as in the grateful faces of those served; these are tempered by the grimness of Grabhorn's photographs of such things as surgical operations in the field. The photographs, documentary in nature, seldom attain the luminousness of art, but some stand out above others: a Chechen soldier gazing with suspicious weariness into the lens; a page of handwritten Arabic script, threatened by Islamic fundamentalists, trembling in the desert wind there. The best of those images show that life goes on even in the face of horror, as Tuareg women sing and children in Sarajevo draw clean water.
A more circumstantial text would have been welcome, but Grabhorn's photographs lend urgency to the ICRC’s important missions.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0670016853
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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by Blake Gopnik ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
A fascinating, major work that will spark endless debates.
An epic cradle-to-grave biography of the king of pop art from Gopnik (co-author: Warhol Women, 2019), who served as chief art critic for the Washington Post and the art and design critic for Newsweek.
With a hoarder’s zeal, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) collected objects he liked until shopping bags filled entire rooms of his New York town house. Rising to equal that, Gopnik’s dictionary-sized biography has more than 7,000 endnotes in its e-book edition and drew on some 100,000 documents, including datebooks, tax returns, and letters to lovers and dealers. With the cooperation of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the author serves up fresh details about almost every aspect of Warhol’s life in an immensely enjoyable book that blends snappy writing with careful exegeses of the artist’s influences and techniques. Warhol exploded into view in his mid-40s with his pop art paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans and silkscreens of Elvis and Marilyn. However, fame didn’t banish lifelong anxieties heightened by an assassination attempt that left him so fearful he bought bulletproof eyeglasses. After the pop successes, Gopnik writes, Warhol’s life was shaped by a consuming desire “to climb back onto that cutting edge,” which led him to make experimental films, launch Interview magazine, and promote the Velvet Underground. At the same time, Warhol yearned “for fine, old-fashioned love and coupledom,” a desire thwarted by his shyness and his awkward stance toward his sexuality—“almost but never quite out,” as Gopnik puts it. Although insightful in its interpretations of Warhol’s art, this biography is sure to make waves with its easily challenged claims that Warhol revealed himself early on “as a true rival of all the greats who had come before” and that he and Picasso may now occupy “the top peak of Parnassus, beside Michelangelo and Rembrandt and their fellow geniuses.” Any controversy will certainly befit a lodestar of 20th-century art who believed that “you weren’t doing much of anything as an artist if you weren’t questioning the most fundamental tenets of what art is and what artists can do.”
A fascinating, major work that will spark endless debates.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-229839-3
Page Count: 976
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
by Randee St. Nicholas ; photographed by Randee St. Nicholas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 19, 2019
A dazzling visual homage to a music icon gone too soon.
A Los Angeles–based photographer pays tribute to a legendary musician with anecdotes and previously unseen images collected from their 25-year collaboration.
St. Nicholas (co-author: Whitney: Tribute to an Icon, 2012, etc.) first met Prince in 1991 at a prearranged photo shoot. “The dance between photographer and subject carried us away into hours of inspired photographs…and the beginning of a friendship that would last a lifetime.” In this book, the author fondly remembers their many professional encounters in the 25 years that followed. Many would be portrait sessions but done on impulse, like those in a burned-out Los Angeles building in 1994 and on the Charles Bridge in Prague in 2007. Both times, the author and Prince came together through serendipity to create playfully expressive images that came to represent the singer’s “unorthodox ability to truly live life in the moment.” Other encounters took place while Prince was performing at Paisley Park, his Minneapolis studio, or at venues in LA, New York, Tokyo, and London. One in particular came about after the 1991 release of Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls album and led to the start of St. Nicholas’ career as a video director. Prince, who nurtured young artists throughout his career, pushed the author to “trust my instincts…expand myself creatively.” What is most striking about even the most intimate of these photographs—even those shot with Mayte Garcia, the fan-turned–backup dancer who became Prince’s wife in 1996—is the brilliantly theatrical quality of the images. As the author observes, the singer was never not the self-conscious artist: “Prince was Prince 24/7.” Nostalgic and reverential, this book—the second St. Nicholas produced with/for Prince—is a celebration of friendship and artistry. Prince fans are sure to appreciate the book, and those interested in art photography will also find the collection highly appealing.
A dazzling visual homage to a music icon gone too soon.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-293923-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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