november-books

Tuesday 3 December 2013

#billhenson the seventies work

#billhenson

#billhenson 1989. it's sooo good.

Amy Arbus / On The Street 1980-1990

Way before the Scott Schuman et al started taking street style shots, Amy Arbus (Daughter of Diane) ran a weekly column in the Village Voice called 'On The Street'. Similar to the straight-ups of i-D she pictured anybody and everyone who appeared interesting. This book compiles highlights of a decade of her work, and features a young Madonna amongst others. Of course, as it was shot during the Autumn of New York's golden era as far as style is concerned all the images are staggeringly EXCELLENT. It really is quite a surprise this book hasn't received the attention it deserves and is very highly recommended.

Absoloutely brilliant book by former Japan frontman David Sylvian. Beautiful polaroid collages of band members, tours, landscapes and cities. Fans of Hockney's polaroids will be at home here. Gentlemen take polaroids indeed...

Gillian Wearing first attracted public acclaim when she exhibited this series of photographs at City Racing, a small artist-run gallery in London in 1993. She had been using video and photography since the early 1990s, but this was her first significant collaboration with members of the public. Standing in a busy area of South London (Walworth road I think), Wearing stopped passers-by and asked them to write down what was on their mind. With their permission, she then photographed them holding their statement. As indicated by the title of the work, Wearing has written that this collaboration 'interrupts the logic of photo-documentary and snapshot photography by the subjects' clear collusion and engineering of their own representation.' These photographs were shown again in 1997 when she won the Turner Prize. A brilliant and important work.

84 pages of B&W photographs of James Dean, all taken by Magnum photographer Dennis Stock on a commission for Life Magazine. Shows a different side to the popular public image of the Dean. Excellent.

Images collected by Tillmans from 1990-1999, incorporated with his own photographs. One of his best books.

One of the best books on youth culture ever. "For decades the work of Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger was shrouded in obscurity. In the 1950s he published numerous homoerotic photographs under the pseudonym "Jim" in Der Kreis (The Circle), the legendary international gay magazine that featured highly sophisticated photographs by, among others, George Platt Lynes and Herbert List. Weinberger was one of the first queer photographers to show his often working-class models posing in their everyday surroundings. For Weinberger, eroticism was always grounded in the quotidian-a revolutionary and courageous approach back in the 1950s.In the late 1950's Weinberger started to develop an obsessive interest in the nascent biker culture and its proud and self-confident celebration of the body, embarking on a longtime study of their lifestyle. In many ways, Weinberger's photographs will remind viewers of Kenneth Anger's cult classic Scorpio Rising. Weinberger's photographs are a unique document both of pre-Stonewall gay culture and postwar youth culture and its cycles. His erotic and provocative photographs are imbued with a mischievous sense of humor that makes them as vibrant and vital today as they were when they were first taken." Astounding.

Very scarce- on account of it being banned shortly after it's release. One of the best books on gangs and gang culture by the great Yan Morvan- who is more of a journalist or a war correspondant than a classic photographer. "Yan Morvan has been documenting gangs in France's suburbs for 40 years, he's followed the Hell's Angels, Skinheads and even serial killer Guy Georges, who took him hostage in 1995 and tortured him for three weeks. This experience forced Morvan to call it quits but, in 2000, he released the book Gangs Story, providing a retrospective of his work." From the bikers of the seventies, skinheads, 50s kids etc to current banlieu crews they're all here. Morvan really hung out with his subjects, so there's lots of very personal stuff, it's a real insight into peoples lives. Crews, firearms, drugs, junkies, sex, corpses and the like. Hundereds of brilliant and candid photographs. One of the best.

Scarce. Super beautiful folio of Antonio's 60s work. Lovely text by Bill Cunningham, followed by lots of nice pictures (by Cunningham too) and then page after page of beautiful work. So good.

Very scarce. Wonderful large format overview of Lopez and his time in NY. Has work for Fiorucci, Bloomingdales, Vogue Italia, his photographs of Divine, Grace Jones (some later published in Instamatics), and if that wasn't enough- lots of pictures of him by the mighty Bill Cunningham- with Cathy Dahnmen, Warhol, Jerry Hall, Paloma Picasso, Lagerfeld, Alain Delon and so on. wow.