GIFT BOOKS 1985 : Photography

The definition of a great photographer is elusive. It begins in the mind, the vision of a unique genius. The photographers who have been among the most eloquent interpreters of our time share a synthesis of heart, imagination and critical intellect. Their life’s work--so varied in subject and style--reveals the seriousness and beauty of their creative achievements. Some particularly handsome collections published this season offer interested readers insight into the careers of these artists with a camera.

Mythic black-and-white landscapes of the Sierras and the name of Ansel Adams are intertwined in the minds of both the public and critics. Adams, influenced in the choice of his vocation by his youthful hikes in Yosemite, shared this destiny in a prodigious outpouring of teaching, writing and political activism to save the American wilderness as seen in his photographs. Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (New York Graphic Society), published posthumously, will be reviewed at a later date.

Like Adams, whose genius was nourished in a particular place, Andre Kertesz left his native Hungary for Paris, a city that became the source of inspiration for a career that spanned 73 years. In 1936 when he traveled to New York, he complained of not feeling at home. “It was,” he wrote, “an alien world of skyscrapers.”

Kertesz died this year at 91, but not before a major exhibit was held at the Art Institute of Chicago. Andre Kertesz: Of Paris and New York by Sandra L. Phillips, David Travis and Weston J. Naef (Thames & Hudson: $45; 288 pp.; 305 illustrations, 180 in duotone) was published in honor of this retrospective (and for the current one at The Metropolitan Museum of Art). The authors, with the advantage of numerous interviews with the artist, have written the first comprehensive account of his life.

Renowned as a pioneer photojournalist, Kertesz had a personal style that combined an innate sense of composition with an eye for the genuine moments in life. Respected in Europe for his expressive images, he felt creatively blocked in America where his first assignments were to photograph products in a studio. It was a painful transition. In this excellent book we observe Kertesz excluded from “The Family of Man” exhibit and passed over by Life magazine where he was told “your pictures talk too much.” Yet, he continued to work with freshness and honesty, enduring as one of the great visionaries of his profession.

An outstanding British figure in the history of photography began working in Paris about the same time as Kertesz, but with very different results. Bill Brandt: Behind the Camera, introduction by Mark Haworth-Booth, essay by David Mellor (Aperture: $25; 100 pp.; illustrated, 61 duotone) does an excellent job of showing Brandt’s remarkable diversity: romantic, chilly landscapes, portraits of artists and writers and his famous wide angle sculptural nudes.

A portrait Brandt made of Ezra Pound in 1928 led to a brief apprenticeship with Man Ray. This early exposure to the Surrealist movement evoked a response in Brandt’s own experimental nature, profoundly affecting his evolving style. Both critical essays provide a valuable assessment of Brandt’s intuitive pursuit of his art as well as explaining how he used harsh lighting and high contrast printing techniques to impart atmosphere to his mysterious, severe pictures.

Conscience was Eugene Smith’s first obsession; photography was his second. Let Truth Be the Prejudice, W. Eugene Smith: His Life and Photographs by Ben Maddow (Aperture: $50; 240 pp.) is a stunning focus on one of the most idealistic and compelling photographers of our time. Smith died at age 59, leaving a legacy of picture essays unparalleled in their capacity to make the viewer witness to the most significant issues of the human condition.

Ben Maddow, a fine writer with a special interest in photography, has written a masterful biography. It is a study of a genius’ exhaustive quest for perfection (both on assignment and in the darkroom). Overworked and plagued with money troubles, Smith lived on Dexedrine hoping to cope with his terrifying fear of failure. Smith’s calling was to capture “life as it is,” and the excellent reproductions of his classic, poignant images including Country Doctor, The Nurse Midwife and those of the crippled victims of mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan, make this illustrated biography a magnificent book.

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photoportraits, preface by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues( (Thames & Hudson: $50; 283 pp., 255 duotone) satisfies the acquisitive desire one sometimes has to pack up an entire exhibition, put it under one’s arm and take it home. Cartier-Bresson uses only a Leica camera and a 50mm lens to capture “the decisive moment,” a definitive term he coined to describe how he creates his profound, intuitive images.

It would seem from the books that crossed my desk this holiday that photography is an exclusive male field; yet there have always been many great women photographers. Gisele Freund Photographer, text by Gisele Freund, foreword by Christian Caujolle (Abrams $45; 224 pp; 50 color photographs; 150 duotone) documents her 50-year career as a photojournalist that took her all over the world. In 1933 she fled her native Germany for France, where she studied sociology at the Sorbonne. Through her friendship with two booksellers, Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, she was introduced to a select literary circle. Portraits of Colette, George Bernard Shaw, Jean Cocteau and Virginia Woolf (among many others) are in themselves almost a survey of this century’s most significant writers and artists.

On Assignment: Dmitri Kessel Life Photographer, text by Dmitri Kessel, foreword by Edward K. Thompson (Abrams: $45; 240 pp; 180 photographs, 100 in color) offers a look at a great photographic journalist with an amazing repertoire of accomplishments. The quality of his work, both in color and black and white typifies the high standards required by Life, a publication that depended on the talent of its photographers. Kessel’s autobiographical text gives us further insight into the difficulties that challenged him in completing these assignments.

Another book that entices us to relive history is It Happened in Our Lifetime: A Memoir in Words and Pictures by John Phillips (Little, Brown: $24.95; 280 pp., 445 black-and-white photographs). This edition is not so glossy, yet Phillips’ account of his adventures as the first overseas staff photographer for Life combined with his prolific output of pictures is a revelation in understanding the human experience.

Richard Avedon is one of our most celebrated fashion photographers with an original, wide-ranging talent. In the American West by Richard Avedon (Abrams: $40; 184 pp.; 20 photographs) is a project that was commissioned by Fort Worth’s Amon Carter Museum. Avedon selected the people who faced his relentless camera (to become celebrities) against a stark white background. These intense portraits will invite much attention and controversy. Some may question if the subjects truly epitomize the American West or only suit the charismatic Avedon’s idea of the West.

In Eliot Porter’s Southwest (Holt, Rinehart & Winston: $45; 88 pp.; 60 photographs) the nature photographer most renowned for more than a dozen books of color presents us with 91 pristine black-and-white images. Looking at these lovely prints, it is easy to see why he lives in Santa Fe, N.M., and how much he loves the mountains, the land and especially--the light.

Times Square: 45 Years of Photography by Lou Stoumen (Aperture: $25; 159 pp.) is a counterpoint of words and images by a Los Angeles photographer, writer, film maker and UCLA professor. It has been achieved by personal dedication, without a grant or a commission. Stoumen began in 1939, returning to New York again and again, to make evocative pictures, to ask questions and answer them in a book he calls his “photographic time machine.”