PORTRAITS: The Portrait in Contemporary Photography. - Hardcover

Peter Weiermair, Ed.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3905514206 ISBN 13: 9783905514209

Publisher: Zurich: Edition Stemmle, 1994., 1994

Synopsis

Book by Weirmair, Peter

About this title

From Booklist:

Editor Weiermair comes at his subject--the contemporary photographic portrait--with a strong point of view, and the resultant collection takes a definite aesthetic position. August Sander and Richard Avedon are the acknowledged paradigm-setters for photo portraiture, and these works by 23 photographers accordingly resemble a kind of clinical specimen collection; they emphasize surfaces. None of the photographers show their subjects in action or at work, and few of them include an environment beyond that of a sterile studio. Character seems absent as the surface of the face and sometimes body is stressed, sometimes for its beauty, often for its strangeness. There are delights and surprises here, but more important is the overwhelming sense of the "seriousness" of modern life. Weiermair's other publications have been heavily devoted to homoerotic photographers, and behind the work of several represented here--Peter Hujar, Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michals, Andy Warhol--linger the specters of death and AIDS. Other photographers included--Annie Leibovitz, Mary Ellen Mark, Anne Zahalka, Taishi Hirokawa--manage to inject a spirit of absurdity, of humor. Overall, the book leaves us sensing the tragedy of the human condition--that each of us is doomed to live in one very specific body. Gretchen Garner

About this edition

• Publisher: Zurich: Edition Stemmle, 1994.
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 3905514206
• ISBN 13: 9783905514209
• Binding: Hardcover