Camera Portraits: Photographs from the National Portrait Gallery, London, 1839-1989 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195208587 ISBN 13: 9780195208580

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1990

Synopsis

Drawn from the National Portrait Gallery in London, one of the great collections of photographs in the world, this exquisitely reproduced album features 150 prominent figures from Britain's past and present. This stunning collection of historic portraits--some famous, others rarely seen--marks the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography, providing not only an engaging survey of its development from the earliest daguerreotypes onward, but also a fascinating pictorial Who's Who of British culture from Queen Victoria to Princess Di.
Featuring a preface by Alan Fern, Director of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., this volume presents an unprecedented gathering of great portraits. There are major figures from literature, ranging from Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle, to D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, to Graham Greene and T.S. Eliot; scientists such as Michael Faraday and Charles Darwin; influential thinkers Bertrand Russell and John Ruskin; political figures including Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan; artists such as James Whistler, Aubrey Beardsley, and David Hockney; and entertainment figures from Lillie Langtry and John Gielgud to the Beatles and Sting. And the photographers themselves assemble their own Who's Who of masters, including Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, Edward Steichen, Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, and Cornell Capa.
Not the least of this book's charm is the delightfully informative commentary Rogers provides for each sitter and photographer, capsule biographies filled with amusing asides (Florence Nightingale, for instance, thought her portrait looked like "Medea after killing her children"). But the true appeal of the book, the attraction, is simply turning page after page and coming face to face with another figure of Britain's past, staring out at us in defiance of time, captured forever in the thinnest layer of chemicals.

About this title

About the Author

About the Editor:
Malcolm Rogers is Deputy Director of the National Portrait Gallery of Great Britain.

From Publishers Weekly

A splendidly luxurious volume of 150 illustrations, representing 150 years of photography, this features pictures of notable persons from science, religion, politics, society and, especially, the arts. The generally excellent prints (mostly black-and-white) were taken by a plethora of photographers, ranging from 19th-century unknowns to modern-day superstars Helmut Newton, David Bailey, Richard Avedon et al. An eclectic history of Great Britain during the past century and a half, this wonderful collection offers the reader carefully rendered glimpses varying from starched poses of Lord Mountbatten or Horatio Herbert Kitchener to informal shots of Henry Moore or T. S. Eliot. Serving as subjects are such historical luminaries as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Disraeli, Florence Nightingale, Rupert Brooke, Edith Sitwell, Aubrey Beardsley, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, John Osborne, Queen Victoria, David Livingstone and a host of others. Short essays alongside the pictures offer bios of sitter and photographer. Rogers is a director of the London National Portrait Gallery.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0195208587
• ISBN 13: 9780195208580
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Rogers Malcolm