Big Pictures: A Book of Photographs

Matthew Rolston illuminates the pages of most high-style magazines in the US and many abroad. This book brings together 75 of Rolston's images. Included among the reproduced colour and black and white photographs are Rolston's renowned celebrity images - among them Michael Jackson, Madonna, Jodie Foster, Prince and Isabella Rossellini - and also his fashion photographs, nudes and abstracts.

These 71 images from 1985 to 1990 depict celebrities and otherwise beautiful people in glamorous and theatrical poses. Photographer and L.A. native Rolston speaks only through his flashy images while Hollywood director/producer Burton, later shown mugging for the camera, explains Rolston's intent: to stimulate the imagination and provide an escape from the mundane in the grand style of the silver screen. Stars including actor Robert Downey Jr. and singer Cyndi Lauper assume the haughty demeanor of Hollywood legends in duotone photos; grainy, overexposed portraits of actress Jodie Foster feature electric blue and lurid pink hues; a single light source reduces Anjelica Huston's profile to an undulating, dramatic line; paint and patterned light are applied to models' bodies in order to exaggerate or flatten contours. Many of these glitzy photos effectively capture the mystique of stardom, although others seem suited primarily for fleeting appearances in fashion magazines.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Rolston's photographic portraits of celebrities and performers show both the narcissism and the stretching of the self that is in their collective character. Rolston delivers big, manipulated color images of his models that seem straight from the psychedelics of the mid-Sixties. Then he gives us perfectly composed black-and-white photographs of costumed and coiffed contemporary stars that look like Hollywood publicity stills, circa 1938. This book is a feast of the purely visual. The only weakness is the introduction by Tim Burton, who combines a little autobiography, a little critique of Rolston's work, and a little pop psychology, wasting three pages that could have been used for more of Rolston's eye-popping photographs. Recommended for academic, public, and museum libraries in need of browsable books.
- David Bryant, Belle ville P.L. N.J.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.