The Passionate Observer: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten - Hardcover

Davis, Keith F.; Van Vechten, Carl; Hallmark Cards, Inc.

4.5

12 ratings by Goodreads

9780875296685: The Passionate Observer: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875296688 ISBN 13: 9780875296685

Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr, 1993

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

In his thirty years of activity with the camera, Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) produced a uniquely important body of work. The 15,000 photographs he made between 1932 and 1964 constitute a remarkable visual catalog of the leaders of modern arts and letters. Working strictly for his own pleasure, Van Vechten recorded the most prominent painters, writers, actors, and musicians of his time with both warmth and style. This volume includes full-page reproductions of sixty of the finest of these images, with a text placing this little-known body of work in its historical and artistic context.
Photography represents only one facet of Carl Van Vechten's extraordinary creative life. As music critic for the New York Times he witnessed performances by the most important avant-garde artists of the time and came to know many of them personally. In 1915 he published his first book of collected criticism. Over the next fifteen years he published eight additional volumes of music and literary criticism, seven novels, two books on cats, one semi-autobiographical volume, and over 200 magazine essays and book reviews. He also became a champion of African-American culture, and a patron of many of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.
Van Vechten turned to photography in 1932 at the age of fifty-one. Using a new 35mm Leica camera he began compiling a great visual catalog of the major cultural figures of his time. The range of his subjects is remarkable. Leading personalities in the fields of opera, literature, theater, painting, sculpture, journalism, and public life all came to pose in the small studio Van Vechten installed in his apartment. He knew many of his subjects personally and often chose specific props or backgrounds to suggest aspects of their character. On other occasions he used very simple settings to emphasize the expressiveness of posture, costume, and glance.
Van Vechten's style combines his own interpretive ideas with a deep empathy for the humanity of his sitters. Through his eyes we gain fresh insights into the personal and cultural vitality of an increasingly distant age.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) was a starstruck Midwesterner who led a colorful life, a social butterfly who established himself as a music and theater critic before enjoying success as a novelist in the 1920s. When the Leica revolutionized photography in the early 1930s, the amateur shutterbug embraced the rapid-fire 35mm camera and reinvented himself as a celebrity portraitist. Keith Davis discusses Van Vechten's evocative work in crisp, distinctive prose that is the perfect complement to the artist's dynamic black-and-white images. Gertrude Stein, Bessie Smith, George Gershwin, Frida Kahlo, and Paul Robeson are among the personalities who paraded through his makeshift apartment studio.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.