Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/03/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Well, I got on over the Hennessey & Engalls and picked up the next to the last copy of D. Bailey's "Birth of the Cool," which I spent the late afternoon and early evening going through. I very much like the hard, graphic style of his early '60s stuff, but feel that he gets less rather than more interesting as the decade goes on. Just for fun, I then flipped through my copy of Jeanloup Sieff's "40 Years of Photography." Like Bailey, he's most well known for his fashion photography and portraiture (though he's also a master of the nude, IMO), and actually worked for a number of the same mags as D.B. Well, I came away with the impression that Sieff's a much better photographer; compositionally he's a lot stronger and more inventive than Bailey in both the fashion work and in the portraits, and he takes a chance on images that don't fall into either of those categories - landscapes, "art" photography (sorry 'bout that), interiors - and frequently pulls them off. For those who go for this sort of thing, he's also a very articulate writer about photography, and the book includes a number of memorable passages. Anyone interested in this kind of stuff would do well to pick up a copy of this wonderful book, which, with its hundreds of beautiful reproductions, is one hell of a bargain at $39. Such are my ruminations for this evening. Guy - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html