Recommended Books

Hellen Van Meene: Portraits Author: Hellen Van Meene Editorial Reviews. For the past seven years, Hellen van Meene has been producing intimate portraits of adolescents. Though the introspective gaze of her models suggest that these are spontaneous, private moments in the lives of her subjects, the carefully considered natural light, lush textures, and striking compositions betray van Meene's hand in choreographing each image down to the finest detail. Throughout, the picturesque qualities are undercut by a disquieting tension: the models' clothes are ill-fitting or inside-out; one girl is asked to lie in a cold bath, fully clothed; another models a fresh bruise. This intimate collaboration between the photographer and her models simultaneously exposes the uncertain nature of adolescent identities and the complicated act of capturing them on film.

Rineke Dijkstra: Portraits Author: Rineke Dijkstra Editorial Reviews Rineke Dijkstra is renowned for her uncanny and thoughtful portraits series of teenagers and young adults: girls and boys of various nationalities at the beach, children of Bosnian refugees, Spanish bullfighters straight out of the arena, Israeli youngsters before and after military service, and here, documented for the first time, her series of photographs taken of aspiring, young ballet dancers. Her subjects are shown standing, facing the camera, against a minimal background. Formally, the images resemble classical portraiture with their frontally posed figures isolated against minimal backgrounds. Yet, in spite of the uniformity in the photographer's works, there is a marked individuality in each of her subjects. Dijkstra often deals with the development of personality as one moves from adolescence to adulthood, or through a life-changing or potentially threatening experience such as childbirth, or a bullfight.

Balthus Author: Stanislas Klossowski De Rola Balthus is almost as famous for his reclusiveness and reluctance to divulge personal information as for his provocative paintings of young women, a fact his eldest son addresses with some pique in his introduction to this superb volume, the most extensive collection of his father's lustrous and enigmatic work yet published. Klossowski de Rola defends Balthus' insistence on privacy, then offers a few tantalizing biographical facts and a set of striking photographs of the artist. Readers are free, then, to study and interpret Balthus' intriguing, unsettling, brilliantly stylized, richly textured, and strongly composed street scenes, portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. His most famous paintings date from the 1930s and 1940s and feature, in his son's words, "languid adolescent" girls, images Klossowski de Rola insists are "untouchable archetypes of purity," but which are clearly erotic works of the highest order. Balthus, nearly 90 and still working, is a profoundly sensual painter, both in his handling of paint and in his subject matter. What's "pure" and magnificent here is the artist's sense of eroticism and immense talent. The author, Balthus's son, contributes a new introduction to this expanded paperback edition, which features two additional works: Balthus's last painting, The Waiting, and the controversial Guitar Lesson of 1934. A unique collection of rare personal photographs, including images by the famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, completes this tribute to one of the great artists of recent times.

Balthus Author: Jean Clair Balthazar Klossowski, known as Balthus, is largely regarded as one of the twentieth century's most important painters-- as well as the most scandalous. His dreamlike canvases populated with pubescent girls in provocative poses garnered him both praise and scorn from artists and critics alike. This volume, edited by renowned scholar Jean Clair, includes more than 400 color plates and includes essays by the premier experts on Balthus's work and life as well as recollections of the artist by his colleagues and friends.

Coming of Age : Photographs by Will McBride Author: Will McBride Editorial Reviews. Will McBride, an American who has spent his adult life in Germany, has made one of the great extended photographic portraits of male adolescence, created over the course of his forty-year career as a photographer. In his studio work and in his reportage for such magazines as Twen, McBride has focused on young men as they come to terms with their inner and outer development. McBride creates a portrait of the young male that is more revealing than those available in countless books, plays, movies, and television shows. In his work, young men discover the power of their own sexuality, fall in love, suffer the imposition of the regimentation of study and religion, seek comfort, flaunt their courage, and play with the unfettered, goofy energy of boys. Clearly made in collaboration with his subjects, McBride's photographs are as telling and sensual as they are unforgettable.

I, Will McBride Author: Will McBride Will Mc Bride is chasened by some of the reviews on Amazon, because in this compliation of mostly nude boys by this one of a kind photographer, some have been seen before. That is like refusing to look at The Winged Victory in the Lovere, because you have seen it before. Encompassing his shocking breakthrough "Show Me" a sexual guide for children, and numerouse nude and clothed subjects, this is a lasting memory of genius whether you like the subject matter or not. His photos of a sculpture he is working on for a square in German are stirring. It could be said that this man is the Jock Sturges of the other sex. - The Florida Critic, Amazon.com

Bouguereau Author: Fronia E. Wissman 60 full color reproductions and 15 black & white illustrations perfectly exemplify Bouguereau's prodigious talent in creating works of sensual, emotional, and intellectual appeal. By the time of his death in 1905, Bouguereau was scorned by progressive painters and critics who saw in his works all that was wrong with the official French world of art, but he was also a favorite of collectors, who found in his paintings of bathers, nymphs, and shepherdesses a realm of eternal beauty far from contemporary life.

The Last Day of Summer Author: Jock Sturges A few families have been given the gift of having their lives chronicled by a master photographer. Jock Sturges books chronicle the passage of time through the lives of several families, who are photographed naturally at a nature retreat in France.

Radiant Identities Author: Jock Sturges Jock Sturges creates images, not of nude adolescence, but of emotion, power, and beauty. He has captured generations with his camera, showing images from childhood to adulthood. More so, Jock has achieved what many photographers and arts cannot. He has attained that trust and opened up the emotion of his subjects.

Jock Sturges: Notes Author: Jock Sturges Jock Sturges: Notes gives fans of his unforgettable images a glimpse behind the scenes of his working process, opening up his studio and notes to the viewer for the very first time.

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