Latest news with #Taschen
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Contorted bodies and bare bottoms: Ralph Gibson's all-seeing eye
A new book collates six decades of Ralph Gibson's work, from 1960s photographs in San Francisco, Hollywood and New York to more recent nudes, portraits and still lives captured with his beloved Leicas. 'These first few early photographs were made with a Rollei 2.8 that I bought in the navy,' says Gibson. 'I couldn't seem to make it do what I wanted it to do. I wanted to make socially relevant photographs that showed the human condition, but it was only later that I found how to say what I wanted'. Ralph Gibson. Photographs 1960–2024 is published by Taschen 'When I moved to San Francisco, I was 21 and the whole world lay before me. More than anything the world of art was where I wanted to be. The Art Institute was where I met fellow artists and early lovers. We debated all these issues nightly at Vesuvio's Bar, but something was missing. The town was getting small. San Francisco was becoming more and more the kind of place where I might someday retire. It was time to move on with my life, and the only move I could make was back to Los Angeles. It felt somehow closer to what I wanted to become: a photojournalist' 'My father worked at Warner Brothers, and as I grew up in very suburban Southern California the things I most remember are a big backyard and the movies. I would often visit my father on the set after school. In the 1950s he became assistant director to Hitchcock, and the visits turned even more dramatic as I became an extra and bit player. I vividly recall the bright carbon-arc lights used to expose the slow orthochromatic black-and-white film of those days. My sense of contrast must surely have been born during this period as well as the idea of a strong camera presence' 'I would drive all day from the beach to downtown looking for jobs and finding instead images that reflected only my needs. The Strip was my first real assignment, reflecting the kind of photojournalism that in those days seemed so romantic, so important' 'I'd always known that what was really essential to my life would be found in New York. I left LA with three Leicas and $200. I checked into the Chelsea Hotel and didn't check out for three years. New York and I were a perfect match. To be a photographer in this town was like being in heaven. Images were everywhere. I started getting assignments right away and met all the people on the scene at Max's Kansas City. The crowd there all felt quite immortal, and I admit to sharing that feeling' 'I had been a photographer for 10 years, and I thought I understood my work. During my first year in New York my reality began to change. Dramatically. I slept most of the day and worked at night. I was drawn to atonal music, concrete poetry and the writing of Jorge Luis Borges, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras, who all enormously influenced my inner being' 'I began drifting away from the idea of being a photojournalist. Photography was becoming the vehicle of my introspection. Nothing could have changed any of this. The camera was leading me to other dimensions, to expressions of entirely new feelings. The images took on a decidedly surrealistic overtone. I didn't understand what it all meant, but I continued to follow this tone. Eventually it occurred to me that I had been photographing a dream state. It was time to make a book. The Somnambulist was born in the Chelsea Hotel' 'After three long years of struggle, The Somnambulist was finally published. I financed the printing myself, which led to the founding of Lustrum Press and other publishing ventures. The acceptance of The Somnambulist drastically changed my life. Up to this time I had been on the outside of the recognised circles of photographers whom I admired. They'd all done something important, but until I produced this slim, 48-page volume, I was not included among them. The book was an immediate success, and within three months I was known in photographic circles wherever I went' 'Along with recognition came a bit more money, and for the first time since the navy it became possible to travel abroad. I had wanted for years to be able to photograph in Europe. The cultural depth of these older countries seemed to provide so much subject matter for someone born in Los Angeles. I decided to immediately start another book that would deal with a set of feelings entirely different from The Somnambulist. This group of photographs would address the most ephemeral sensation I could imagine – the feeling of Déjà-vu' 'As early as my art school days, I had wanted to move in closer to the subject. But it was also important to maintain certain attitudes towards scale and volume. I didn't fully come to realise all this until I started working with a 50mm dual-range Summicron lens for the Leica. This enabled me to get much closer to the subject without foreshortening or distortion. With all this in mind, I took particular notice of the image in Days at Sea of the woman in the white shirt with the sleeve rolled up' 'This was new visual territory and I found it extremely stimulating. I determined that one of the ways to subtract data from the image was to move in closer. Also, by selecting subjects that were essentially black and white to begin with, I would remain one step closer to reality' 'I've photographed women for many years and for many reasons. Whatever my intentions might have been at the moment, the female form would reflect the idea I was pursuing. However, I soon realised the impossibility of transcending the subject. A photographer often starts with one idea about the subject and finds the medium reveals its own intentions. The photographer finds himself having become the subject. A dialogue is born between the photographer and the photograph and continues throughout subsequent works. For this reason I believe the figure can never be fully mastered' 'I approach photographing the figure in much the same manner as a musician playing scales. A theme is announced and variations are performed with the goal of attaining ultimate harmony. Photography also resembles music with regard to the ephemeral nature of time and its measurements. One could suggest that certain notes, once struck, are as short or as long as photographic exposures. Beauty in a woman inhabits a force field charged with particles of light. It is almost as if the light is the subject, and the woman the source of light' 'The lines of a woman's form reflect any lighting situation that may occur upon it; a successful photograph of a nude becomes a lighting event in itself' 'Italy is a country and a museum of human nuance. To be a cittadino (citizen) of this land is to share in an ancient spiritual ownership. All gods are present in everything from art to food to love. The cities differ from one another to the degree that other countries differ in their attitudes and language. Politics are so complex that not even Machiavelli could make a clear definition. Love embraces all possibilities with equal blindness. Passion reigns and the moment endures' 'Quadrants remains one of my most simple and enduring series of images. I remember that most of the time I put the bright sun over my shoulder, just like it says on the little slip of paper that comes with the film' 'In Situ (in the natural or original position or place) is the photographic point of departure. Only the location of the image is permanent. The photograph displaces the object within it and separates the word from the object' 'I embarked upon a series entitled MONO, all in black and white, and this led to the colour/black series entitled Political Abstraction, 2015. This gave rise more recently to The Vertical Horizon, 2019–2024' 'In 2012 representatives from Leica came to my studio and proposed a limited-edition, signature monochrome camera. I put the shutter speed on 'A' and prepared to photograph the manhole cover. A bicycle entered the frame just as I released the shutter. As I looked at the image on the display, I said to myself: 'That looks like it could have been taken by me'. Since that morning in the fall of 2012, I have not exposed a single frame of film. I am entirely under the sway of the digital syntax. I am fascinated by this unique language. I will remain committed to the digital Leica'
The Guardian
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sex, patriotism and Donald Trump cologne: the US adverts that explain the 00s
As the longtime editor of Taschen's All-American Ads book series, cultural historian Jim Heimann has helped chronicle the shifting landscape of commercial artistry through each decade of the 20th century. Now, with a final volume dedicated to the 2000s, Heimann has completed what he calls a 'swan song' – not just for the series, but for an entire era of advertising. It presents the last moment before social media and the decline of print media transformed the industry for ever. The 2000s were fraught with social, political and cultural disruptions. Chief among them were the September 11 terrorist attacks, which sparked a dramatic wave of national trauma that simultaneously drove the advertising industry to embrace patriotism while seeking escapism. Brands such as Budweiser, with its iconic Clydesdale tribute – which sees a team of horses pulling a beer wagon to New York before bowing their heads towards the Manhattan skyline – channelled unity, while luxury brands offered distraction through aspirational messaging. 'It was a transitional period,' says Heimann. 'There were not these huge changes that you would see from the 30s to the 40s, and the 40s to the 50s, in terms of things like fashion and cars.' Instead the 2000s was notable for the prevalence of nostalgia, with many campaigns harking back to previous eras of American dominance. The main innovations in the sector came from tech companies, who had an unparalleled ability to harness the tide of economic optimism and hire the best ad execs. Among the most influential campaigns of the era were Apple's silhouette iPod advertisements. With striking imagery of black shapes dancing against vibrant backgrounds, the campaign looked beyond traditional selling points – such as product features and price – to sell a new way of living. 'Their campaigns reflect that sophistication,' Heimann says. He compares this approach in the 2000s to Apple's famous 1984 campaign, which featured a flagship Ridley Scott-directed Super Bowl ad: 'From an advertising point of view, it wasn't so much print as much as the television and video. That's where it really struck its core.' Despite technological evolution, certain advertising constants remained and arguably reached their apotheosis in the period. 'The one thing that never seems to change is sex,' Heimann observes. 'Sex sells, women sell and, in the last 40 years, exploiting women has been a consistent way to go.' The book features numerous examples of this, including controversial Calvin Klein campaigns and provocative alcohol advertisements such as the one for Skyy Blue vodka, where the viewer looks through a woman's legs at the product. Celebrity endorsements also reached new heights, becoming central to marketing strategies. 'Look at who's endorsing fragrances,' Heimann says. 'David Beckham, Paris Hilton. You go down the line – everybody jumped on that bandwagon.' In this case, everybody includes a bronzed, smiling Donald Trump, pictured in the book posing with his new wife Melania in an ad for Donald Trump the fragrance. In many ways, the era's biggest campaigns prefigure the rise of influencer marketing. As traditional media fragmented, brands increasingly relied on familiar faces to cut through the noise, transforming celebrities from mere endorsers into brand architects whose personal mythology became inseparable from the products. The rise of environmental consciousness also created intriguing contradictions in advertising. Innovations such as the Toyota Prius promised eco-friendly cars, while Hummer advertisements celebrated gas-guzzling excess. 'Those are the kind of contrasts you look for,' Heimann notes. 'In one section you have the environment being concerned, and then the next section you've got these giant gas-eating monsters.' The true significance of the 2000s in advertising history may be its position at the precipice of fundamental change. 'Where is advertising going?' says Heimann. 'Well, we know where it's gone, and it's not print … with online and influencers, and now AI, who knows what advertising is going to be? You don't even need a human any more. You don't need advertising agencies. You don't even know whether it's real!' As well as celebrated ads, the book features a number that missed their mark, including one perplexing ad for Axe Dry deodorant, which features the surely unprecedented scene of a model holding a glass of wine in one hand, while the other is wrapped around her partner, a stubby, mutated foot with a 'vaguely vaginal hairy armpit for a face'. 'You want to know who was in that meeting', says Heimann. 'Who gave the green light to go with some of this stuff!' For Heimann, the book serves as both celebration and epitaph for an era when advertising retained its quality: 'It's depressing but the 2000s were the final time where real people made real campaigns. And for better and for worse, you know, it's in this book.' All-American Ads 2000s, published by Taschen, is out now. Omega, 2006James Bond has long been a staple of high-end advertising, with many campaigns employing a retrofuturist vision of the 60s. This ad appeared when Daniel Craig began playing the iconic spy and tied in with the film's return to a rugged, masculine aesthetic after the Pierce Brosnan era had leaned heavily on gadget wizardry. Hummer, 2002This Hummer advertisement embodies the conflict between environmentalism and masculinity perfectly. The comically large SUVs, popularised in the US by Arnold Schwarzenegger, had become symbolic of an era where bigger meant better, a mentality that was beginning to face cultural scrutiny as the decade progressed. Conservation International, 2008In the 2000s, NGOs and public bodies used advertising techniques to appeal for a less consumerist culture. Conservation International were criticised for their work with companies such as BP and Exxon, with Heimann remarking that it became important for the industry to rehabilitate its public image. Evian, 2000The 'Evian mermaid' ad featured a very artistic concept that was highly unusual at the time for such a quotidian product. The ad was notable enough that it likely inspired a scene in the movie Zoolander (2001), in which the title character plays a 'merman' for a beauty campaign, to the chagrin of his friends and family. SKYY vodka, 2002While sexually explicit imagery has long been a feature of advertising, the 2000s is particularly notable for evincing a sort of hypersexuality that frequently bordered on the comic. 'Flicking through the magazines you see sexuality being expressed in all kinds of weird situations,' says Heimann. 'I thought there was something zeitgeisty as well as graphically interesting about the stilettos being featured as prominently as the product.' Earth Day 2009Earth Day, an annual environmental event, produced this image to promote its day of activism in 2009. It was chosen as the book's cover image to reflect the rise of environmentalism in the 2000s.
The Guardian
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘The 1980s turned out to be magic': David Bailey on the era of excess
In the 1980s, fashion wanted to make a statement and found in legendary British fashion photographer David Bailey its perfect chronicler. After Bailey shaped the style of the swinging 60s, fashion in the 80s posed a new challenge. A new book showcases his take on the decade of decadence. Eighties by David Bailey is available via Taschen. All photos: David Bailey The book compiles Bailey's era-defining fashion photography from the pages of Vogue, Tatler and countless other publications. As Bailey says in his foreword: 'The 80s turned out to be magic.' Here, that magic comes alive Bailey's photos feature couture, catwalk and ready-to-wear collections by the epoch's seminal designers, including Azzedine Alaïa, Comme des Garçons, Guy Laroche, Missoni, Stephen Jones, Valentino, and Yves Saint Laurent David Bailey: 'The magic of the 80s came as a surprise and possibly turned out to be the most amazing time in London to lead the world in fashion. It was the first time the Americans wanted to come to London instead of Londoners wanting to go to New York. It seemed like London was getting a second chance in fashion, art, theatre and cinema. After years of stagnation it had become a centre for the arts' ' In fashion we had the faces of Jerry Hall, Marie Helvin, Catherine Dyer and Christy Turlington on the pages of our magazines. Whereas models used to go to New York to get photographed by the great American photographers, suddenly they realised they could save their fare by staying in London and getting it done there. So a new wave of models from Paris, Milan, New York, etc, turned towards London' The decade still resonates on our screens, runways and concert stages, which makes today ideal for revisiting its enduring legacy of maximalism and excess. Icons are captured at their most playful, invincible and provocatively sexy. The book stands as a testament to a decade that dismantled hierarchies of taste to reintroduce fun and sex into fashion, reminding us that we need not think of either as dirty words In the second foreword, Grace Coddington writes: 'Bailey jumped right into this new vibe with his bold and often humorous portraits of the personalities of the time such as Grace Jones, David Bowie, Jack Nicholson and Tina Turner' Editor Reuel Golden writes: 'Princess Diana photographed in Bailey's classic minimalist, no frills style against a plain background for the National Portrait Gallery. It's almost the anthesis of the excesses of 1980s fashion and perhaps explains why the 'unplugged' Diana is looking somewhat warily at the camera' Golden: 'The American model and actress Lauren Hutton had worked with Bailey in the 1960s and 70s. Her effortless elegance and 'it girl' credentials made her a perfect muse for him. She is wearing beautifully cut and relatively understated clothes (for the 1980s)' Golden: 'Kelly LeBrock is best known for her role as the dream girl in the movie Weird Science. Yet she also had a highly successful career as the prototype 1980s 'Amazonian' model, although here she is almost overshadowed by the equally imposing male hunk' Coddington: 'What makes this book so striking, however, is the other side of Bailey we find interspersed with its exuberant, witty and vibrantly colourful images: the soft, lyrical, often black-and-white portraits of his wife and longtime muse, Catherine, and their children. Mixed in with the dazzling energy that jumps off the page, these seemingly unposed moments capture an endearing tenderness that is very Bailey'
Telegraph
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Want to satirise millennials? You need to try harder than this
Anna and Tom are a millennial couple in 21st-century Berlin. They moved here, from an unnamed southern European city, in their early twenties. They work as freelance 'creatives', designing websites and marketing materials, a job into which they seem to have fallen, much like everything else they do. They're mystifyingly passive, to the point of haplessness. Perfection is Vincenzo Latronico's fourth novel and his first to be translated into English. He's Italian, and based in Berlin himself; this book, of just 120 pages, is pitched as 'a brilliantly scathing sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence'. The reader is meant to understand that Anna and Tom, whose mundane lives we follow across nearly two decades, are stereotypes of a taste- and brand-obsessed milieu, rather than characters in their own right. (Fitzcarraldo's jacket copy has them as ciphers of 'an entire generation', a phrase also used by Latronico. This is an impossible burden to place on a novel, even if the novelist is doing it themselves.) To emphasise the wider resonance of his leading pair, Latronico describes them in a distant third person, and deliberately renders them as blurry silhouettes. He outlines their biographical and physical details in terms of basic facts. (Anna's father, for instance, is a lawyer, and her mother is an accountant, but we never meet them. We know she has an inheritance that she uses to top up her income, but we don't know how much.) There are flashes of internality, but for the most part they're described in terms of the Tom-Anna unit, rather than either person's specific thoughts: among friends in their home city, we learn, 'Anna and Tom weren't free to be themselves, or rather, they weren't free to reinvent themselves.' This is a reminder: think of them as types, not individuals. On the one hand, such a style is an efficient means of delivering information. Latronico's writing is easy to read, and allows him to provide social commentary without it seeming shoehorned in. In a deliberate contrast to the vagueness of everything else in Anna and Tom's lives, Latronico describes their tastes in luxurious detail. They own a Taschen history of typefaces; they sit on ergonomic chairs. They eat 'seasonal roasted root vegetables seasoned with ginger and sumac' and 'shiny emerald avocados'. (Of course: that great millennial deity.) We see Tom and Anna primarily in terms of their taste because this is how they define themselves. Latronico also argues, over and over, that this taste has been hopelessly determined by social media, and made far more generic than they think. 'Their interest in plants,' we're told, 'was likely a result of the never-ending stream of pictures they were fed of stunning plants in bay windows.' This extends to their choices about where to live, and their vague, loosely-held Leftism: 'They identified as feminists and spoke out against social injustices, which in practice meant they were willing to express outrage at instances of racism or sexism that took place in New York.' But while all this commentary may be easy to follow, it isn't especially enlightening; in fact, it becomes as generic and predictable as Anna and Tom themselves. For instance, you can probably guess what Perfection has to say about gentrification without me telling you, though I will: 'They realised they had contributed to the problem that was starting to affect them, but they knew it in an unacknowledged, almost imperceptible way… Gentrification, as they understood it, was something other people did.' Having millennial subjects with less obvious hypocrisies – or spelling out these subjects' hypocrisies less obviously – might have made for a more interesting novel. Tom and Anna, unfortunately, seem void of the wills and wants that define what I, and other millennials who actually exist, understand to be the human condition. In Berlin, this couple attend galleries mostly because that's what everyone around them is doing. They make acquaintances, rather than friends. They learn to host nice dinner parties because they see nice dinner parties on social media. During the migrant crisis, they volunteer to work with refugees, but quickly give up because they feel too awkward. In fact, they give up on everything they try. They try sex clubs, but that feels awkward too. They somehow don't even get the idea to go on holiday until their mid-thirties, and when they try, they take flights that depart too early and they leave it too late to pack. This feels like the kind of mistake most people leave behind at 24. To me they seemed not uncomfortably relatable, but totally bizarre. Surely even the most hypocritical, social-media-addled millennials have the odd hobby they enjoy? Perfection recreates the exact emptiness it claims to critique. Latronico's style is self-consciously refined, like much of the Rachel-Cusk-lite literary fiction that you find in reams and reams these days. Writing like this isn't to my taste; fine, that's subjective, and the style is a fashionable one. (Some critics already seem to be swallowing Perfection whole.) But, even so, I wondered about its relationship to the subject matter being critiqued. Writing like this may be easily parsed, but I don't think anyone could argue, at this stage, that it feels inventive or exciting. It reminds me of Tom and Anna's lamps. Maybe the parallel is intentional, a wry reference. The appeal of writing like this, as far as I understand it, is that it's easy to read, yet endowed with a veneer of erudition and sophistication. What could speak more to the millennial sensibility than that? Maybe it's too much to expect us to read a formally experimental novel that hits closer to home. But I found myself craving a bolder execution, in both content and style – not something this safe. I won't spoil the ending of Perfection. Suffice it to say that, appropriately, it involves one of the other great millennial deities: inheritance.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
$60,000 Ferrari Book by Taschen Remains Unopened in Factory Crate
Read the full story on Modern Car Collector A pristine example of the $60,000 Ferrari Art Edition book by Taschen has surfaced for sale, still sealed in its original factory crate. Released in 2018, the book, simply titled 'Ferrari,' was produced in a limited run of just 250 copies, each accompanied by a distinctive bookstand and case designed by renowned industrial designer Marc Newson. The book, a detailed homage to Ferrari's illustrious history, comes with a stand crafted from TIG-welded, chrome-plated steel that is inspired by the exhaust manifolds of Ferrari's iconic V12 engines. The case, designed to resemble the red crackle-finish valve covers of the Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa, is a testament to Ferrari's commitment to artistry in both design and engineering. When assembled, the book's stand and cover measure 55cm x 57cm x 110cm in height, creating a striking visual that is as much a piece of art as it is a reference book. Though the book was initially available in two editions— the $10,000 Collector's Edition and the rarer $60,000 Art Edition— all copies sold out quickly, with Ferrari enthusiasts snapping them up as exclusive collector's items. For those seeking a new, unopened edition, this example is one of the last available in its original crate, greatly increasing its value. The packaging itself is a work of art, with the wooden crate designed to house the book, stand, and case, giving collectors the choice to open it or keep it sealed for posterity. With the book's scarcity and unique presentation, it's sure to attract the attention of Ferrari collectors and automotive enthusiasts alike. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter
