Celebrity portraits and majestic landscapes, two mainstays of photography in any era, get a generous showing in photography books this holiday season. Several Hollywood nostalgia books tap into America`s endless fascination with movies and movie stars, while the nature books offer the weightier theme of environmental preservation amid images of paradise and paradise lost.
Of course, the masters of the art take a bow in gift books. There are war (and peace) photographs by Robert Capa, a personal view of America by Henri Cartier-Bresson, surrealism by Ralph Gibson, portraiture by Annie Leibovitz, photojournalism by Mary Ellen Mark and a little of everything in a classy volume covering Irving Penn`s multifaceted career.
The books offer not only something for every taste but something for just about every budget: ”Blue Planet: A Portrait of Earth,” with its dramatic oversize space shots, sells for $19.95, while the lavish book of Penn`s photographs costs $100. Here is a sampling of the new titles for the photography lovers on your list:
”Acting Hollywood Style,” by Foster Hirsch. A rich collection of movie stills and portraits illustrates this entertaining history of Hollywood acting. The book combines anecdotes and witty critiques of acting styles and dramatic effects. The 262 black-and-white and color photographs capture scenes such as Clark Gable`s conquest of Greta Garbo in ”Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise,” a lighter-than-air Fred Astaire in ”You`ll Never Get Rich” and Katharine Hepburn as a rather unconvincing Chinese peasant in ”Dragon Seed.” Hirsch has written more than a dozen previous books on the theater and film. Harry N. Abrams, 288 pages, $60 in hardcover.
”America in Passing,” by Henri Cartier-Bresson, preface by Gilles Mora. Cartier-Bresson, one of the pioneers of modern photography, offers a personal documentary of America as he encountered it while traveling in this country from the 1930s through the 1960s. The black-and-white images encompass a cross section of American life from young love to civil rights. The photographer`s ability to encapsulize places and events with stirring candids creates an eloquent journal. Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown and Co., 152 pages, $75 in hardcover.
”Big Pictures,” photographs by Matthew Rolston, introduction by Tim Burton. Rolston is a virtuoso of modernism, classic Hollywood portraiture and pop art, all of which he draws upon in his celebrity portraits, fashion photographs, nudes and abstracts. Rolston`s black-and-white and color photographs appear in Harper`s Bazaar, Esquire, Rolling Stone and other major magazines. Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown and Co., 144 pages, $60 in hardcover. ”Blue Planet: A Portrait of Earth,” by Lydia Dotto, foreword by Martin Harwit. Images capturing the wonder and grandeur of the Earth as photographed from space shuttles alternate with earthbound views of majestic landscapes scarred by tornadoes, fire, volcanoes, pollution and other natural and man-made cataclysms. The book includes 29 breathtaking oversize color images. Harry N. Abrams, 64 pages, $19.95 in paperback.
”Changing Reality: Recent Soviet Photography,” by Leah Bendavid-Val, released in conjunction with an exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. Ironic and romantic moments, surreal portraits and candids of everyday life present a photographic vision at odds with Western
preconceptions about Soviet photography. Many of the 38 photographers did their work outside the former mainstream of politically correct picture-taking in the Soviet Union. All were ready and waiting to test recent new freedoms but remain committed to the ideal that art can and should change society. Starwood Publishing Co., 132 pages, $34.95 in hardcover.
”Children of War, Children of Peace: Photographs by Robert Capa,”
edited by Cornell Capa (Robert`s brother) and Richard Whelan. Robert Capa was the quintessential war photographer, symbolizing the ideal of the photojournalist as romantic adventurer and compassionate observer. The book gathers selections of his pictures of children who mirror impressions of Europe on the brink of World War II and suffering during the war itself. The book includes jubilant postwar images of children in Europe, Japan and the new state of Israel. The final photographs are from Indochina, where Capa was killed by a landmine while photographing for Life magazine in 1954. Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown and Co., 168 pages, $50 in hardcover.
”The Circle of Life: Rituals from the Human Family Album,” edited by David Cohen, introduction by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Here is a wonderfully upbeat celebration of the diversity of rituals and ceremonies the world over. Yet the black-and-white and color photographs unite the human community, in that all cultures respond with ritual to the great passages of life such as birth, marriage and death. Photographs by Bruno Barbey, Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas and many others are included. Harper San Francisco, 240 pages, $39.95.
”Dancing in Your Mother`s Skin” combines the work of two Chicago artists, poet Jean Howard and photographer Alice Hargrave. Both capture potent imagery where such things as trees, windows, grasshoppers, fossils or schoolyard swings become urban metaphors for human fears and longings. Tia Chucha Press, Chicago, 67 pages, $12.95.
”L`Histoire de France,” photographs by Ralph Gibson, introduction by Marguerite Duras. Gibson`s France suggests how a culture is imbedded in fleeting images and floating impressions of architecture, people and objects. The evocative sensuality of form, a hallmark of Gibson`s often surreal photographs, echoes through these images. This is the New York photographer`s 15th monograph and his first in color. Kodak/Aperture, 120 pages, $49.95 in hardcover.
”The Horse: Photographic Images, 1839 to the Present,” by Gerald Lang and Lee Marks, pays tribute to the horse in 155 photographs drawn from collections throughout the United States and Canada. The grace and motion of horses and the proud poses of their riders attracted photographers from the start. The early masters such as Nadar, the pioneering modernists such as Edward Weston and Paul Strand, and contemporary trailblazers such as Holly Roberts are among the artists included. Photographs are both black-and-white and color. Harry N. Abrams, 156 pages, $45 in hardcover.
”Mary Ellen Mark: 25 Years,” by Marianne Fulton. Mark is a consummate photojournalist whose photographs in Life, National Geographic, The New York Times, Paris Match and countless other magazines often document life on the brink-in mental wards, slums, streets that are home to the homeless, and Mother Teresa`s hospices for the dying in Calcutta. But Mark`s empathy for her subjects brings an uncompromising dignity to photographs that command a sense of the common humanity of all people. Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown and Co., 192 pages, $60 in hardcover.
”MGM: When the Lion Roars,” by Peter Hay, gives an alluring year-by-year, star-by-star account of MGM in an entertaining text as well as 700 black-and-white and color illustrations. Here are movie stills from classics such as ”Queen Christina,” ”Red Dust,” ”Gone With the Wind,” ”The Wizard of Oz” and ”Ben-Hur” (both the 1925 and 1959 releases that flank the beginning and end of the book). There`s lots of written history accompanying the photographs, movie posters and stargazer magazine covers included in the book. Turner Publishing, 336 pages, $50 in hardcover.
”Nuclear Enchantment: Photographs by Patrick Nagatani,” essay by Eugenia Parry Janis. Nagatani`s darkly humorous apocalypse offers commentaries on the nuclear age with kinetic photographic tableaux that juxtapose such things as body worship and weapons worship, American Indian ceremonies and the ceremonial display of missiles. Nagatani tells his stories in color, often with vivid backgrounds of radioactive red. University of New Mexico Press, 140 pages, $45 in hardcover, $29.95 in paperback.
”Irving Penn: Passage,” introduction by Alexander Liberman. Penn brought a sculptural elegance to fashion photographs, celebrity portraits and even to still lifes of discarded objects like cigarette butts. A balletic grace pervades his pictures of tribespeople in New Guinea and other cultures while settings such as a corner in his studio created invitations for self-revelation by subjects such as the Duchess of Windsor. This book of 468 color and black-and-white images offers a lavish reflection on Penn`s 50-year career, much of it spent as a photographer for Vogue. Alfred A. Knopf/
Callaway, 300 pages, $100.
”Photographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970-1990” gathers together the color celebrity photographs and other work that have made Leibovitz as famous as some of her subjects. Leibovitz has captured Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, John Belushi, Isabella Rossellini and many others as their alter-ego personas-beings dancing on the edge between fantasy and self-parody-in her precisely choreographed portraits. HarperCollins, 231 pages, $60.
”Photography in Nineteenth-Century America,” edited by Martha A. Sandweiss. Some of photography`s most historic pictures and some little-known masterpieces accompany six essays that explore photography as a cultural force in 19th Century America. Works by Mathew Brady, William Henry Jackson, Alexander Gardner, Timothy O`Sullivan, Gertrude Kasebier, Jacob Riis, Alfred Stieglitz and numerous others are included among the 244 illustrations. Harry N. Abrams, 336 pages, $49.50 in hardcover.
”Planet Peru: An Aerial Journey Through a Timeless Land,” photographs by Marilyn Bridges, introduction by Fernando Belaunde Terry, historical commentary by John Hyslop. Bridges takes aerial photographs of landscapes that embody the history of ancient civilizations in the sacred emblems of temples, drawings and other markings left behind. She has been photographing in Peru since 1976. Her dramatic black-and-white images reveal a spiritual force that continues to resonate from Inca ruins and giant enigmatic drawings etched into the earth at Nazca. Kodak/Aperture, 108 pages, $35 in hardcover.
”The Portfolios of George Hurrell,” introduction by George Christy, essay by Gene Thornton. Famous black-and-white photographs by one of Hollywood`s lords of glamor. Jean Harlow on a bearskin rug and Jane Russell`s pinup portrait in a haystack are just two of the pictures included that became synonymous with a star`s career. Dramatic poses, near-luminous lighting and an idealized equation between glamor and human grace gave Hurrell his oft-imitated power to photograph movie star mortals as the gods and goddesses of the 1930s and 1940s. Graystone Books, $50.
”Save the Earth,” by Jonathon Porritt, foreword by the Prince of Wales, introduction by Robert Redford. Both text and pictures document the magnificence and fragility of world ecosystems. The text offers statements from a who`s who of contributors including Walter Cronkite, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Carl Sagan, Ted Turner, Barry Commoner, Jesse Jackson, Peter Ustinov, David Attenborough and photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. All royalties from the book go to Friends of the Earth International. Turner Publishing, 208 pages, $29.95.
”Sierra Club: 100 Years of Protecting Nature,” by Tom Turner of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. This volume of majestic landscapes traces the Sierra Club`s heroic view of nature from idyllic 19th Century paintings to photographs drawn from throughout the history of the medium. Here is landscape presented as ethereal architecture in photographs by Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, Galen Rowell, Carr Clifton and Kathleen Norris Cook, among others. Turner`s text chronicles a century of struggle to protect the environment. The 300 illustrations include 150 color plates. Harry N. Abrams/Sierra Club, 288 pages, $49.50 in hardcover.
”Spirited Visions: Portraits of Chicago Artists by Patty Carroll,” text by James Yood. Carroll turned with her humor, full-throttle color and signature brand of cultural documentary to the art circles of her own hometown for this series. In each of 43 portraits, artists such Ed Paschke, Pyllis Bramson, Tony Phillips and Michiko Itatani inhabit and personify the worlds fabricated from their own imaginations. Yood`s text and photographs of a work by each artist give context to the portraits. The book accompanied an exhibition at the State of Illinois Art Gallery earlier this year. University of Illinois Press, 104 pages, $49.95 in hardcover, $34.95 in paperback.
”Vietnam: Images from Combat Photographers,” by Owen Andrews, C. Douglas Elliott and Laurence L. Levin. Army, Marine, Air Force and Navy photographers documented the war in Vietnam with millions of images, and this book offers a selection from among them. The unflinching black-and-white and color images turn to combat scenes, the meaning of survival for villagers and soldiers and poignant attempts to reassert everyday life in a war zone. The photographs trace the war from America`s initial advisory role to the rescue of refugees during and after the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. Starwood Publishing, 107 pages, $29.95 in hardcover.
