Customer Reviews

Andreas Feininger: That's Photography (Hatje Cantz)

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As a record of the work of Andreas Feininger this has to be the book to own. With just over two hundred photos I doubt there will be anything better published. The 320 pages show his work from 1930 to the mid-Eighties with, I thought, a really first-class selection of photos.

European work from the Thirties includes: architecture; figure studies and portraits, then from the Forties onwards, when he was in America, work for the Office of War Information and Life magazine assignments of the Californian oil industry (those famous Signal Hill oil derricks) and probably the best from Feininger's sixty-year love affair with Manhattan. In between the industry, transport and city work there are forty-two photos of nature, either close-ups of plants or desert and mountain landscapes.

I love Feininger's work and I have to say that this book is rather special. As a collector of photo books (nearly exclusively dealing with America) I would normally expect to see monographs as landscape with the images centered on the page with generous margin but here is something different. The book is upright with the size and thickness one would expect for a non-fiction title, the margins on each page are quite narrow, the paper is a super matt art just right for the 200+ screen duotones . The binding and printing is impeccable as one would expect from art publishers Hatze Cantz (they did the print as well).

It is one of those rare books that is a joy to hold, turn the pages and be overwhelmed by stunning photos. A masterpiece!

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.