Customer Reviews

Author Photo: Portraits, 1983 - 2002

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This 173-page hard cover book features more than 200 B&W portraits of authors. Good quality paper and print. Although the portraits in this book are highly manipulated, yet they represent a specific photographic style and an era. The artist has full command of the medium and the technology. Her ability to use available light to bring her photographs to life is remarkable. The techniques use to create Ronald Steet's photo as well Ron Rosenbaum's in 1983 are quite different from those use to create David Gates's in 2001. Marion has succeeded in revealing her subjects personalities in these remarkable photographs.

Marion Ettlinger is one of the few contemporary artists left in the field of photography. This is a brilliant overview of her work and an exciting insight into the world of some of our great writers.

In the fall of 1978, after I relocated from Colorado to Burlington, Vermont, I came upon an exhibit of black & white portraits of important Vermonters hanging in the front window of the Church Street Center, our city-owned art gallery. It was an ironic moment for me because only a year before, I had walked away from a 17-year career in serious portrait photography. I'd become familiar with all the significant players in this field, yet there I stood, gazing at some of the most beautiful work I'd seen in years. I had no idea who this talented photographer was.

Marion was still living in Burlington at that time, and I asked her if she would take a portrait of me. I was curious to see how she worked and what her interpretation of me might be. She worked in a very deliberate way, moving my arms, legs and head into the exact position she wanted, as if to match an image she already had in her mind. Her photographic technique was beautiful in its simplicity. She used natural window light and pieces of cardboard covered in aluminum foil to illuminate the shadow areas. I had technical training in photography, while Marion had simply evolved her own methods. She knew how to get what she wanted, and the proof can be found in this marvelous book.

Marion's work shows a bit of evolution over these 30 years, but at the same time I am pleased to see that she works basically in the same organic way. Perhaps the only difference is that she has even further mastered her medium as evidenced by the striking sculptural light found in many of the portraits.

Marion has a special way of connecting with her author-subjects. I sense a kind of mutual respect. The faces in this collection all seem to be speaking in a similar language, and that gives this book a powerful emotional resonance. It is much more than a portfolio.