BILLY WOOD'S BUSINESS [Hardcover]

Marvin Heiferman (Author), Diane Keaton (Author), Bill Wood (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2008

Bill Wood's business was photography, and he produced tens of thousands of images over the course of his career. A tall, slender, hardworking family man with a penchant for bow ties, Wood (1913-1979) was born, lived and died in the Fort Worth, Texas area, and his photography played a central role in how his clients chose to see and to portray themselves and their city. Bill Wood's Business features approximately 300 of Wood's photographs, alongside essays by Diane Keaton and Marvin Heiferman that pay homage to the skills Wood (and professional photographers like him) brought to the business of photography. What drew Keaton and Heiferman to this project was the extraordinary range of Wood's images, as well as a shared appreciation of archives and the construction of photographic realities. In an earlier collaboration, Still Life (1982), Keaton and Heiferman explored the Surrealism, the fantasies and the economic motivations percolating beneath the surface of the glamourous color publicity photographs that Hollywood studios orchestrated and distributed in the mid-twentieth century. Since then, Keaton (in her film and book projects) and Heiferman (in his curatorial, writing and publishing work) have continued to survey the quirks of American iconography. Keaton purchased the archive of Wood's negatives 20 years ago, and in Bill Wood's Business, she and Heiferman team up again to look at and through photographs, to show what they are intended to depict and what they actually reveal.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Steidl (October 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3865216846
• ISBN-13: 978-3865216847
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 11.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,195,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Commercial Art, February 4, 2009

By 

Robin Benson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: BILLY WOOD'S BUSINESS (Hardcover)

Bill Wood was just like thousands of photographers across the Nation who ran small commercial photo studios and made their living from capturing the aspirational endeavors of the middle-classes: it could be the opening of a new gas station or furniture showroom; a wedding; inside a new apartment; a product shot; family portrait or anything else that needed a visual record for private or commercial use.

This is bread-and-butter work with technically correct lighting and straightforward compositions and the only thing to worry about was making sure the final prints put a positive spin on whatever was being photographed. These are commissions of record not creativity.

You might think that a book of 235 large black and white photos of essentially everyday life might look sort of dull but I found this a real page turner. Bill Wood seems to have been paid to photograph an amazing amount of Fort Worth commercial activity during mid-century. Interiors, exteriors and a few aerial shots, too.

The layout is the standard photo book format: one centered image to a page with reasonable margins and the briefest of dated captions centered below, printed on matt paper with 175 screen. The photos are presented un-cropped.

The work of city and small-town photo studios seems a neglected area of photography probably because it lacks a creative or critical edge but I think it can reveal so much of what the country aspired to in past years. Barbara Norfleet has raided the archives of local studios to produce three books: WEDDING/NORFLEET P (Fireside Books (Holiday House)), When We Liked Ike: Looking for Postwar America and Killing time. This last one is looks at the work of Joe Steinmetz and his coverage of social life in Pennsylvania in the thirties and forties and life in Florida during the fifties.

Norfleet though tends to concentrate on people doing things where as Bill Wood's Business gives examples of all of his commercial output and I think that is why I found it so fascinating.

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

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular b&w photos, October 21, 2008

By 

T. Markus "markustim" (Olympia, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: BILLY WOOD'S BUSINESS (Hardcover)

This collection of beautifully composed black and white photographs captures life in central Texas chiefly from the 1940s through the 1960s. Subjects covered include just about everything from typical scenes of daily life and business to Christmas cards, lake outings and contest winners. Includes a brief introduction by Diane Keaton who bought Wood's archives, this is highly recommended for all fans of b&w photography as well as typical scenes of Americana from the 40s on.