French Dreams [Hardcover]

Steven Rothfeld (Photographer), Richard Reeves (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 1993

In 90 photographs a young artist named Steven Rothfeld evokes a dream of France that is exactly as we want to remember it--or imagine it to be.

Taken over seven years of travel, here are landscapes, portraits, still lifes, vignettes, and studies. But here also is a singular vision--these are not like photographs you've seen before, but are unique and unpredictable Polaroid transfers. They begin as 35 mm slides, are transferred to a Polaroid negative, and re then printed onto art paper, giving each a muted, timeworn quality of a relic.

Author Richard Reeves has written an introduction, and accompanying the photographs are quotes celebrating France from such natives and Francophiles as Proust, M.F.K. Fisher, Bauldelaire and Van Gogh, W.S. Merwin, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, and others. French Dreams is a brilliant debut, a gift, a work of art, a dream of France. Winner of the 1994 Communications Arts Award of Excellence for books of photography.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

In this collection of visual enchantment Steven Rothfeld presents a dreamer's celebration of France. It is the France of mist over the vineyards of Beaujolais and a sun-dappled allee in St. Remy; of shadows falling on the Place des Vosges and of fishing nets hung out to dry in Honfleur; of snowbound rowboats on the frozen lake at Versailles and peeling shutters in Provence. It is the France that lives by light, be detail, by what Edith Wharton called the "long familiar intercourse between the earth and its inhabitants."

And it is the France whose singular quality, whose unmistakable Frenchness, is captured not only through the photographer's subject and eye, but through his technique as well. Impressionistic in mood and effect, each photograph in FRENCH DREAMS is a unique, handmade Polaroid transfer whose muted colors and soft lines seem to arise not from a camera, but out of memory itself.

Accompanying the photographs are excerpts from Proust, Colette, Baudelaire, van Gogh, W.S. Merwin, Flaubert, Henry Miller, Henry James, Georges Simenon, Madame de Sevigne, and others.

About the Author

Steven Rothfeld has been a contributing photographer for European Travel & Life and a contributor to Bon Appetit and Travel & Leisure. Besides his own French Dreams, he is the photographer for such books as Entrez, and Patricia Wells's Trattoria. He is also the photographer for the 365 Days in France Picture-a-Day calendar with text by Patricia Wells, and the 365 Days in Italy Picture-a-Day calendar with text by Patricia Schultz.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 86 pages
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company (January 10, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563054698
• ISBN-13: 978-1563054693
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 7.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,466,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect way to help remember France, November 12, 2009

By 

Deborah Tolland "charlie's mom" (Germantown, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: French Dreams (Hardcover)

Okay, maybe I could never forget my vacation in France, but the pictures in this book will help keep the images fresh in my mind. The pictures are beautiful.... soft and romantic (not sappy romantic, more of an old-fashioned romantic).
I had seen the book in a book store but at full price, it was more than I wanted to pay. So I checked out Amazon.com and went through a 3rd party seller and found it much cheaper! The book was in excellent condition.
It now sits conveniently on the top of a bookcase next to my own pictures of France!