11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vavra and I, February 17, 2000
This review is from: Horses of the Sun: A Gallery of the World's Most Exquisite Equines (Hardcover)
My experience with Vavra books goes back to the 80s when I first encountered Equus. I happened to open to page 8 and found myself standing there actually wiping my eyes. I had never encountered a person who felt as I do about the nature of the horse. In this, his latest offering, that tradition continues. I have given away several copies now (thank you Amazon) and the recipients and I agree; if you wish to have the spirit of the horse on your living room table, this book is the means to that end. Thanks again, Robert.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Overdone., March 4, 2005
This review is from: Horses of the Sun: A Gallery of the World's Most Exquisite Equines (Hardcover)
Robert Vavra, Horses of the Sun (Morrow, 1995)
Blurbed by James Michener and introduced by William Shatner (and this was before the Priceline days, mind you). Can you get any cooler?
Horses of the Sun reminds me of another book that's crossed my desk quite recently, Barbara Livingston's Old Friends: Visits with My Favorite Thoroughbreds. Maybe if I hadn't read that one so recently, this one would have appealed to me more (but I don't think so). About the only place where Vavra's book doesn't pale in comparison is that he covers more breeds of horses (but then, you expect from the title of Livingston's book she's only photographing one breed for it) and covers each horse with more photographs than Livingston. Other than that, however, Livingston's book towers over this.
As should be the case in two books of photographs, the main thing to compare is the photographs themselves. Barbara Livingston shoots clean, spare shots with an eye for a good background. Vavra's photographs are always very cluttered, and he has a thing for overly-dramatic double-exposure shots. (Oh, my, does he have a thing for overly-dramatic double-exposure shots.) Now, one overly-dramatic double-exposure shot, on its own, is fine (for example, the one that hangs over the entrance to the Kentucky Horse Park). But in a book of over two hundred pages, where you've got at least two for every horse he's photographing, the effect gets to be a bit much. To say the least.
Livingston also gets comparative points for the text in the two books, though it's a bit harder to put a finger on why. Both of them are writing about horses they've loved over the years, and both approach a tone of hero-worship quite often in the text (which, for a book of photographs, is extensive in both). I think, perhaps, it's the same thing as it is with the photographs; Livingston's prose is cleaner, less flowery. It's almost as if, in comparison, Vavra's book is a two-hundred-fifty-plus page Hallmark card.
Nice to look at, but if you're a Vavra fan, check out Barbara Livingston's work. ** ½
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great book that captures a image of the equine species., August 14, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Horses of the Sun: A Gallery of the World's Most Exquisite Equines (Hardcover)
I once looked at this book and fell in love with the pictures. Robert Vavra can really capture the true energy of the horse. I love horses and I have never seen such such beautiful pictures in my life.
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