Customer Reviews

Light and Illusion: The Hollywood Portraits of Ray Jones

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During the 30's and 40's, Hollywood helped America climb out of the Depression by painting glamourous fantasies with stars who were larger than life. As the head photographer at Universal Studios during this important time in American history, Ray Jones was instrumental in creating and defining this "Glamour Era" of Hollywood. The book goes into some detail about how Jones created his special look, but the true joy here is thumbing through the numerous examples of Jones' exceptional talent. The photos span the three decades of Jones' carrer in Hollywood (from the 30's to the 50's) and the featured stars read like a Who's Who of Hollywood. Also featured are Jones' six Acadamy Award-winning photos (the award has since been discontinued) including a memorable one of John Wayne. For those who long for the good ol' days of Hollywood, this is a wonderful look at how the stars were made.

I bought this book last week from a mail order. However, I was kind of disappointed about this book as a young portrait photographer. 1) This book talks nothing about photography lighting. (Because of the name called "Light and Illusion") It only talks about Ray Jones' photography life. 2) The quality of the photos in this book is not very good (Except few of them have great quality.) I also read "Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits" which has very good quality of pictures. (I am not too sure that is because George Hurrell always used 8x10, 4x5 camera so his picture quliy in that book is consistency). Anyway, this is my opining.