Lillian Bassman [Hardcover]

Martin Harrison (Author), Catherine Chermayeff (Author, Editor), Kathy McCarver Mnuchin (Author, Editor), Nan Richardson (Author, Editor), Lillian Bassman (Author, Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1997

For 50 years Lillian Bassman has been one of the great figures in the world of fashion photography. Now, after a 20 year hiatus the 79 year old photographer is agai n at the forefront and her autobiography will thrill admirer s with its revelations. '

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Photography is a medium alive with masters who pushed the envelope beyond the raw elements of light, paper, and chemicals to make images first conceived and then assembled within the camera. Fashion photography, in particular, has long been served by artists who stretch the idea of costume, form, situation, and emotion. Both Bassman and Coffin used those elements with striking results, achieving enormous fame in their overlapping eras, Bassman in the 1940s through the 1960s and Coffin in the 1940s and 1950s. Both were capable of bringing a nearly kinetic choreography to their still photographs, both made fabric a stage and the human form within it a blending of gymnastics and drama, yet both offer a very different legacy. As seen here, Bassman worked exclusively in black and white, producing images highly dependent on light and shadow in which something is missing but is remembered by the viewer. Coffin built sculptural forms from models, clothes, and places united in enduring photographs. He often worked in color, making the products he photographed slow down long enough to be seen and critiqued. These books are ideal for our time. By offering the excitement of discovery in an avant-garde almost half a century old, they offer stirring evidence of the merger of the commercial and the aesthetic while gathering, as if by accident, beautiful clothes for our eclectic tastes. In so doing, they convert the old to the timeless. Recommended for general collections.?David Bryant, New Canaan P.L., Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 73 pages
• Publisher: Bulfinch Pr (June 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821223763
• ISBN-13: 978-0821223765
• Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 10.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #664,208 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning Fashion Photography! Puts The Zip In Your Zipper., December 31, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Burlington, VT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lillian Bassman (Hardcover)

Lillian Bassman is a well known fashion photographer of the 40's and 50's. Her work is glamorous and visually exciting. The photos in this collection are a combination of photography and other artistic tools which give them an almost otherworldly feel. The book is oversized, which makes many of the pictures big enough for framing which is exactly what I intend to do. There is also a short biography of her career which continues through today. A very good buy overall.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book of ethereal black and white fashion photographs, June 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lillian Bassman (Hardcover)

Lillian Bassman treats every photograph as though it were a canvas. With her selective toning and bleaching, it's hard to believe many of these images are photos. Her work in fashion was groundbreaking.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CRIMINALLY UNKNOWN, August 1, 2001

By 

Andy Todes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lillian Bassman (Hardcover)

if i could take only two photography books to my desert island, they'd be "Jeanloup Sieff : 40 Years of Photography," plus Lillian Bassman's relatively thin -- yet sensually-overloading -- volume. what a crime her work is not widely known. hers truly are impressionist photographs at their absolute finest, dripping with lushness and yet extreme fragility. they seem to float dreamlike around us and about us, offering a glimpse into that most rarefied world: the strange ethereal galaxy of a french fashion model of the 40s and 50s, bathed in moonlight and wrapped in jazz. god these are beautiful pictures.