Customer Reviews

Paul Outerbridge: Command Performance

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Paul Outerbridge (1896-1958) applied his Modernist aesthetic to commercial photography, and his pictures were published early in the last century in prestigious magazines such as Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue. The J. Paul Getty Museum is displaying a little over 100 of his prints, and there's a catalogue to go with them that will remain a source of pleasure and reference long after the work has come down. Martineau glosses over many of the prints and gets serious about a few, here and there. It is, however, a sober and highly readable introduction, to an art photographer of exacting sensibility. We can see the influences, from Pictorialism to Cubism, the parallels with the likes of Edward Weston, and now his heirs, so to speak, in Gregory Crewdson and Thomas Demand.

It would be easy with Outerbridge to be mislead by the sharpness of his palette or the oddity of his subjects. One might scale him as a simple eccentric: this would be totally reductionist. His mastery of complex color techniques, his understanding of camera consequences, his control of lighting, and his joy of composition mark him as a technical master on par with the best in more tame genres. That he adds to this an eroticism and sensuality that is non-standard would in itself place him in a special category. That all this is packaged with a sly commentary on bourgeoise values makes him a keeper for anyone seriously interested in photography.

kinda hard tell things in the language of the empire:to cut it short, as i see those pics i gather this is a very big case of overlooking an artist; this kandisnky like pics are somtehing i've never seen before, and the pic in the main cover is mind blowing;
i have the feeling, that as long you are not too fashionable from the market point of view, you do not even exist, and i think this is here the point with Outerbrige.
anyway, he was not to dedicated to the fashion stuff.
the book is great in my opinion.