Customer Reviews

Performance

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A beautiful book, uniquely designed and executed (the book cover unfolds in sections so that it looks like a box) featuring black and white portraits of various entertainers from the past 50 years. A sampling of the subjects featured here include Astaire, Baryshnikov, Bogart, Bacall, Bjork, Brando, Capote, Chaplin, Cher, Dylan, Garland, Hepburn (both Audrey and Katharine), Hitchcock, Joplin, Keaton, Loren, Minnelli, Nurevev, Sinatra, Streisand, and many more. Essays are by John Lahr, Mike Nichols, Andre Gregory, Mitsuko Uchida and Twyla Tharp. Includes "Paparazzi", a satire photographed for Harper's Bazaar in 1962 with Suzy Parker and Mike Nichols, inspired by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Avedon is not just a master, not only a creator of a very copied style. In the core of his portraits is the essence of the photographed subjects. Avedon could make it emerge from those persons, and capture it in the perfect moment. All this - added by the fact that most of the subjects are world celebrities - makes Richard Avedon's work a great pleasure to watch.

And it's all about this book. A wonderful luxury edition, very well organized. A no-brainer.

It is very difficult to celebrate the best photographer in the world. Conversation can be about, for example, ten or fifteen photographers. But Richard Avedon can be named the first from the first. And I bought Performance: Richard Avedon in spite of the fact that I had already bought Richard Avedon Portratis some years ago. New book is more complete works of R. Avedon. It can be the manual for any photographer and this book may be interesting even at repeated review. There is only one imperfection for me. I would like to have photos of Maya Pliseckaya in this book.

Excelent value and wonderfull fotographies from a great artist. In october I was able to attend the show of Avedon works at the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston. Of course, I knew his work, but supperficially, and there I could have a complete panorama of his way of looking at the world. This book is focus on other artists, from the performing world, and let's us see the inner feelings of both, Avedon and his subjetcs. Highly recommendable.

I recently attended the Avendon exhibit here in S.F. The photographs, all in black and white, represented an incredible history of Avendon's work. My favorite section in the exhibit was the "performance" section. There was a photo of Nureyev's foot that I was completely drawn to. There were other performance photo's also. Most of them were in the book of the exhibit...but not the photo of Nureyev's foot. I did find it in this Performance book at the museum, but they only had a display copy. I was lucky to find the book on Amazon. What a delight that the book also had amazing photos of Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland and many other priceless photos. I love this book even more than the exhibit book!

wonderfull photos of artists in this very special book. The best of american photography.

I knew Richard, he was a great inspiration for all photographers, we all admired him for his work and as a person, we miss him, so this book is truly a wonderful memoriam to a great and inspirational man, I love it.
Michael Dunne, London

Returned book as it was not what I thought it was. The description states Theatre, but there are music, film, and others included. Have purchased many photography books and DVDs from Amazon, and this is the first I returned. My title says it all. Did purchase Richard Avedon's book from his tour that will be here in the Bay area in October. Am going to attend that exhibition because of that.