Provence Memories [Hardcover]

Dennis Stock (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Bulfinch Press,U.S.; 1St Edition edition (February 16, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821217151
• ISBN-13: 978-0821217153
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,030,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pleasures on the Coffee Table..., October 19, 2011

By 

John P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Provence Memories (Hardcover)

Few areas of the world are more photogenic than Provence, an area that is not precisely defined, but the very core is two French departements, Bouche-de-Rhone and the Vaucluse. The photographer, Dennis Stock, lived near the Luberon, a relatively small granite mountain that dominates the landscape to the east of the Rhone River, in the Vaucluse, for a period of seven years, starting in 1978.

Philip Conisbee wrote the introduction in 1988, which focused, suitably enough, of the imagery as conveyed by two of the regions most famous artists, Cezanne and Van Gogh. And it is in that spirit that Stock portrayed the area: stunning landscapes, and citizens, usually photographed individually, engaged in their every day pursuits.

Overall, the result is impressive. The reflective beauty of an a woman from Arles was captured; the statue of Frederic Mistral in silhouette; and the appeal of the tree-lined entrance to the Chateau de Roussan near St. Remy has always had a strong appeal to me. There are the numerous pictures that have become veritable clichés of Provencal life, and those include the flower market and the old man playing boules. You won't find any image-shattering pictures, all themes are carefully cropped, so there are no banlieues from Avignon or Marsailles; nor the hectic travel on the A-7 autoroute; and no hint that most people now shop at one of the hypermarchés instead of the local market. And Stock must have looked long and hard to find a mule still plowing the field.

There are other similar coffee table books on Provence, and I frankly think that Gérard Sioen's Provence : Plurielle et singulière is better. Whereas Stock would fill his car with his camera gear in the morning, and set off, Sioen would ride his motorbike, striving to capture the first hour after sunup, and the last hour before sunset, with the result that more pictures had the long shadows in the soft light. Also, Sioen captioned each picture on the same page, whereas Stock relegated all the captions to a separate "Catalog" section in the back, necessitating the flipping of pages; never as a desirable a format.

Still, for those searching for beauty, coupled with dollops of nostalgia for the Provence "d'antan," (of days gone by), this book is an excellent choice. It would make a great gift for anyone bound on their first trip to this inspiring region. Compared to Sioen's book, think it only rates 4-stars, but the themes and beauty resonate in their own right, and after a glass of Gigondas, the mood is mellow, so why not: 5-stars.