SNOWMEN [Deluxe Edition] [Hardcover]

David Lynch (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 21, 2008

As his Spring, 2007 Cartier Foundation retrospective, The Air Is On Fire, made plain to all who saw it, the talents of the great American filmmaker David Lynch reach far beyond his acknowledged achievements in cinema: he is also an excellent painter, draughtsman and photographer. His photography to date has fallen loosely into four distinct genres or series: nudes (Bacon-esque images of digitally distorted Victorian photographs), still lifes (spark-plugs, dental machinery), industrial landscapes--and snowmen. Published to accompany the Cartier show, this compact volume brings together Lynch's black-and-white photographs of snowmen, all taken in the suburbs of his hometown of Boise, Idaho. Exhibiting his characteristic preoccupation with ominous beauty as these ephemeral folk sculptures decompose in front of snow-covered tract houses, Lynch pays scant regard to the cheerier and more genial properties of snowmen, and indeed some of these images will remind viewers of the shadowy black-and-white tones of Lynch's 1977 film Eraserhead. "If you have some shadow or darkness in the frame, then your mind can travel in there and dream," he has stated. Lynch's indisputable gift for teasing out the sinister flipsides of the props and rituals of American suburbia is beautifully evidenced in this small, gift-worthy book.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 20 pages
• Publisher: Steidl; Limited ed edition (November 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3865214673
• ISBN-13: 978-3865214676
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,288,973 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Simple and honest: this book sucks, May 11, 2009

By 

Said Head (MN, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: SNOWMEN (Hardcover)

As a Lynch fan and snowman enthusiast I felt this would be an interesting purchase. I expected some creepy, minimalist display of snowmen of whom David Lynch photographed and compiled into a book. Makes sense right? Well, what I expected is true, but far less than the extent that I expected of which.

First of all, the book is hardcover (which for anyone who buys books often will know that's an automatic and giant price boost); this book didn't need to be a hardcover.

Second, even though the description details a 20 page book, each page is one-sided (that's right, there are only about 13 pages that actually have anything on them--one's a short description, 10 are of actual photos, and a couple last pages of something in French).

And third, the last potentially redeeming quality, are the photos themselves. While I do like most of the photos (some are just dull) the pictures are all about 4 by 3 inches big (that's right, they're tiny). When I went a-googling for some sample excerpts from this book I figured the small page scans were just reduced, but clearly not. Also, and here's a big one, pretty much all these photos (some differ between publications) are available in David Lynch's 'Images'. In fact there is a small section in that book dedicated solely to snowmen (bigger pictures too).

Overall this book has really no purchasing value; Lynch may've just posted this photos on his website instead of ripping people off. Sure, this book was released for some special show Lynch did in 2007, but it is best just left alone as a little keepsake if you'd been there. If photographing snowmen is a hobby of Lynch's, why do we get to see such little of what could've potentially been a worthy item?