Two Books of Portraiture: 21st Century, 20th Century

Pores. Skin pores. Craterous, oily, vivid skin pores in high relief. That's the overriding impression made by the portraits in this collection.

I was inspired by Geoff's lament the other day regarding the alleged decline of photo book making to seek out these two very beautifully-made recent photo books, both of which happen to consist of portraits. In the case of the always aptly-named photorealist painter par excellence Chuck Close (that's him on the cover), the pictures are enlargements of large daguerreotypes made in collaboration with the master of daguerreotypy Jerry Spagnoli, whose work we have (somewhat controversially) featured before.

The book itself is certain type of artifact that I admit makes me a little uncomfortable. Let's put it this way. Do you happen to remember Heritage Press books? They can still be found in virtually any used book shop. George Macy began publishing ultra-deluxe editions of classic literature in the year of the Great Crash, 1929, a venture he dubbed The Limited Editions Club. The books were printed in editions of 1500 (hence the name) and sold by subscription. They were very expensive. They featured custom design and typography and bespoke illustrations by leading artists, and they were made using the finest papers and bindings. They're still traded by booksellers in the $60–$300 range, although a few high points go for much more. Then, in one of those seemingly un-self-aware cognitively dissonant moves seemingly much beloved of culture-vultures, Macy instituted a more downmarket variant in 1935—the thick of the Great Depression—called the Heritage Press. The Heritage Press (often a first enthusiasm for future book collectors) published and distributed, also by subscription, unlimited-edition middlebrow versions of their upper-crusty LEC counterparts.

Exclusivity for the middle-class masses? Unlimited editions of limited editions? I've always felt that something was not quite sound about the concept, even though I own a couple of HP books, and even though I have a tolerant fondness for midcentury middlebrow culture. My problem is that every time I see a Heritage Press book, it makes me wonder what it was really supposed to look like—that is, what the Limited Editions Club version looked like.

At any rate, that's what Chuck Close's A Couple of Ways of Doing Something (here's the U.K. link), published by Aperture, essentially is—it's the public and affordable version of a far more exclusive and expensive portfolio, to which ordinary people are not expected to aspire. There were only 75 copies anyway. This is the Heritage Press version, if you will.

Chuck Close, Lorna Simpson 2006, one of the finer portraits from
A Couple of Ways of Doing Something

If you can look past that feeling of being patronized, of being shown the table-scrap version of the real thing, it's a gorgeous book in its own right. The printing quality is pull-out-the-stops, the design exquisite, the binding fine. The poems accompanying each picture—"by Bob Holman, the celebrated and widely published New York School poet who originated and hosted the famous Poetry Slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café and now runs the Bowery Poetry Club," according to the publisher's description—are perhaps writ too large, so they might stand up to the photographs visually. That's a quibble.

The portrait subjects comprise an exclusive club, too, which gives the group a self-congratulatory feel. (Note Lorna Simpson's smugness, or am I imagining that too?) Essentially, they're a group of top artists who happen to be Chuck's friends and peers. There's more than a whiff of real, not feigned, elitism here—it's an "in group," for sure—but one can hardly grouse about a portrait artist making subjects of his friends.

To make monumental monoliths of human faces is Close's project, and I can't pretend to criticize—I don't feel his work, but then, I don't really know it. "Daguerreotype" and "monumental" don't seem to go together naturally, on, er, the face of it. This glistening book is beautiful in every conceivable way except that, for me, the pictures don't quite convince as portraits (can a portrait work as art yet not as portraiture?), and thus the project doesn't quite cohere. If I've really seen it.

And the pores distract. Maybe it takes paint to provide the needed distance from the excessively, er, close visual intimacy.

But a lovely, lovingly made volume it indisputably is.

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Another stout and comely little book that's gained a place on my eagerly-awaited new shelving unit is the Thames & Hudson An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson by Agnes Sire and Jean-Luc Nancy, which I bought on Miserere's recommendation. (I apparently got the last one; the hardcover's gone out of print just since I started writing this review. The paperback is expected soon. If you live in Great Britain, you're in luck, as the hardcover is still available there. But act smartly.) As a book it has an exactly-made feel, its dust jacket fitting precisely, its paper rich and thick, its boards true and flat, the spine rounded just so. The reproduction quality is superb: the lustrous tritones are exact reproductions made directly from original prints drawn from the collection of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. In fact this was the new institution's first project. The reproductions are in an important sense reproductions, really, not just plates or illustrations; the book's creators have elected to be exactingly faithful to the prints, even down to their occasional flaws or hurts.

Many of the most famous portraits are here: Collette and her housekeeper; Pound at St. Elizabeth's; Truman Capote in the garden; Faulkner; Sartre; the severe and aloof Joliet-Curies. There are (naturally, because they're published here for the first time) a number I've never seen, emphasizing again that H.C.-B.'s archive is vast and he did not insist in life (as he surely cannot in death) on making the selects himself as an indivisible part of his process. 

Among the missing are the famous one of Matisse with his doves, and my own favorite of H.C.-B.'s portraits, Giacometti crossing the street in the rain with his jacked pulled over his head. Also, a number of pictures that happen to be of people are pressed into service as "portraits" although they don't seem to quite fit the genre. H.C.-B. had a fairly well-defined project in mind in his portraiture, and random people at a bar or the famous black mama picture from America in Passing don't fit the enterprise, in my opinion, even if the pictures are nice.

Compare to Eisie
My only other cavil is that I'm not quite sure the general collector needs Cartier-Bresson's portraits. Is that too blunt?

With any artist's oeuvre, it is reasonable to ask, if this body of work did not exist, would the artist's reputation and accomplishment be diminished? If Ansel Adams's color work (also the subject of a good new book) were to disappear, it wouldn't affect his standing a jot. I wouldn't miss Walker Evans's subway pictures, although others might—they don't define that artist's best work for me.

One might also ask the question the other way around, so to speak—if this work were all that the artist did, would it be enough to secure the reputation he or she in fact has achieved? Cartier seems to try a bit too hard with his portraits, throwing the faces to one side or toward one edge a little too recklessly, as if searching, mostly in vain, for the dynamic framing that characterizes his best work out in the world; and I'm not sure he has quite the knack for capturing the essence of a personality or a person's appearance as surely as he was able to frame the strangeness and wholeness of moments amidst the melee of life.

So Cartier-Bresson is a very good but not, in my opinion, a great portraitist. (Compare to Eisenstadt for an object lesson.) If his portraits were never made I don't think it would diminish his reputation much. Similarly, if his portraits were all he ever did, I don't think he'd be known as a photographer of the first rank, much less as one of the greatest of the 20th century.

If you do like his portraits, however—for instance if you are a portraitist!—or if you seek a reasonably complete collection of the photographer's work, this book is well recommendable. It is a broad sampling, perhaps too broad and perhaps just a bit of a jumble, but 'tis a very pleasing example of the bookmaker's art. You will never have a chance to own better reproductions of these works, nor have cause to complain. I didn't add the Chuck Close book to my shelf, but I did buy this one: H.C.-B. suits my taste, and this here is fine H.C.-B. (Maybe I'm just "so 20th Century.")

Mike

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Featured Comment by Robin Dreyer: "I love that Chuck Close book and have looked at it a lot. However, you didn't really mention the typography, which is pretty great. They turned Bob Holman's poems over to typographer and letterpress printer Ruth Lingen who made a distinctive visual composition out of each one. Very nice. Nice of you to give Jerry Spagnoli front and center credit for his role in this—you have to read the text carefully to find his name in the book."

Comments

[John Yuda]

Mike, this brings to mind an important question for me: if you had to pick just a couple of portraitists -- preferably with a reasonably-accessible book or two -- what would you recommend?

[Ken Tanaka]

I've seen, but not not yet walked through, the Chuck Close book. I can say, however, that I've seen a few of Chuck Close's portrait prints upon which this book is based; they're quite memorable. The cover self-portrait, in particular, is quite large. "Pores. Skin pores. Craterous, oily, vivid skin pores in high relief. " describes it well. Unlike, say, Karsh portraits these are not at all revealing of the subjects. They're exercises in photo gymnastics largely for the entertainment (and presumably enrichment) of the photographer. Many are hauntingly memorable for their visual values but a little of this goes a long way. For me, viewing 3 or 4 at a sitting is enough to sate my appetite for years.

Regarding the HCB portraits: The Washington Post has a small gallery of these online for those interested in seeing some (for free). Was HCB a good or great portraitist? Shrug - I dunno. But I do know that I much prefer seeing his portraits than those of Chuck Close's.

[Barry Reid]

I think you make a good point about HCB's portrait work. Where I have seen them printed in the past I've often wondered where the magic, so evident in his street work, went to.

[Paul]

If you are looking for a great, cheap book, check Broken Spears: A Masai Journey by Elizabeth Gilbert. Great large format portraits, really intense photodocumentary photographs of rituals (erm - some are pretty rough to look at). And a lot of historical photos and documents to go along with it. And her own writing about the experience. A really impressive book. I got it for $9.99 remaindered, looks around that on amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Spears-Elizabeth-L-Gilbert/dp/B000SOVCE6/ref=pd_sim_b_3

[Mike Johnston]

John Yuda,
That's a very tough question to answer as asked...for what? For reference, to learn from, to use as models for your own work, or my favorites to look at?

But hey, I'm nothing if not game. I'll nominate "Alice Springs Portraits" from Twelvetrees Press and "Camera Portraits: Photographs from the National Portrait Gallery, London, 1839-1989," by Malcolm Rogers, from Oxford University Press. Like many such compendia, the latter book gets weaker as it goes on, so I'll really only recommend the first half of it or so. "Alice Springs" was a pseudonym of Helmut Newton's wife, and the scuttlebutt I heard was that the book was published as a sort of political maneuver because Jack Woody of Twelvetrees (now Twin Palms) was wooing Helmut to do a book. I don't know that, I'm just spreading gossip. I also seem to remember Helmut being quite condescending toward his wife's work, but I like hers better than his--they're mostly plain Leica portraits done simply with a Tele-Elmarit, but in Woody's lavish presentation they show great visual style and inventiveness, sensitivity and insight. They've aged quite well for me.

I guess now I'm not allowed to mention Bruce Davidson's book of portraits from Aperture or Lee Friedlander's "Portraits" from New York Graphic Society, am I? ;-)

Mike

[Geoff Wittig]

Dang it, Mike...
I picked up 'A Couple of Ways of Doing something' and set it back down again about four times at a bookstore maybe 6 months ago, before finally, reluctantly deciding against it. And now you made me buy it through your Amazon link. The reproductions are indeed gorgeous, and the charming anachronism of 21st century Dagerreotypes is irresistible.

The Limited Editions Club/Heritage Press analogy is interesting. High end book printing, producing books that are works of art in their own right, has always represented a tiny sliver of the publishing world. The Limited Editions Club was actually George Macy's attempt to democratize this part of it. 1500 copies may not seem like many, but typical 'private press' fine editions of the day ran to 100 – 300 copies or even fewer. Most of the LEC books from 1929 until WWII are lovely. They have gorgeous letterpress printing, generally contracted out to the era's finest artisan-printers like John Henry Nash, Bruce Rogers, Pynson Printers or Nonesuch Press. The books' illustrations were often photogravures, woodcuts or similar original impressions rather than reproductions. The Heritage Press versions, at least through about 1950, were simply reduced-format versions of the original books. They substituted photo reproductions, commercial printing and plain cloth bindings for the hand-crafted LEC methods, but the typography and overall design were preserved. It really was a 'democratic' way to acquire really nicely printed books without paying the equivalent of a months' salary. I started my book collecting with Heritage Press editions, and they're still a very valid way to start acquiring decent books. (They're waaaaay nicer than almost all contemporary offset printed trade books, which tend to have abysmal typography and brain-dead design.) Unfortunately, from the early 1960s onward, the nice letterpress type was replaced by far cheaper offset printing, and so subsequent volumes are less appealing.

Fine editions at different quality levels still exist for a very few books; Ansel Adams' Sierra Nevada: the John Muir Trail is still available in a nice trade edition, and a gorgeous (very pricey) letterpress limited edition.

Andrew Hoyem's masterpiece, Moby Dick, was actually available in three different versions. The original letterpress edition of 268 complete with hand-printed wood engravings by the great Barry Moser now goes for about $12,000, FYI. There was a facsimile slip-cased reproduction in an edition of (I believe) 500 that can occasionally be found in rare/used bookstores for about $300, and provides a fair imitation of the original. Finally, there's a more reasonably sized trade edition that does very nicely reproduce the typography and engravings via offset printing for about $50 via Amazon.

[Paul]

That´s interesting I´ve seen the "Alice Springs" book at my local library,but I´ve never stopped to look at it and that´s Helmut Newtons fault. I will certainly now stop to have a good look, mind you never liked Helmut Newton´s work.
Talking about archaic techniques and portraits I´m going to buy through your website next month Sally Mann´s "Proud Flesh", that should be quite something!
Didn´t you interview her once Mike? Anything worth writing a post about.
Happy Christmas to everyone round here!
Paul

[Yuanchung Lee]

Sorry to disagree, but I think Carter-Bresson was a great portraitist.

Maybe it's no accident that a world-class street photographer would be a world-class portraitist as well. As Max Kozloff explains in the introduction to "Lone Visions / Crowded Frames" (which I recently acquired on someone's recommendation on TOP), "a link exists between portrait and street photography, in the condition of their regard." He continues:

"The unpredictable conduct of one subject comprises the field of interest for the portraitist, just as the unforeseeable actions of many create the field of the street photographer. The incidents we think characteristic of both modes can be equally fugitive and subtle, though, of course, of different scale. . . . [T]he closely observed human physiognomy is the site of as many uncontrollable moods and variables as the street."

Or, to put in HC-B's terms, decisive moments occur in the street as well as in Matisse's studio, Faulkner's yard, Sartre's Paris, Capote's garden, or the Curies' apartment.

[Paul]

For a great portrait book I don't think you could go wrong with Irving Penn. I just looked up my platinum prints book (I think I paid $60ish dollars for it 4 years ago) and it's up to $238 on Amazon. How I wish I wanted to sell it. I never had a book appreciate on me like that.

But I'm guessing this would be pretty amazing too, at not too bad a price:
http://www.amazon.com/Irving-Penn-Trades-Virginia-Heckert/dp/0892369965/ref=pd_sim_b_5

[Bill Mitchell]

Your comment has made me wonder -- is Eisenstadt brushed aside when considering the "greatest of the great" photographers? Perhaps he was TOO prolific, and his work too accessable, without the angst of Gene Smith, the drama of Karsh, or the formality of Strand and Weston. Just one hell of a photographer.
I've owned "The Eye of Eisenstadt" for 40 years, and still often enjoy romping through its pages from cover to cover.

[David Nicol]

hehe, Mike does it again. HCB portraits out of stock at amazon uk now as well.

[John Yuda]

Mike, in all honesty I'm not sure which of those categories I was necessarily looking for with my question. I mostly enjoy your book recommendations so I figured I'd nudge you toward a couple more of them.

[Semilog]

When I was a kid I sent Eisenstadt (who was by that time retired) a couple of my prints. Silly me! But Eisie immediately sent back an incredibly warm-hearted and personal typewritten note on his Life stationery, urging me forward. I still have that note somewhere, dry-mounted to a spare piece of matt board, and though I became a molecular biologist the importance of that early encouragement by a an important elder has never left me.

[Stan B.]

Most "artists" don't really make exceptional photography when they try their hand, falling into many of the same basic pitfalls experienced by any Ordinary Joe. These portraits by Chuck Close most certainly break that mold; they are exceptional, both in their retro technique and their "unique," penetrating vision.

Two other recent books that succesfully mix visions of traditional and "modern" portraiture are Living With War by Judith Joy Ross and South East by Mark Steinmetz.

[Pete]

I was lucky enough to be given the HCB book last year and I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment — it's beautiful. I have no basis for assessing whether the reproductions do justice to his work but they certainly look excellent to me. As for his status as a portrait photographer, I agree with Ken; I certainly prefer his work over Chuck's, but perhaps that's because I generally like portraits that at least hint at a context.

Finally, something that struck me strongly about the HCB portraits was how many have what would be considered by the forum-dwellers to be faults — typically a slight or even strong element of camera shake or out-of-focus blur (e.g. the cover photo of Samuel Beckett). That photos with these kinds of "faults" can succeed so well has been an eye-opener for me.

[Nick]

I've been resisting the temptation to buy a photobook these last few months (except for one; read on) because I was saving up for a fast 35mm, but with the lens now save on the camera I could not resist this HCB book. Managed to get one in the UK just in time I gather.
The one exception was Garry Winogrand's 'The Game of Photography', which I found in a used bookstore in town and loved. I was especially smitten with myself when I found out later that on Amazon it costs 10 times what I paid!
I also distinctly remember seeing a book by Alice Springs in that same bookstore... When I'm in town next week I'll go and see if it's still there.
Thanks for all your posts this last year Mike and happy holidays to you and your loved ones.
Nick, The Netherlands

[Mike Johnston]

EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to a posting problem--entirely my fault--some of the comments to this post were temporarily not visible. Several comments I've had to rescue--I can't repost them under their author's names, but here are the otherwise missing comments:

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Posted by: DaveS., The Black Isle, Scotland | Wednesday, 23 December 2009 at 07:24 AM:

Went for one of the remaining H.C.-B. books from Amazon UK - there were 5 left prior to me ordering mine.

Have a Great Christmas Mike, and thanks for all your contributions and work throughout the year. The same goes to all your other contributors too.
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Posted by: Miserere | Wednesday, 23 December 2009 at 03:54 PM

I see you followed my H.C-B recommendation, Mike. At that price, it would be silly not to buy oneself a copy for Christmas, IMHO.
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Posted by: Richard | Thursday, 24 December 2009 at 04:10 AM

I think he has some great portraits. There is something very touching about the portrait of Ezra Pound, and I have always marvelled at the portrait of Francois Mauriac gazing right with the little world out of focus behind him. The Joliot-Curies is a shot for the century. They are quite different to the classic geometries of Cartier-Bresson's street work but fine enough to be remembered for in their own right.
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My apologies for the SNAFU.

Mike

[John Queenan]

I bought a copy of HCB portraits on amazon.ca (canada) yesterday and it looks like they still have stock. Thanks for the great blog!
John

[richj]

You wrote: "If Ansel Adams's color work (also the subject of a good new book)..."

According to Amazon, this is an expanded edition (20 new prints) of the 1993 edition. Also, from Amazon: "New digital scanning and printing technologies also mean that the book now offers a more faithful representation of Adams's color photography."

I've admired the book for years, and will probably purchase the expanded edition.

Thanks for posting!