Edward Steichen: In High Fashion - The Conde Nast Years, 1923-1937
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Graphic Design
Edward Steichen: In High Fashion - The Conde Nast Years, 1923-1937 Details
About the Author Todd Brandow is the founding director of the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in Paris.William A. Ewing has been an author, lecturer, curator of photography, and museum director for more than forty years. His many publications on photography include The Body (1994), Landmark (2014) and Edward Burtynsky: Essential Elements (2016). Read more
Reviews
Truly a beautiful book. I am always looking for high quality coffee table books with large (full page is always best) photographs. I like the text to be minimal, so that the images get a chance to shine in their own right. This book provides a wealth of images in a page after page format and the essays are short and easy to flip past. The pictures are almost full page, in that they have a slight white border and space beneath for a caption. The gallery style of presentation is very satisfying, though the book does leave you wanting more. With books such as these, the term "lavishly illustrated" seems to be bandied around to an almost comical extent. I always get a bit worried when I see a description like that because my idea of "lavishly illustrated" is not a few small to average sized images in the corner of a page full of text (with an occasional full pager to justify it all), no matter how stunning or rare those images may be. But I think it is safe to say this is "lavishly illustrated"! Only issue is that a sizeable number of portraits are of notables rather than of "high fashion", so in that sense you may feel cheated that images that would better suit what the title claims and evokes, aren't included. That being said, it is mostly of fashion photography, but do be prepared that many images are not. I also felt that his 1930s fashion work wasn't as well represented as his 1920s work. Just my opinion, others may differ. Also, some great art deco infused shots (like the still life of shoes, pianos, lighters...you know the stuff) that I expected to be included weren't, but portraits of Conrad Veidt and Noel Coward are. See what I mean? But that in no way detracts from the beauty of this book. The photography is sublime, though the quality of the prints vary, but that is to be expected.
