If you were to judge any book at all by its cover, it should be this one. Story Teller is an amazingly unique photo book that is just as whimsical and eerie as the cover would suggest. Photographer Tim Walker takes fashion and portrait photography to an exciting new place by shooting his subjects (You’ll recognize a few of the subjects- Tilda Swinton and her unforgettably creepy face pops up all over the book) in imaginative and sometimes frightening dream-like sequences that tell an amazing story. I was reminded several times of Lewis Carroll’s imagery while I was flipping through it and got that same prickly feeling as when I read Through the Looking Glass for the first time. A definite must buy for those who aren’t content with your blah-de-blah every day coffee table book.
Murals and Portraits by Richard Avedon
In quintessential Avedon fashion, the brilliant photo collection Murals and Portraits is both shocking while being utterly honest and beautiful at the same time. The photos are grouped into four sections: Avedon’s work with Warhol and the members of the Factory, the series covering Alan Ginsberg and his family, the Chicago Seven war activists, and the photos that were taken during Avedon’s first and only trip to Vietnam in 1971. I find it a little hard to fit a description of this book into just a paragraph because of the range of emotion that fills it’s pages. Jumping from the shocking and strangely effortless pictures taken of Warhol and the members of the factory to the weirdly stand-offish and cold portraits of mangled war victims somehow works, although it feels like it shouldn’t. Maybe that’s the beauty of Richard Avedon’s work though, showing history as it really happened: good and bad, all happening at the same time.
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