About this item
In this rollicking account of fashion photography's golden age, the New York Times bestselling author of Model and House of Outrageous Fortune, Michael Gross, brings to life the wild genius, ego, passion, and antics of the men (and a few women) behind the camera.Before Instagram was an art form, fashion photographers and the models they made famous were pop culture royalty. From the postwar covers of Vogue to the triumph of the digital image, the fashion photographer sold not only clothes but ideals of beauty and visions of perfect lives. Even when they succumbed to temptation and excess - and did they ever - the very few photographers who rose to the top were artists, above all. Focus probes the lives, hang-ups, and artistic triumphs of more than a dozen of fashion photography's greatest visionaries: Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Melvin Sokolsky, Bert Stern, David Bailey, Bill King, Deborah Turbeville, Helmut Newton, Gilles Bensimon, Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel, Corinne Day, Bob and Terry Richardson, and more. From Avedon's haute couture fantasies and telling portraits to Weber's sensual, intimate, and heroic slices of life, and from Bob Richardson's provocations to his son Terry's transgressions, Focus takes readers behind the scenes to reveal the revolutionary creative processes and fraught private passions of these visionary magicians. Tracing the highs and lows of fashion photography from the late 1940s to today, Gross vividly chronicles the fierce rivalries between photographers, fashion editors, and publishers like Cond Nast and Hearst, weaving together candid interviews, never-before-told insider anecdotes and insights born of his three decades of front-row and backstage reporting on modern fashion. An unprecedented look at an eccentric and seductive profession and the men and women who practice it on the treacherous shifting sands of pop and fashion culture, Focus depicts - perhaps most importantly - the rewards and cost, both terribly high, of translating an artist's vision of beauty for an often cold and cruel commercial reality.
About the Author
This book list is a work in progress. Michael Gross is recognized as one of America's most provocative writers of non-fiction-its "foremost chronicler of the upper-crust," says curbed. com. His latest book Unreal Estate, to be published November 1, 2011, is a west coast version of his bestseller, 740 Park, this time exposing the most exclusive neighborhoods of Los Angeles-Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Bel Air and Beverly Park-and their residents. 740 Park, published in 2005, is the inside story of New York's richest, most prestigious cooperative apartment building. Built by James T. Lee, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' grandfather, and long the residence of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. , 740 Park is today the home of some of New York's wealthiest and most prominent families. Fortune has described 740 Park as "jaw-dropping apartment porn. " It offers an unprecedented peek into the world of such latterday financial heroes and villains as Stephen Schwarzman, Ezra Merkin and John Thain. In between these real estate epics, Gross published the wildly controversial expose of New York's cultural elite Rogues' Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money that Made the Metropolitan Museum in 2009, setting off an extraordinary campaign by some of New York's most influential citizens to suppress the book. It failed. The New York Times Book Review called it "a blockbuster exhibition of human achievement and flaws" and Vanity Fair said it is simply "explosive. " Why? "Gross demonstrates he knows his stuff. It's a terrific tale ... gossipy, color-rich, fact-packed ... What Gross reveals is stuff that more people should know," according to USA Today. A paperback edition was released in May 2010. Before 740 Park, Gross wrote Genuine Authentic, a biography of fashion designer Ralph Lauren. It was acclaimed by The New York Times as a work of "impressive reporting" that "hack(s) through the hype and half-truths" of the Polo purveyor's legend. Publishers Weekly praised his "meticulous research and artful prose ... The crackerjack journalist simultaneously tells a compelling story and gives it meat enough to be satisfying."A Contributing Editor of Travel & Leisure, Gross has also worked as a columnist for The New York Times, GQ, Tatler, Town & Country, and The Daily News; a Contributing Editor of New York (where he wrote 26 cover stories, including the magazine's all-time best-selling reported cover story on John F. Kennedy, Jr.) , and of Talk; a Senior Writer at Esquire, and a Senior Editor at George.In 2000, Gross published My Generation, a generational biography of the Baby Boom. It was called "wonderful" by the Washington Times, "trenchant, well-dramatized, thought-provoking and unusual" by Kirkus Reviews and "hugely entertaining ... a brilliantly reported story," by the Orlando Sentinel.Gross's 199
