A superb pictorial evocation of the City of Light, full of dazzling images and intriguing lore.
Pictures of Seine River bridges frame nighttime views of the French capital in this striking coffee-table collection of photographs.
Zuercher, a businessman and professional photographer, presents black-and-white photos of all 35 of the Seine bridges in Paris. The structures run the gamut of ages and architectural styles, from the Pont Neuf, built in 1607 of masonry, with many barrel-vaulted arches and circular Renaissance bastions projecting from its sides, to the Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir, a footbridge completed in 2006 with undulating, gracefully interwoven convex and concave spans. It also includes the Pont Des Arts of 1804, a spindly iron spiderweb that’s a favorite of couples, who festoon it with commitment locks; the Pont Alexandre III, an elegant 1900 edifice with neo-Baroque statuary and beaux-arts streetlamps; and the undistinguished steel girders of 1974’s Pont de l’Alma. Zuercher supplies brief, sprightly accounts of each bridge’s construction and the history of its site. Many of the bridges are heirs to predecessors that burned or collapsed, with the results made even more tragic by the pre-modern custom of building houses right on top of the spans. Others have been the locations of colorful scenes; the Pont au Change, readers learn, “has also been known as chemin des rois et de la guillotine” because it was both the processional route of royals into Paris and the exit for condemned prisoners, who were taken across it to have their heads lopped off. But the book’s centerpieces are its ravishing photos, which are overexposed to give the scenes a palette of bright but warmly luminous highlights, shading into slate and black backgrounds. Zuercher takes several shots of each bridge, capturing both the long sweeps of the spans and the close-up details of stonework, décor and gargoyles; looming in the backgrounds are Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and other landmarks, all set off to spectacular effect against the riverscape. The end result is an iconic visual record of the heart of Paris.
A superb pictorial evocation of the City of Light, full of dazzling images and intriguing lore.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0990630906
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Marcorp Editions
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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