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Photography books to get lost in
Design in TV Land
Those of you who proudly never watch TV, skip down to the Bob Dylan and wine book reviews. Diana Friedman's "Sitcom Style: Inside America's Favorite TV Homes" (Clarkson Potter, $30 is for those of us who've actually lounged around debating the location of Alice's room on "The Brady Bunch," or grumbling about how huge Monica and Rachel's apartment was on "Friends." We're the ones who will snatch this book up for the photos alone, luscious giant images of the Huxtable kitchen, or for factoids such as the street address of the Queens home seen in the credits of "All in the Family."
Actually, there's already a book out there that presents blueprints for famed television homes, Mark Bennett's wonderful "TV Sets." Compared to that book, "Sitcom Style" is a bit of an oddity. The photos and history of the sets is pop-culture manna, but was it really necessary to try and offer actual design tips based on TV sets? Does anyone need an image of the Buchmans' "Mad About You" home to learn that "built-in bookcases eliminate clutter"?
The table of contents is also misleading. While most of the shows get decent treatment, it's hardly fair to list shows like "The Munsters" and "The Flintstones" when all the book offers for them is a generic show photo and a paragraph or three, in giant type. Still, much of the book is a nostalgic treat.
I am woman
Two coffeetable books out this season focus on the many and varied modern roles of women. "A Day in the Life of the American Woman" (by Sharon Wohlmuth, Carol Saline and Dawn Sheggeby, Bulfinch Press, $35) sent out 50 photographers on one day, April 8, 2005, to shoot American women living their lives. A Marin County mom, 44, tracks her four kids' varied activities on a color-coded chart. Just down the coast in southern California, another 44-year-old mom waxes up her surfboard — she's the 2002 Women's World Longboard Champion.
These women are moms, boxers, entrepreneurs, senators. Hollywood actress Jamie Lee Curtis pops up, on both sides of the camera. The women serve in the armed forces, they get treated for cancer. Flipping through the book is like peeking through the window of your neighbor, watching a life that is familiar in its generalities, novel in its specifics.
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National Geographic |
In "Mother Daughter Sister Bride," photos from the modern-day mix with those from years past. 1920s women compete in a swimsuit competition, wearing more fabric than it takes to make 10 of today's swimsuits. Inuit girls in 1929 Alaska pore over a fashion catalog.
But as vital as the photos to this book are the essays. Rich with history and global in their scope, they offer a look at how the rituals of womanhood differ worldwide, and how such rituals have changed. It's not a book for everyone, but if you find National Geographic magazine's sociological portraits fascinating, you'll likely love this too.
Like a Rolling Stone
In 1964, Bob Dylan was just 23, a folk singer on the rise but still relatively unknown. Photographer Douglas Gilbert, himself just 21, was sent by Look Magazine to photograph the young man in Woodstock, N.Y. Look eventually refused to publish the results, calling Dylan "too scruffy." (Ah, America in 1964, still fighting what was already Blowin' in the Wind.)
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Da Capo Press |
He's shown sitting thoughtfully with children, watching Dean Martin on television, dragging deep on a cigarette, and on stage at the Newport Folk Festival. Famous faces cross his path — Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Alan Ginsberg, John Sebastian and others. But the star of the photos is always Dylan, not yet famous, but bound to be, captured as he hangs between obscurity and superstardom.
Gael Fashingbauer Cooper is MSNBC.com's Books Editor.
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