Release Date: 25/10/11
SYNOPSIS:
They're not your girls next door. This title deals with fashion and fetish in a female fantasyland. Ellen von Unwerth was a supermodel before the term was invented, so she knows a thing or two about photographing beautiful women. Now one of the world's most original and successful fashion photographers, she pays homage to the world's most delectable females in Fraulein. This celebration of our era's sexiest female icons includes Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss, Vanessa Paradis, Britney Spears, Eva Mendes, Lindsay Lohan, Dita von Teese, Adriana Lima, Carla Bruni, Eva Green, Christina Aguilera, Monica Bellucci and dozens more. Switching effortlessly between color and immaculate black and white, von Unwerth's photography revels in sexual intrigue, femininity, romance, fetishism, kitsch humor, decadence and sheer joie de vivre. Whether nude or in lingerie and a dazzling smile, her subjects are never objectified. Some flaunt personal fantasies; others are guarded, suggesting that we have stumbled into a secret world. Fashion and fantasy were never so enchantingly combined. These images were shot over the last 15 years and many are previously unpublished.
REVIEW:
Whilst this is a reprint of the title released last year, this one comes in at a better price which will allow not only followers of fashion, but fans of photography to see how a master not only snaps people in candid moments but manages to set the scene with dressing. It’s evocative, it’s as beautiful as the people it portrays and there’s a photographic style to suit all with my personal favourite being the Art Deco styling’s of the models, especially when there’s an inner strength portrayed that comes out in the image.
It’s a coffee table book, it’s a title to inspire but above all else it is an item that will be viewed time and again as the reader can’t resist looking at the photographic medium by a true master of the lens. Great stuff and wonderful value for the sheer selection of shots within.
BOOK BLURB:
This title presents roadside Americana, fantasy, kitsch and joy on the American roadside. Before the advent of corporate communications and architectural uniformity, America's built environment was a free-form landscape of individual expression. Signs, artifacts and even buildings ranged from artisanal to eccentric, from deliciously kitsch to quasi-psychedelic. Photographer John Margolies spent decades documenting these eye-catching and endearingly idiosyncratic examples of roadside advertising and fantasy structures, a fast-fading form of Americana. This book brings together approximately 400 color photographs arranged into chapters by subject: Main Street signs, movie theaters, gas stations, fast food restaurants, motels, roadside attractions, miniature golf, and Atlantic coast resorts. In an age when online shopping and mega-malls have reconfigured American consumerism, Margolies' 30-year survey reminds us of a more innocent, unpredictable and colorful past.
REVIEW:
Whilst everyone is herded to the latest gadgets or must own products, one aspect that is starting to sadly fade is the expressionism of the individual and nowhere is it clearer than in this recently released title by Taschen where the dreams and quirkiness of the few are available for the masses. Here, in this title, author/photographer John Margolies has clocked up over 30 years and 100,000 miles visiting the architecturally unusual or even downright jaw dropping advertising of the American highways/byways alongside roadside attractions which enhanced not only the local community but became a curio for the masses from a sadly disappearing bygone era.
Whilst not every piece from the weird to the kitsch will inspire the reader, it's a fabulous collection of the Americana idiosyncrasies that made the country what it is today. Were these true national treasures to be lost to time and modern development, in my mind, it would be a sad loss to the identity as well as entrepreneurial skills of the generations gone before whose mind conceived of these true wonders of the modern world.
Yet again, a few may well be glad to see what some would term as monstrosities disappear completely from the mind and landscape but its these very things that helped form the identity as well as the dreams of those who now walk upon the same road as these, what I can only term as pioneers. Overall, this title is a great talking point, its quirky but above all its an inspirational graphical demonstration of the individual that deserves to be remembered by all. I truly hope that this title not only amuses but will also help in the preservation of these curio's, true treasures of modern architecture.
Release Date: 25/10/11
