Photobook Phenomenon
VicenC Villatoro
ISBN 10: 8417047050 / ISBN 13: 9788417047054
Published by Rm/Ccccb/Fundacion Foto Colectania
See also
Fascinations and Failures Photobook Phenomenon Erik Kessels Photography
Monday, March 7, 2011
Here Comes the English Sunrise
It's been hard to find time to write something new lately, so I thought I'd re-post something old. This was first published in December 2009.
"He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise."
~ William Blake
There was a time, from the late 1700s through the Victorian era, when it was often said that Britain was the "empire on which the sun never set." Similar things have been said of other empires, including Persia and Spain, but Britain's dominion is the most recent.
Is that the reason why the English are so fond of sunrises? It's hard to say, but their penchant for the orb and its arching rays has led to images of considerable beauty, both humble and grand.
This is the cover of one of my favorite books, The English Sunrise, by Brian Rice and Tony Evans, published in 1972 and now out of print. Although yellowed with age, my copy remains a jewel of a thing — an 8" x 8" paperback filled with seventy-six lovingly positioned images, plus those on the front and back covers, each one an English sunrise. To me this is sufficient argument for why printed books can never be completely replaced by e-books. The English Sunrise can still be found second-hand; I encourage you to do yourself a favor and seek out a copy. You'll see sunrise-bedecked houses and pottery, furniture, radios, tea cozies, signage and even a slot machine. Here are just a handful of examples — not necessarily my favorites, simply chosen at random.
"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls."
~ John Muir
Anthony Mathews
Publisher of innovative art books
Thursday 16 January 2003 00:00 GMT0
The Independent Online
Anthony Roland Mathews, art-book publisher and designer: born London 19 August 1930; married 1954 Madge Wilson (one son, two daughters; marriage dissolved 1965), 1965 Jill Thomas (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1975), 1981 June Scott (one son, two daughters); died Oxford 4 January 2003.
A loquacious charmer of great personal generosity, Anthony Mathews was an innovative publisher of art books. If his company had been operating today, it might have been at the forefront of the Britart boom.
After studying illustration and graphics at Wimbledon School of Art, Mathews worked on British Rail's innovative corporate design in the early Sixties. From 1966 to 1970, he was production manager with the fine art publisher Editions Alecto and worked on limited-edition prints with artists including David Hockney (a series based on Cavafy poems), Claes Oldenburg (a project entitled London Knees), Jim Dine, Richard Hamilton, Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha and Frank Stella. In the late Sixties, he was an early promoter of Gilbert & George's performance pieces
Mathews utilised his formidable technical ability in his first two books by the controversial pop artist Allen Jones, Allen Jones Figures (1969) and Allen Jones Projects (1971). Covering the artist's television projects as well as his more familiar paintings and sculptures, the works broke new ground by incorporating Jones's raunchy reference material and preliminary sketches. One of the books concluded with several pages of "advertisements" for Jones's favourite artists. Mathews also published a pioneering work by Udo Kultermann, Art-Events and Happenings (1971), and Polaroid Portraits (1972), photographs by Richard Hamilton by leading contemporary artists including Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol.
In 1970, Mathews formed a specialist publishing company with the magazine designer Peter Dunbar and the art dealer Barry Miller. The first book produced by Mathews Miller Dunbar was its most successful. The English Sunrise (1972) by Brian Rice and Tony Evans was a photographic exploration of the sunrise motif in middle England – in suburban stained glass, on garden railings, in trademarks and elsewhere. Mathews issued several more in the same format, all containing illustrations reproduced in a uniform postcard size – including Afghan Trucks by Jean-Charles Blanc (1976; exuberant personalised livery), Façade by Peter and Tony Mackertich (1976; art deco architecture), Lost Glory by Ian Logan (1977; US railroad logos) and Classy Chassy by Ian Logan and Henry Nield (1977; pin-ups on American war planes).
In 1975, MMD published the first work devoted to spray-can graffiti. Watching My Name Go By by Merlyn Kurlansky and Jon Naar documented this New York phenomenon in vast, lavish photo-spreads. The Other Women (1976), by the theatre designer Barry Kay, was an equally groundbreaking photo-essay on the extensive transgender communities of Sydney and Melbourne. Mathews also published two collections of photographs by his friend David Bailey and the beautifully produced Monet at Giverny (1975) by Claire Joyes.
Following the break-up of MMD (the partnership was financially disastrous), Mathews devoted his considerable energies to Idea Books, a specialist art-book importer. The Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha's deadpan works Nine Swimming Pools and a Small Fire, Twenty-six Gasoline Stations and Every Building on Sunset Boulevard are now collector's items.
When Idea Books went into receivership, Mathews returned to book design, working primarily for Thames & Hudson in London, Alvise Passigli of the Scala publishing house in Florence and Idea Editions in Milan. He designed and produced a number of books on architects, including Adolf Loos, Carlo Molino and Gio Ponti, and new-wave Italian designers, such as Bruno Munari and Andrea Branzi.
Moving to Italy in 1977, a country he loved, Mathews lived with his third wife, the artist June Scott, in a cottage on the Passigli estate outside Fiesole, where he was an endearing, chatty host for an endless succession of English visitors. Mathews's mind was a storehouse of out-of-the-way knowledge, particularly on food and drink. "Do you know they cook a dish with lampreys and bitter chocolate in Bordeaux?" he would announce, simultaneously waving his untipped Gauloise in the air and pouring you a glass of Chianti. "Had it once. Not an experience I'd care to repeat."
He appeared to move constantly in a great cloud composed of talk, cigarette smoke and hilarity. One of his most characteristic gestures was wiping a tear of laughter from the corner of his eye.
Mathews settled permanently in Oxford in 1994. The amputation of a leg did not diminish his charm or energy. He died suddenly on the eve of taking a holiday in Italy, his first alone with June since the birth of their three children.
Christopher Hirst
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