Showing posts with label La Lettre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label La Lettre. Show all posts

Sunday, March 27, 2011

JACK WOODY: Photo Book Publisher

Jack Woody, NYC. Photograph by Duane Michals
read profile on
La Lettre de la Photographie 3.26.2011


Lost Hollywood title spread with a young Sylvia Sidney
by Jack Woody (Twin Palms 1987)

Jack Woody's Twelvetrees Press, named for his grandmother, early Hollywood movie star Helen Twelvetrees, includes her beautiful portraits in his exquisitely printed book, Lost Hollywood, along with Lillian Gish, Jean Harlow, Charlie Chaplin, Theda Bara, Erich von Stroheim, Greta Garbo, and Rudolf Valentino by photographers George Hurrell, William Mortensen, Clarence Sinclair Bull, and Edward Weston.

Woody's Grandparents: Movie star Helen Twelvetrees and Frank Woody, actor and stuntman in John Ford movies, 1933. From 1929-1939, Twelvetrees starred in movies with Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and John Barrymore. Her initials “HT” are still inset in stained glass above the original front door of her Brentwood home on Mulholland Drive and Outpost, now home to a current movie star.

"Walk of Fame Star" on Hollywood Boulevard © Stefano Paltera

Robert Mapplethorpe: Certain People. A Book of Portraits
Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait, 1984
(Twin Palms 1985)

"...the Robert Miller Gallery did an exhibition of George Platt Lynes prints and after the exhibition they gave a big party. A guy comes up to me, all in black leather, and starts talking to me. It was Robert Mapplethorpe. He said he really loved the book, thought it was great and wanted to know if I’d be interested in working with him on a book...We ended up doing a book together, “Certain People: A Book of Portraits by Robert Mapplethorpe", with gravure plates printed in Spain. He’s on the front cover in leather and the back cover in drag. Susan Sontag wrote the text."

Matt Mahurin (Twin Palms 1999)

"Matt Mahurin’s book was the ultimate book for gravure printing. That’s a beautiful book. Beautiful, rich, dark – there’s a whole school of people who copy his work now."

Disfarmer: 1939-1946 Heber Springs Portraits
(Twin Palms 1996)

"The first book I published was Christopher Isherwood’s beautiful journal called “October” (Twelvetrees, 1980). Don Bachardy, Christopher Isherwood’s lover, was a portrait painter. He did a portrait everyday in the month of October, and every day Christopher would do a journal entry, so we paired each journal entry with Don’s portraits of Gore Vidal, Joan Didion and everybody who was anybody in L.A. Then I found a little printer in the valley, Cunningham Press. A couple of old guys ran it and took pity on me. That was about 1978 or 1979."

Friday, February 11, 2011

HIROSHI WATANABE: Love Point

Mariko 2
Photograph (c) Hiroshi Watanabe /All Rights Reserved

Japanese Edition "Love Point" (Tosei, 2010)


"I took the photograph of a bar, Love Point, a few years earlier in Japan. I liked the sign and its design. I used it on the cover in order to confuse the readers. When the show opened in Japan, a newspaper article appeared saying that the show is about a real place in Japan where men play with real women and dolls. For me, the work is a kind of mind game. I hope I was able to intrigue."– Hiroshi Watanabe

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Japanese-born, California based photographer, Hiroshi Watanabe, has become an important force in photography over the past several years, with a growing list of monographs, artist's books, exhibitions and awards to his credit. He's known for his beautiful theatrical portraits of traditional Noh Masks of the Naito Clan and Kabuki Players (Hiroshi Watanabe, La Lettre de la Photographie, Jan 17, 2011)


though here he has taken a slightly different turn, photographing artificial Japanese Sex Dolls as models, along with almost identical live models. The portraits are titled out of fictional characters in an accompanying short story by novelist Richard Curtis Hauschild and all reside in a fictional place, Love Point.

"The dolls are very expensive sex dolls (about $5,000). They are human size with real joint movements, soft skin, and weigh just like a woman. As in US and Europe, there are people in Japan who live and sleep with these dolls in lieu of wife or girlfriend. US dolls are more realistic in a way, but Japanese dolls are cuter and adorable (my opinion)."

"After I photographed the dolls, I photographed real human models dressed similarly. I wanted to puzzle and confuse what is real and what is not. Of course, one can tell the difference once he/she knows there are both. I could have made them more same and thus indistinguishable if I manipulated the images digitally, buytI kept them as they are on the film. I wanted to raise a question about perfectly (and easily) manipulated digital images that we see now everywhere."

“Love Point” was a collaboration of many. Hiroo Okawa of 4woods created the dolls which gave Watanabe's photographs their mysterious charm, along with the work of make-up artist, Kyoko Owada, stylist Hiromi Chiba, and models, Mariko Masu and Hiroko Sato. Richard Curtis Hauschild, “Bulldog”, wrote a strikingly original short story with the inspiration he received after looking at Hiroshi Watanabe's photographs. Kunihiro Takahashi of Toseisha belief in the work prompted an “I will publish it” response on the spot when shown the photographs, with book design by Satsuki Ishikawa. And more recently, Chris Pichler of Nazraeli Press, published the U.S. version, One Picture Book #66: Love Point (Nazraeli Press, 2011). – Elizabeth Avedon, La Lettre de la Photographie
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Friday, December 10, 2010

LA LETTRE: William Eggleston: For Now

Untitled, Rosa Eggleston, Memphis, Tennessee, 1971
Photograph by William Eggleston

Untitled, Walter Hopps, early 1970's
Photograph by William Eggleston


Twin Palms Publishers newly released monograph, William Eggleston: For Now, is the result of film-maker Michael Almereyda’s year-long search through the Eggleston archives, a remarkable collection of heretofore unseen images spanning four decades of work. Unusual in its concentration on family and friends, the book highlights an air of offhand intimacy, typical of Eggleston and typically surprising. Eggleston remarked “the book comes close to being a family album.”...read more

LA LETTRE: The 14th Annual Friends of Friends Photography Auction

Photograph by Herb Ritts, Karen, Los Angeles 1989
Donated by the Herb Ritts Foundation, Sold for $4,600

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with Yolanda 1962
Photograph by the late James Karales, Donated by Monica Karales

Photograph by Marc Riboud, Three Chinese Girls, Beijing 1957


In his opening speech, Friends Without A Border Founder, Kenro Izu, told the Auction audience: “I asked the Dalai Lama what is the key to Peace? He said, ‘Think We, not Me or I’”.

The 14th Annual Friends of Friends Photography Auction began last Tuesday night with a cocktail reception, followed by the annual Live Auction. The audience was a broad mix of private collector’s, Gallery owners and director’s, curators and first timers. Many returning for their 14th year, know this auction is a great way to expand your Photography Collections with well known artists, while donating to the exceptional work being done at the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia...read more

Friends Without A Border Foundation and The 14th Annual Friends of Friends Photography Auction Results

12.10.2010