- Hardcover: 144 pages
- Publisher: Thames & Hudson; illustrated edition edition (18 Oct 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0500542309
- ISBN-13: 978-0500542309
- Product Dimensions: 30.2 x 24 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 150,316 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Erwin Blumenfeld shot to fame in 1938 with the publication of 14 sensational nude photographs in Verve magazine. The commission led to a career as one of the most gifted and sought-after fashion photographers of the 40s and 50s. However, throughout his career Blumenfeld remained fascinated with the naked female form and its representation within photography. In The Naked and the Veiled: The Photographic Nudes of Blumenfeld, his son Yorick Blumenfeld traces his father's fascination with the nude to a visit at the age of nine to an artist's studio in Berlin. Surprised by the young boy's entrance, the naked model "quickly threw a diaphanous cloth over herself. But the outline of her body was still visible against the light." Inspired by this moment, Blumenfeld later claimed that women could become "even more naked by their transparent veils". A psychoanalyst would have a field day with this comment, as well as Blumenfeld's subsequently compulsive and fetishistic photographs of the naked female form, captured over 40 years spanning his early days in Holland in the 1920s to his later years in the USA in the 1960s.
The 120 illustrations in duotone and colour crisply reproduce Blumenfeld's obsession, from early experiments in form inspired by surrealism (and ManRay in particular), to later, more classical nudes, playing with images of transparency and opacity. The Naked and the Veiled is an extraordinary photographic diary of a self-confessed "erotomaniac" --Jerry Brotton
Product Description
Blumenfeld gained fame as a fashion photographer, but he always considered his nude photographs to be his best and most important work. As a man he was obsessed with the female form. As an artist he worked endlessly to perfect a technique that would express that fascination - through solarization and negative printing, double and multiple exposures and other innovative devices. The 120 duotone and colour photographs shown here represent the peak of Blumenfeld's achievement. They have been selected by his son, Yorick, who also contributes an informative text. The book spans Blumenfeld's whole career from 1930s Amsterdam to 1960s New York. Blumenfeld's nudes - naturalistic, art-inspired, surrealist and erotic - represent an unrepeatable episode in the history of photography.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This wonderful book, The Naked & the Veiled, has been totally ignored by the
media in the UK. At the time the book was published, a full decade ago, Thames & Hudson did not have anyone in PR to promote it. As a result sales were minimal.
In France, however, the book was praised as one of the great photo books of all time. Sales were high. Why the difference for the same product?
Amazing that no one bothered to write a review in all this time in the UK!
media in the UK. At the time the book was published, a full decade ago, Thames & Hudson did not have anyone in PR to promote it. As a result sales were minimal.
In France, however, the book was praised as one of the great photo books of all time. Sales were high. Why the difference for the same product?
Amazing that no one bothered to write a review in all this time in the UK!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Blumenfeld Didn't Need A Computer!
23 Jan 2001
Format:Hardcover
I had my sister get me this book for Christmas so as to further my study of the nude. Knowing that the work inside was all about a half century or more old, I wasn't expecting highly innovative or original work but I indeed did find it. How stupid of me to think that his art work might be less fresh because he didn't have the photo equipment we now have or a computer. This study of his work is certainly proof positive that all an artist really needs is a first rate imagination! His fascination is the female nude. He "hides" that nude in some way in each shot but his results end up exposing the subject rather than obscuring it. Actually, it was a relief in many ways to see the art work of someone who was neither handicapped nor helped by state of the art machinery and equipment. Don't hold off buying this book because the work came from many earlier decades. The front cover image is very representative of the quality and content inside the book.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Good photographs, weak presentation
16 Feb 2002
Format:Hardcover
As a book this is a mediocre to poor presentation of an interesting mid-century photographer. The photographs are well reproduced and show a wide range of content and intent. Woman as sex object, woman as hardware, woman as mystified naked girl and anything else that fit Blumenfeld's fantasy.
The author is the son of the photographer who tries everything from freudian analysis to name dropping to make his father seem important. This detracts from the work. If you look at the photographs as the record of an artist who worked his way through Europe to New York over the middle 40 years of the twentieth century, you will find some art history and maybe some insight on how the artist evolved and how the craft changed over the most hectic time in its history.
Blumenfeld was a pragmatic professional illustrator. Most of his imagery is either derivative or based on tradition. Man Ray, Ruth Bernhard, and many others seem to have influenced him.
This is a good collection of different treatments of the nude female figure by an accomplished craftsman. It could serve as a starting point for thinking of how to or how not to approach the subject. Blumenfeld is at his best when he is simply doing graphic illustration and not "serious art". Some of it is warm and funny. His commercial work is very good and should stimulate other artists.
Just don't expect the unforgettable originality of Bernhard, Weston, Penn or their ilk.
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