Hollywood on your wall

A clever publishing idea from 1973 that only half comes off. Hollywood movie posters have been a visual treat for decades but unless you worked in the industry virtually impossible to get hold of. Why not publish a very large spiral bound book so the poster can easily be removed. The page size is 17.25 by 12 inches with the whole page posters are a bit less because of the margin. Where it falls down slightly is that only half the book is in color: the right-hand pages. Most of these are whole page but sometimes two landscapes stacked.

The first color one is How Bella was won from 1911 then each decade gets a showing up to the sixties with a mono Walk on the wild side (1962). With a rough count of the index I reckon there are 250 plus posters in the 174 pages. Find a copy of the book and start your own movie poster gallery.

Mostly forgotten

Maybe if Horace Bristol hadn't given up being a photojournalist in the early sixties, when he moved to Mexico to design and build houses, he would probably be remembered more than a footnote in the history of photography.

This book, published in 1996, is an excellent overview of work with one hundred and twenty photos. The five chapters: Early years; Magazine work; The Grapes of Wrath; World War II; Japan and Southeast Asia, each sub-divided into smaller portfolios and you'll see that here was a dedicated, creative and caring photographer. The Grapes of Wrath chapter has thirteen photos worthy of Stryker's FSA output. Bristol was interested in working with John Steinbeck to work on a project similar to You have seen their faces by Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell. They traveled to the Central Valley during the winter of 1937-38 but after Bristol said he had enough photos for the book, Steinbeck withdraw from the project and wrote his book instead. Some of the photos did appear in Life magazine in 1939 and 1940.

The Japan and Southeast Asia chapter, with thirty-seven photos, reflect Bristol's two decades of living in Japan. He was Time/Life's photographer covering the aftermath of war but he eventually started his own news photo agency. Because of the part of Asia covered he was often on assignments and away from his wife, Virgina, who felt increasingly isolated and took an overdose in 1956. Bristol was devastated by her death and blaming himself he burned all his prints and negatives. His photographic career more or less ceased, though his last Life assignment was in 1964. He left Japan in 1967 and died in 1997, aged eighty-eight.

I like this book and having had it for some years it's always a pleasure to look through it again. Nicely designed and printed with one photo a page and short essays to introduce each chapter. Horace Bristol wasn't one of most well known photographers but these pages reveal a good, solid professionalism.

Small world

There are no details about these photos in the book and as it was published in 1981 it's reasonable to assume they were taken at least forty years ago. My guess is that they are from the late sixties and through the seventies.

Bubley had a knack of photographing people and children as if she wasn't there. The 159 photos here show this with hardly any child looking at the camera. I think the best images involve pets, like the cover photo and children by themselves exploring their immediate surroundings; looking at flowers; pressing a piano key; listening to a record. Fortunately, there are hardly any showing under fives making a mess of things, for example babies and food is always a favourite snap taken by parents.

I think Bubley's work has been rather neglected, apart from this book of children's photos there are only two others worth considering, the excellent On assignment published by Aperture and her work for the FSA/OWI published in the Fields of vision series from Giles.

UPDATE A book of photos Bubley took for the Office of War Information covers several bus journeys she took in 1943. First-class reportage of the American home front. ISBN 979-8843742812.

Look and listen

Illustrators and artists frequently use photos as reference for their work and that's how Esther Bubley came to shoot, in June 1952, a recording session in Hollywood. Her graphic designer friend David Stone Martin asked her to provide reference shots from this session to use for his distinctive illustrations for Clef and Norgran LP covers (and Verve CDs).

The book has the majority of Bubley's work from that session (she took 314 shots) and nicely all the neg prints, too. The photos are very informal and casual, no creative framing or dramatic compositions of light and shade as one would expect from Francis Wolf, William Claxton or Herman Leonard but only because they were basically made for reference not reproduction and it shows.

Despite the ordinariness of the photos what makes this book possibly rather special is that you can look at the players and listen to the recording at the same time. The Charlie Parker Jam Session has been issued several times on CD (I can recommend the five CD set: Complete Norman Granz Jam Sessions) it has some knockout performances, just listen to Johnny Hodges and Charlie Parker on Jam Blues for instance.

The book is a rather unusual landscape shape (fourteen inches by nine) published in France and reasonably designed with plenty of whole page photos but rather annoyingly just a bit too much empty white space where photos could have been bigger. At the back is a spread with David Stone Martin's photocollage of the players and based on this the final illustration used for the 1952 LP (and now CD) covers.

I recently reviewed a book about Bubley's work: Esther Bubley: On Assignment where I came across a reference to this book. Her photojournalism work is superb, from a Greyhound bus journey in 1943 for the Office of War Information to assignments for the Ladies Home Journal or Life magazines through the forties and fifties. The 'Charlie Parker' session is nowhere near her usual high standard but is unusual because of the number of photos taken and that they normally would not be published.