Tuesday 14 December 2021

The elite smile for Betty (5/5)






















Betty Kuhner (1916-2014) has, judging by the excellent photos in this book, managed to capture wealthy folk relaxing, mostly in New York and Florida. They were taken between 1959 and 1991 and they show her personal style of shooting outdoors. This, in a way seems obvious, studio portraits remove a family from their normal environment, how much better to show them enjoying the natural landscape.

Many of the photos show families looking at the camera but amazingly they don't look posed at all but are full of life and warmth, especially those showing mothers and their young children. The book has photos of seventy-five families, some with just one photo, others have several over two or more pages. Oddly, the Kennedy family, in Hyannisport, are spread over thirty-five pages with fifty-eight photos, which seems rather excessive to me.

The book is a handsome print job using a two hundred screen on a smooth matt art paper. The publishers had a worthwhile idea of including a brief bit of history for each family which, nicely, gives the photos an extra bit of credence. Worth saying that I bought my copy, new and shrink-wrapped, for a really low price so it's worth checking around the web for your copy.

US


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