FOCUS: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers

Michael Gross

Atria Books, New York, USA

Year 2016

Pages 310

In this rollicking account of fashion photography’s golden age, the author brings to life the wild genius, ego, passion, and antics of the men (and a few women) behind the camera. Before Instagram was an art form, fashion photographers and the models they made famous were pop culture royalty. From the postwar covers of Vogue to the triumph of the digital image, the fashion photographer sold not only clothes but ideals of beauty and visions of perfect lives. This book probes the lives, hang-ups, and artistic triumphs of more than a dozen of fashion photography’s greatest visionaries: Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Melvin Sokolsky, Bert Stern, David Bailey, Bill King, Deborah Turbeville, and more. The book takes readers behind the scenes to reveal the revolutionary creative processes and fraught private passions of these visionary magicians.