whe ch
of a portrait

Terry Peters
Book reviews

EVER since man first learned to use a tool, he
has attempted to record his activities.

First with paintings on eave wall, then later sculptures aad oil
paintings. Bur it was the invention of the camera that put the
abilicy to record life's passing moments into the hands of the
masses. The portrait photo so seemingly simple in concept and
yet incredibly challenging in execution, has brought the tients
of many great photographers into focus.

The ability to sav something about the subject through the
many aspeers of the portrait is an enormens challenge. The pho-
tographers whose work is represented in the following, books
have all risen to that challenge and surpassed it’s boundaries.

Diane Arius: Magazine Work. Apecture, New York, 175

pages, $29.95.

Her subjects range from the poorest families in Sourb
Carolina to the mous, people fike Mae West whe kept her star
status long atter she retired trom the public eve.

Diane Arbus pointed her camera like a rifle at her subjects.
There are no casual moments where the photographer acts as a
candid observer. Arbus is right there in the room with all her
subjects and their unflinching response to her camera acknowl:

edges her presence.

Arbus worked in a style that made

no judgments, she opens the world

up for the people who live in soci-

ety’s stratosphere and for those liv-

ing in it’s darker corners. The arti-

de on her by Thomas Southall at
the book’s end offers fascinating
insight into her all too-short career.

@ Mary Ellen Mark, Portraits.

Smithsonian Institution Press,

Washington, 47 pages.

This slim volume of portraits begs

the reader to examine it over and

over again. Forty-seven beautifidly
painted photos fill the pages, draw-
ing us ir: with their beauty and
power.

Mark juxtaposes her portraits of

famous personalities with equally

graceful pictures of regular people
in their own environment. Federico

Fellini with bullhorn to mouth on

the set of Fellini Satyricon, while

cn the facing page a Vietnamese
circus performer poses beside an
clephant.

Mark's photography is well repre-

sented here and, with her clean

compositions, her respecte for her
subjects shines through.

. Bh Icons & idols by Jack Mitchell,
Amphoto Art, an imprint of
Watson-Guptill Publications,
New York, 160 pages, $40.00
US.

For forty-five years Jack Mitchell

lived and worked in New York’s

Upper East side. His studio was vis-

ited by the luminaries of the art

scene and in Icons C> Idols, he offers
us a who's who of artises, dancers,
and performers. His seif-assigned
goal’to photograph the greatest ral-
ents living in New York has resutt-
ed in an outstanding collection of
portraits.

From those archives, Mitchel! has

chosen a cross section of personail-

ties. Many of the portraits are taken
in his studio with its clean back-
grounds and smooih lighting, while
others are the results Gf location

; shoots. Artists stand with their

works, while dancers are captured in graceful poses. Their names

are immediately recognizable but net always their faces.

~ His subjects add up ta a fascinating collage, and with this
book Mitchell gives us a time capsule of late twentieth century
artistic ralent. .

Faces of the Twereticth Century by Mark Edward Harris.

Abbeville Press, New York, 183 pages, $45.00 US.

Twenty of this century’s greatest photographers are presented
with some of their best known images. Together they make up a
collection of photos chat are a part of our collective awareness,

The raising of the flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal and the
stery of how the photo was taken is just one exampie of the
many powerful pictures included. Annie Leibovitz, Herb Ritts,
Gordon Parks all offer insight into the process of creating the
wondertul images that grace these pages.

Harris inodvces each photographer with a portrait, turning
the rables on the often shy photographers, followed by an
overview of their careers, The vaiious photos selected by the
artists are accompanied by an excellent explanation of their mak-
ing.

P scautifilly reproduced ia black and white, his book flows
from its opening picture of Joseplt Goebbels by Alfred
Eisenstaedt to its closing fashion photo of supermodel Kate
Moss by Peter Lindbergh.

f

Katharine Hamer
Contributing Writer

CALLING ail Malcolm Lowry fans: UBC has a
treat in store for you.

The university has recently acquired a first edition copy of
Lowry’s first novel, U/tramarine, with pencitied notations from
the author himself. The book, published in 1933, is “the ulti-
mate scholar’s prize,” says Professor Sherrill Grace, head of the
English Department at UBC.

The novel cells the story of idealistic young, aristocrat Dana
Hilliot, who leaves Britain in the 1920s to experience life as a
deckhand and is roughly treated by the working class crew.
Lowry made a similar vovage himself benween leaving school and
heading off to Cambridge University. He called it “an unpleasant
experience.”

URC purchased Ultramarine last autumn at the Pacific Book
Auction in San Francisco for
$14,000 US, fr has since been
professionally restored.

“ft isa messy book, deg-cared
and full of staples and scatch tape with pencil handwriting all
over it. It isn’t very pretty,” says Grace. “Bur we can see in it all
the revisions he wanted to make. Lowry was constantly re-writ-
ing. He could never sign off."

The book, which Grace says bears all the hallmarks of
Lowry’s later work, was intended to be part ofan epic series
called The Voyage That Never Ends Bus Lowry died long before
that collection was ever completed.

The university’s Lowry Collection, which is housed in the
main university library’s Speciat Collections division, is the most
extensive of its kind anywhere in the world, it aiready boasts a
first edition of the author's most famous title, Under the Volenno.

Published in 1947, Under the Volcano is a highly autobio-
graphical, alcohol-fuclled tale set in Mexico on the Day of the
Dead. Hailed by critics as a classic of 20th century literature,
much of the book was written in North Vancouver, where Lowry
lived for several years in a waterfront shack on the Dollarton
mud flats.

Despite the fact that the English-born author only lived on

Prison life parallels society

@ Sentences And Paralzs, A Prison Reader, edited by P.J.
Murphy and Jennifer Murphy, New Star Books, 1998, $24

THIS provocative book shines an honest fight
upon a subject many of us have strong opinions
about but few really understand.

Prisons and those who inhabit such places exist at the margins
of society. The contents of Sentences And Paroles reveals this
world of power and contro] to be a bleak metaphor for the
realities of institutional society and the human condit’n as
expressed on the “free” side of coiled barbed wire.

Popular opinion paints prisoners as caddled miscreants and
penitentiaries as cosy country ciabs.

Editor P.J. Murphy, the author of nvo books on Beckett,
knows the corrective system intimately by way ofa nine-year
stint teaching Kent Maximum Security inmates enrolled in the
Simon Fraser University Prison Education Program.

Girl in Ganges River, india , photograph by Mary Ellen Mark

—— “If a subject has a strong,
active content I use
35mm. if | have to create
the content and atrnos-
phere. as in portraiture, |
use 2 1/4. its a different
sort of reality. | have been
using a 2 1/4 camera for
seven years, and it has
unhanced ry way of see-
ing. In fact, it has made
me a better 35mm pho-
tographer... | don't think
you're ever an objective
observer. By making a
frame you're being selec-
tive, then you edit the pic-
tures you want published
and you're being selec-
tive again. You develop a
point of view that you
want to express. You try
to go into a situation with
an open mind, but then
you form an opinion, and
you express it in your
photographs. it is very
important for a photogra-
pher to have a point of
view ~ that contributes to
a great photograph.”

~- Mary Ellen Mark

phot trors Random Howee's Sy Furies
MALCOLM Lowry relaxing on the beach at Dollarton.

the North Shore between 1939 and 1954, Lowry always
“thought of himself as Canadian,” says Grace. “He was happy
here. He liked che simple life — away from the noise and. ontu- -
sion of the big city.” ;

Grace describes Lowry as a sort of early environmentalist.
“He was deeply engaged with the natural environment,” she
says. “(at Dollarton) he swam, walked, and boated. He was very
interested in preserving nature.” :

After Lowry’s death, it was the UBC library that his widow,
Margerie Bonner, chose to send his papers to. Lowry scholars
from all over the world now make pilgrimages to Vancouver to
study his archives and nanuscripts. ys Coon

Lowry has since been adopted by Vancouverites as a local fit-
erary icon. The annual Under the Volcano festival is held in
Cates Park, near the site of his former home, and when
Vancouver writer Michael Turner launched a new reading and
music venue at the North Burnaby Inn a few years ago he chris-
tened it the Malcolm Lowry Room. . "

“He was so much larger than life,” says Grace, explaining the
author’s enduring appeal. “There’s kind of a mythology about
him. He was part of a vibrant artistic scene when he lived here —
he was friends with Earle Birney and Dorothy Livesay. He was a
colourful and charming character, even when he was drunk.
Peopte loved him.” °

Co-editor Jennifer Murphy has
volunteered in prisons.

They do a good job of weaving to
together historic record, first-per-
son account and poetry to pro-
vide successive insight.

Taken in its entirety, the material
supports Michel Foucsuit’s can-
tention that our institutions form
a “carceral net.” vee
Individual contributions resonate particularly: My Home is
Heli, B.C. Pen inmate Jack McCann’s chilling pocm on soli-
tary confinement; prisoner Thomas Shand’s 1977 statement
to the court prior to his sentencing for participating in a
hostage taking at B.C. Pen; a 1984 interview with Direct
Action member Gerry Hannah; Poet Brian Fawcett’s piece
called The Gun.

— Michael Becker

Friday, February 26, 1999 — North Shore News — 37

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