Book picks similar to
Steve McQueen by William Claxton


photography
biography
non-fiction
fotografia

Some of Me


Isabella Rossellini - 1997
    The model and actress describes life with her famed parents, Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, her acting and modeling careers, the men in her life, and other personal relationships.

Obama: An Intimate Portrait: The Historic Presidency in Photographs


Pete Souza - 2017
    senator, in January 2005, and served as the chief official White House photographer for the President's full two terms. Souza was with President Obama more often, and at more crucial moments, than any friend or staff member, or even the First Lady--and he photographed it all. Souza captured nearly 2 million photographs of Obama, in moments ranging from classified to disarmingly candid.This large-format (12"x10"), exquisitely produced book presents more than 300 of Souza's favorite and most iconic images from these historic years; many have never been seen before. This seminal work on the Obama presidency documents moments of national importance--including the historic image of the President and his advisors watching tensely in the Situation Room as the Bin Laden mission unfolded--alongside unguarded moments with the President's family, his many encounters with children, and his time spent interacting with world leaders, members of Congress, White House staff, artists, musicians and more.The photographs are paired with captions and stories providing behind-the-scenes context for each, and offer insight into the special relationship Souza and the President forged during their time together. The result is a stunning record of a landmark era in American history.Souza's work enabled us to feel that we knew the President. This book puts us in the White House with him.

Barack Before Obama: Life Before the Presidency


David Katz - 2020
    He spent approximately six days a week alongside the future president as Obama campaigned across downstate Illinois, and the two developed a close, professional, and personal relationship. What began as a long-shot Senate run culminated with the election of America’s first African American president in 2008, which Katz also photographed.During this time, David was never without his camera, capturing quotidian scenes from the life of a man who would soon become known the world over: a dad playing with his small daughters; a young unknown politician walking the streets of New York by himself with no one noticing; a devoted husband lovingly making faces at his wife in an elevator. In 2004, after seeing the unique and touching photographs David had amassed, Annie Leibovitz gave him some advice: “Don’t release these photos of Obama for at least fifteen years. They need time to age.”Now, fifteen years later, Barack Before Obama is the treasury of these photographs. Pulled from an archive of more than ninety thousand images, every photograph in this volume is like nothing that has been seen before: the ease in which David captures the spirit and essence of one of our most beloved first families is unparalleled, and it is in this affectionate familiarity that his photographs sing. Warm, engaging captions tell the stories behind the photos—the surprise meeting with Nelson Mandela, the back room conversation before the rally, the emotion after sending one of the Obamas’ daughters off to school—bringing readers closer than ever to the spirit and motivation behind the extraordinary man who became our forty-fourth president.Barack Before Obama is a unique collection of images illustrating the making of an American icon. A moving document of an historic moment, it’s the perfect gift for all those who want to remember it.

Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables: The Early Years


Alex Ogg - 2014
    Their sound was inventive and tetchy, and front man Jello Biafra’s lyrics were incisive and often scathing. This chronicle—the first in-depth book written about Dead Kennedys—uses dozens of firsthand interviews, photos, and original artwork to offer a new perspective on a group that was mired in controversy almost from its inception. It examines and applauds the band’s key role in transforming punk rhetoric, both polemical and musical, into something genuinely threatening and enormously funny. Author Alex Ogg puts the local and global trajectory of punk into context and, while not flinching from the wildly differing takes the individual band members have on the evolution of the band, attempts to be celebratory—if not uncritical.

Sculpting in Time


Andrei Tarkovsky - 1984
    In Sculpting in Time, he has left his artistic testament, a remarkable revelation of both his life and work. Since Ivan's Childhood won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1962, the visionary quality and totally original and haunting imagery of Tarkovsky's films have captivated serious movie audiences all over the world, who see in his work a continuation of the great literary traditions of nineteenth-century Russia. Many critics have tried to interpret his intensely personal vision, but he himself always remained inaccessible.In Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first time the original inspirations for his extraordinary films--Ivan's Childhood, Andrey Rublyov, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice. He discusses their history and his methods of work, he explores the many problems of visual creativity, and he sets forth the deeply autobiographical content of part of his oeuvre--most fascinatingly in The Mirror and Nostalgia. The closing chapter on The Sacrifice, dictated in the last weeks of Tarkovsky's life, makes the book essential reading for those who already know or who are just discovering his magnificent work.

Her Name Is Barbra


Randall Riese - 1993
    Randall Riese has exhaustively covered every aspect of her life--from her rise to stardom and her stunning career on Broadway and in film, to her relationship with her mother and with her son, her political involvement, and her numerous lovers. Includes 16 pages of fabulous photographs.

Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste


John Waters - 1981
    If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. Thus begins John Waters's autobiography. And what a story it is. Opening with his upbringing in Baltimore ("Charm City" as dubbed by the tourist board; the "hairdo capital of the world" as dubbed by Waters), it covers his friendship with his muse and leading lady, Divine, detailed accounts of how Waters made his first movies, stories of the circle of friends/actors he used in these films, and finally the "sort-of fame" he achieves in America. Complementing the text are dozens of fabulous old photographs of Waters and crew. Here is a true love letter from a legendary filmmaker to his friends, family, and fans.

Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit


Sean Hepburn Ferrer - 2003
    Eliza Doolittle. Holly Golightly. But to her most adoring fan, Audrey Hepburn was best known for her role as “Mummy.” In this heartfelt tribute to his mother, Sean Hepburn Ferrer offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the life of one of Hollywood's brightest stars. Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit is a stunning compilation of nearly 300 photographs, many straight from the family album and never before published; archival documents, personal correspondence, and mementos; even paintings and illustrations from the actress herself. Sean tells Audrey Hepburn's remarkable story, from her childhood in war-torn Holland to the height of her fame to her autumn years far from the camera and the crush of the paparazzi. Sean introduces us to someone whose grace, charm, and beauty were matched only by her insecurity about her appearance and talent, and who used her hard-won recognition as a means to help children less fortunate than her own. With this unique biography, Sean celebrates his mother's history and humanity—and continues her charitable work by donating proceeds from this book to the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund.

Diana - Princess of Wales


Mario Testino - 2005
    

U2 by U2


U2 - 2005
    The drum kit just about fit into the room, the lead guitarist was playing a homemade guitar, the bassist could barely play at all and nobody wanted to sing. Over thirty years later, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr are still together, bound by intense loyalty, passionate idealism and a relentless belief in the power of rock and roll to change the world.In a epic journey that has taken them from the clubs of Dublin to the stadiums of the world, U2 have sold over 130 million albums, been number one all over the world, revolutionized live performance, spearheaded political campaigns and made music that defines the age we live in.From the anarchic days of their Seventies punk origins through their Eighties ascent to superstardom with the epic rock of 'The Joshua Tree', the dark post-modern ironies of 'Achtung Baby' in the Nineties and their 21st-Century resurgence as rock's biggest and boldest band, this is a tale of faith, love, drama, family, birth, death, survival, conflict, crises, creativity . . . and a lot of laughter.Told with wit, insight and astonishing candour by the band themselves and manager Paul McGuinness, with pictures from their own archives, 'U2 by U2' allows unprecedented access into the inner life of the greatest rock band of our times.

Joan Rivers Confidential: The Unseen Scrapbooks, Joke Cards, Personal Files, and Photos of a Very Funny Woman Who Kept Everything


Melissa Rivers - 2017
    With a career that began in the late 1950s, Joan kept mementos over the course of her entire working life, and Joan Rivers Confidential is a compilation of never-before-seen personal archives. Assembled by her daughter Melissa with Scott Currie, the book contains scripts and monologues, letters from famous friends, exchanges with fans, rare photographs, as well as classic and never-before-heard jokes—many simply scribbled on everything from hotel stationery to airplane boarding passes. Touching on subjects from her 50 years in show business (The Tonight Show, Las Vegas, Elizabeth Taylor, Heidi Abromowitz, the red carpet, and Fashion Police), this is a revelatory and humor-filled insider look at the popular, multitalented comedian.

Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell


Deborah Solomon - 2004
    Legends about Cornell abound--as the shy hermit, the devoted family caretaker, the artistic innocent--but never before Utopia Parkway has he been presented for what he was: a brilliant, relentlessly serious artist whose stature has now reached monumental proportions. Cornell was haunted by dreams and visions, yet the site of his imaginings couldn't have been more ordinary: a small house he shared with his mother and invalid brother in Queens, New York. In its cluttered basement, he spent his nights arranging photographs, cut-outs and other humble disjecta into some of the most romantic works to exist in three dimensions. Cornell was no recluse, however: admired by successive generations of vanguard artists, he formed friendships with figures as diverse as Duchamp, de Kooning, and Warhol and had romantically charged encounters with Susan Sontag and Yoko Ono--not to mention unrequited crushes on countless shop girls and waitresses. All this he recorded compulsively in a diary that, along with his shadow boxes, forms one of the oddest and most affecting records ever made of a life. It is from such documents, and from a decade of sustained attention to Cornell, that Deborah Solomon has fashioned the definitive biography of one of America's most powerful and unusual modern artists.

The Grace Kelly Years: Princess of Monaco


Frédéric Mitterrand - 2007
    A tribute to Princess Grace on the 25th anniversary of her death, this beautifully illustrated book retraces all the various facets of the Princesss life, and gives the reader the definitive, official portrait of a fine actress, great beauty, and icon of American style.

Herzog on Herzog


Paul Cronin - 2003
    The sheer number of false rumors and downright lies disseminated about the man and his films is truly astonishing. Yet Herzog's body of work is one of the most important in postwar European cinema. His international breakthrough came in 1973 with Aguirre, The Wrath of God, in which Klaus Kinski played a crazed Conquistador. For The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Herzog cast in the lead a man who had spent most of his life institutionalized, and two years later he hypnotized his entire cast to make Heart of Glass. He rushed to an explosive volcanic Caribbean island to film La Soufrière, paid homage to F. W. Murnau in a terrifying remake of Nosferatu, and in 1982 dragged a boat over a mountain in the Amazon jungle for Fitzcarraldo. More recently, Herzog has made extraordinary "documentary" films such as Little Dieter Needs to Fly. His place in cinema history is assured, and Paul Cronin's volume of dialogues provides a forum for Herzog's fascinating views on the things, ideas, and people that have preoccupied him for so many years.

Lynch on Lynch


David Lynch - 1997
    Over the course of his career, he has remained true to a vision of the innocent lost in darkness and confusion, balancing hallucination and surrealism with a sense of Americana that is as pure and simple as his compelling storylines. In this volume, Lynch speaks openly about his films as well as about his lifelong commitment to painting, his work in photography, his television projects, and his musical collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti.