Monday, November 21, 2022

FACE TO FACE Portraits by Feliks Topolski

 


FACE TO FACE is a big coffee table book of interviews with 35 people

"some likable, some not, each famous in America or England, each revealed in such a way as to make them better known to us in a few minutes than people we've known all our lives."

Hugh Burnett edits, with outstandingly loose and gripping portraits by Feliks Topolski. It's copyright 1964 by both men. Here are just three samples from the book.

Pretty much every famous person in the book gets a gatefold with a portrait and maybe another, smaller drawing. John Huston's crew and its boom mike overlap with the text. Each piece is only takes a few minutes to read.

These kind of books are not produced now. And if they were, (a) it would be actors and pop stars -- people who have fans who would buy, and (b) there would be no Topolski drawings, just photos like you can see everywhere else.

John Huston:


The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.:


Otto Klemperer:


-- Edited from an April 22, 2014 blog entry.

2 comments:

John Dannheiser said...

Great post, these type of books are certainly wonderful, how and why has the audience changed so much. Do art schools bear any responsibiity ?

John Dannheiser

Mike Lynch said...

Art schools? I don't see it. There's SO much talent out there. Publishers bear the responsibility for not making the editorial choice.