Emily Andersen has been making photographic portraits of the
international avant-garde since graduating from the Royal College
of Art in the early 1980s. Having started out by finding her way
into some pretty cool-sounding private parties in London and New
York, she began convincing artists and musicians to pose for her -
from Nan Goldin to Nico. Over the past thirty-five years, she has
built up a remarkable and beautiful portfolio that includes many
high-profile writers, poets, film directors, actors and architects,
with Peter Blake, Michael Caine, Derek Jarman, Zaha Hadid, Arthur
Miller, Helen Mirren, Michael Nyman and Eduardo Paolozzi among
those featured in this new publication devoted to her
black-and-white portraits. In addition to celebrities, Andersen has
documented many interesting and inspiring figures who are
celebrated and respected within their fields, offering an
invaluable insight into the lives of people who have made
significant contributions to the wider cultural and creative life
of the USA, Britain and Europe over the current and recent
generations. An illuminating essay by critic Jonathan P. Watts not
only explores the lives of some of Andersen's many sitters and the
photographs she has taken of them, but also get to grips with ideas
such as the nature of portraiture, photojournalism and the
limitations of the documentary photograph, framing them within
debates of the late 1980s onwards. 'While all of these portraits
may not be recognisably activist images', asserts Watts, 'they're
rooted in the belief of a micro-politics of everyday lives and
relationships.' Readers can discover more about the background,
circumstances and dynamics of many of the shoots by means of notes
prepared by Andersen herself to accompany each image, which are
regularly entertaining and thought-provoking as well as
informative. Beyond capturing the essence of these figures and of
the times in which they are living, Andersen has a particular
talent for entering into their private lives and private spaces,
often being invited into her sitters' own homes. By photographing
family members and friends, she gets an angle on them that is often
deeply personal, sensitive and honest. Creating works that are
carefully composed and choreographed and yet regularly informal and
relaxed, there is always, somehow, a sense that Andersen is more
interested in encouraging her subjects to speak through her images
than in imposing her own impressions upon them. It is also
fascinating to note how Andersen is often keen to document the
young children of celebrities, especially girls, and has made a
substantial body of work of fathers and daughters. She is always
interested to know what these young women grew up to be, and
sometimes returns to photograph the same people years, if not
decades, later. Andersen has been commissioned for innumerable
magazines and newspapers including the New Musical Express (NME),
The Face, Elle Deco, Domus, The Times, The Guardian, The
Independent, The Sunday Telegraph and The Economist, and has been
commissioned by publishers such as Quadrille, Simon and Schuster,
Oxford University Press, Hachette, Random House and Harper Collins.
Her works have been exhibited internationally in venues including
The Photographers' Gallery, London; The Institute of Contemporary
Art, London; The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; The
Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham;
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Jehangir Art Gallery,
Mumbai; and China Arts Museum, Shanghai. A winner of the John Kobal
prize for portraiture, she has a number of works in The National
Portrait Gallery, London and in other public collections including
The British Library, London, and The Contemporary Art Society,
London. Andersen is a senior lecturer in photography at Nottingham
Trent University. Designed by Melanie Mues of Mues Design, London,
with reprography by DPM, London, and printed by EBS, Verona, this
stunning hardback monograph has been released in both a trade
edition published by Anomie and as an artist's limited edition of
fifty signed and numbered copies, accompanied by an original print.
The cover image is of the Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro
Jodorowsky and his son, Axel, in London in 1989.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!