François-Marie Banier
Beckett
Hardcover $175
ISBN: 9783865219831 Published May 2010 by Steidl Publishing
1978 年夏摩洛哥某城，法國攝影師François-Marie Banier 巧遇正在渡假的貝克特與他的太太。踢著拖鞋穿著沙灘褲的貝克特在小市鎮裏悠閒踱步，似乎除了攝影師一人以外並沒有其他人發現自己正與這位諾貝爾文學獎得主擦身而過。Banier 拿著相機追隨貝克特的身影，直至兩人相遇、攀談、成為朋友。相集除收錄了這批彌足珍貴的「偷拍照」外，也包括一些在貝克特晚年於巴黎拍攝的黑白人像照，讓讀者發現置身於兩個年代兩種色調兩種氣氛的兩個貝克特。
“About thirty years ago, the beaches and streets of Tangier were haunted by an automaton. It was nothing but skin and bones, and I often lost sight of it, blinded by the sun. Its silhouette of a marsh-bird vanished in the middle of the crowd of Moroccans in djellabahs and indifferent tourists. Like me they ignored the fact that this skinny man was the great writer Samuel Beckett. His path seemed to follow the movement of a pendulum, adjusted to his own rhythm, his heels touching the ground long before his weight followed, the body leaning backwards. He looked far above the horizon, his ocean blue eyes hidden by big sunglasses, and tried to orientate himself. It troubled me so much not to be able to capture the real dimension of this figure that I often forgot to put a film into my camera.
As our paths kept crossing we finally met. So I abandoned the camera and stopped taking pictures. With his dark voice, he told me of the twenty seven books he couldn’t find a publisher for, of his wife Suzanne, of his friendship with Joyce, of his family in Ireland. He imagined how his mother would have been surprised by him getting the Nobel Prize, if ever she had known; he advised me to read “to learn how the others do it”. But I wanted to retain this attitude and his face, so I had to step away, to leave the treasure of his words, his opinions, and get back to the place that suits the photographer best: the one behind the lens.”
伸延閱讀｜of related interest
Robert Frank
Henry Frank, Father Photographer
Hardcover $195 (original price: $ 30.00 US)
ISBN: 9783865218148 Published October 2009 by Steidl Publishing
Robert Frank’s father, Henry (1890–1976), was both the proprietor of a bicycle shop in Zurich, and a keen amateur photographer. Father Photographer makes public for the first time a selection of Henry Frank’s photographs including landscapes, family portraits, still-lifes and cityscapes.
Annie Leibovitz
A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005
Paperback $395 (original price: $ 50.00 US)
ISBN: 9780812979633 Published November 2009 by Random House
“I don’t have two lives,” Annie Leibovitz writes in the Introduction to this collection of her work from 1990 to 2005. “This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it.” Portraits of well-known figures–Johnny Cash, Nicole Kidman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Keith Richards, Michael Jordan, Joan Didion, R2-D2, Patti Smith, Nelson Mandela, Jack Nicholson, and William Burroughs–appear alongside pictures of Leibovitz’s family and friends, reportage from the siege of Sarajevo in the early Nineties, and landscapes. The pictures form a narrative of a life rich in contrasts and continuities. The photographer has a long relationship that ends with illness and death. She chronicles the celebrations and heartbreaks of her large and robust family. She has children of her own. All the while, she is working, and the public work resonates with the themes of the life.
