Focus, Michael Gross
Focus, Michael Gross
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Focus
The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers

Author: Michael Gross

Narrator: Kirby Heyborne

Unabridged: 15 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/05/2016


Synopsis

Before Instagram was an art form, fashion photographers were pop culture royalty. From the postwar covers of Vogue until the triumph of the digital image, the fashion photographer sold not only clothes but ideals of beauty and fantasies of perfect lives. Even when they succumbed to temptation and excess, the very few photographers who rose to the top were artists above all.

In his follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, Michael Gross probes the lives, hang-ups, and artistic triumphs of more than a dozen of fashion photography's greatest visionaries: Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Melvin Sokolsky, Bert Stern, David Bailey, Bill King, Gilles Bensimon, Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel, Corinne Day, Bob and Terry Richardson, and more. From Avedon's haute couture fantasies and telling portraits to Weber's sensual, intimate and heroic slices of life, and from Bob Richardson's provocations to his son Terry's transgressions, Gross takes listeners behind the scenes and reveals the revolutionary creative processes and fraught private passions of these visionary imagicians.

About Michael Gross

Michael Gross is the author of New York Times bestsellers Model, 740 Park, and House of Outrageous Fortune, as well as Rogues' Gallery, My Generation, Unreal Estate, and Focus. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, New York, Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair, and many other publications around the world. Online, he writes for Air Mail and The Daily Beast. Currently editor at large of Palmer: The Palm Beach Reader, he lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael on June 12, 2016

I wrote it so I shouldn't review it.......more

Goodreads review by Levi on December 06, 2017

I went into this thinking it was a long shot that I would be really into it. I listened to the audiobook version, which may have been part of the issue I had with the book. That is not to say the reader was bad, just that listening to this may not be the best way to absorb it. First, I have to admit......more

Goodreads review by Eugenia on February 21, 2019

This is a very well researched and written book. Having worked as a fashion photographer's agent for over thirty years, I can confirm that a lot Gross's factual reporting is as accurate as can be. I thoroughly enjoyed getting the backstories and insights to this world that few people know about. My on......more

Goodreads review by Michael on August 16, 2016

If you want juicy gossip about sex and drugs and bad relationships in the world of fashion photography--which is what the subtitle promises--this is the book for you; it will not disappoint, except for the lack of any photos of any of the layouts or ads which are described. But if you want anything......more

Goodreads review by Soquel on July 12, 2021

Informative. I enjoyed learning the history of fashion photography but didn't like the graphic details.......more