Writers: Photographs by Nancy Crampton

by Nancy Crampton

Book Overview

Here are more than a hundred wonderful and sensitive duotone portraits of our major novelists, poets, and playwrights. Paired with the photographs are fascinating texts from each writer on... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1593720289
• ISBN13: 9781593720285
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Quantuck Lane Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 2.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 9.5" x 10.8"

Customer Reviews

Not to be Missed

"Writers" is a stunning collection of two-page spreads featuring 104 of our treasured authors, poets and playwrights. The right-hand side of each smooth, heavy page presents Nancy Crampton's arresting photo of a writer -- each photograph communicating far beyond the requisite thousand words. But then, on each left-hand page, there ARE words: a paragraph or three from the writer about an aspect of their inspiration, their writing philosophy or their life. And tucked in the matter at the back of the book is Nancy's Afterword -- her notes on the backstory of several of the photographs -- which made me flip back through the pages to revisit those images with new insight ... and then all the images, again. Absolutely lovely!

A Photographer's Glimpse into the Creativity of Writers

A reader's delight, photographer Nancy Crampton has captured the faces (and personalities) of over one hundred of our most prominent writers and poets in this outstanding monograph. Following an introduction of elegant simplicity by Mark Strand, Crampton presents a seamless flow of the artists whose words have filled our eyes and minds, but somehow have eluded our visual images of the creators. While most books by the subjects surveyed include a 'jacket photo', those semblances are usually posed and formal and tell us little about the writer. Crampton goes 'into the wild' and captures her subjects in studios, out of doors, in public places - any place she finds conducive to the comfort of the subject. These magnificent duotones are not only technically superb as photographic portraits; they convey much of the 'mystery' of the artists. WH Auden is captured in closeup taking a drag on his ubiquitous cigarette; James Baldwin in his white djellaba gazes straight into our eyes from France; Eudora Welty sits graciously in her overstuffed armchair in Jackson, Mississippi; Gabriel Garcia Marquez smiles, eye glasses in hand, in Mexico City; John Cheever sits in solitude but for his dog on the steps in New York; and Susan Sontag, Jorge Luis Borges, Anne Sexton, Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Maurice Sendak, Joseph Brodsky, Lorrie Moore, Tom Stoppard, Chinua Achebe, Ian McEwan, Jonathan Franzen - the list seems endless - all give Crampton their moment of cooperation. This is a valuable addition to the library of every avid reader. Meet the faces and images of your favorite writers, be challenged by faces you may not know, and enjoy this captured bit of literary history. Very Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, September 05