I’ve been intrigued by portraits lately and this book has only pushed that intrigue further. I had not heard of Jane Brown before about a month ago when I read an article describing her and her work spanning six decades for a single newspaper. She seems to be something of an anomaly in this day and age, where most photographers jump from publication to publication she has photographed both the famous and not so famous for 60 years for the Observer. This book includes both published and unpublished photos from the last 60 years of Jane’s work. It gives you a unique look into the posing, lighting and style of a world renowned photographer.
> She is a very rare species, a photographer without an ego. Speaking of the work the shear volume of images that are portrayed in this book speaks to not only the quality of her work but the time she has spent on the job. It’s all black and white photography to me that speaks of a couple things. First it was a fact of necessity for Jane, remember she was shooting for a newspaper, black and white for years was the only thing that could be printed. Second to me it lends greatly to effect when shooting quality portraits like Jane did in these, it shows more of the person in my opinion by removing distractions. Jane also removes distractions in alot of these shots by shooting with dark backgrounds to accentuate the subject in the first place. She also shoots with natural light which tends to give the images a great glow that is very hard to replicate with studio lighting. This book also has some very cool portraits of famous people in it, take for example the following list -
- Spike Lee
- John Lenon
- Martin Scorsese
- Margaret Thatcher
- Rupert Murdoch
- Paul McCartney
- Bjork
- Woody Allen
- Bono
- Boy George
- Robert de Niro
- Queen Elizabeth II
Overall I think this is a great book for those of you interested in portrait photography and allows you great insight through the images into the mind of a great portrait photographer. You can pick up the book at Amazon UK
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