>> Ah, month goes by and another Assouline-published book gets added to the "List of Coffee Table Books to Buy Before I Become Too Old to Carry them With My Arthritis-Induced Hands". The list is growing of course because somehow things like solo meals at indulgently expensive restaurants, impulse buys at Topshop and duped-buys at beauty counters (I always always fall for new cleansers...) take precedence before beautiful imagery.
It hopefully stops here. I'm holding fort to say that I WILL buy their latest slipcased tome... "Cecil Beaton: The Art of Scrapbook", reproducing images from Beaton's scrapbooks for the very first time.
Beaton needs no introduction of course and his imagery certainly speaks volumes all by themselves but with this added slant of scrapbooking, it's even more of a pleasure deciphering his love of the celebrity from his chosen prints and clippings from magazines and newspapers. The inclusion of his own work is quite telling of perhaps his reflection and analysis of his work.
There's also a pleasant satisfaction derived from this scrapbook collation, that most creative's influence must come from somewhere, even if we are talking about one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. Before the insanely beautiful photographs that we know too well, came a series of rough edged scrapbooking and a quick visual notation of ideas that seems vaguely familiar to those of us that are remotely creative, albeit his world and time proffered up some pretty stunning imagery to take notes from... all of which needs soaking up in $250 slipcased, hardback format...
