Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers - Tapa dura

"I thought I knew practically everything about the fashion industry, but Michael Gross has corrected me. His thoroughly absorbing narrative dazzles with the most profound investigation and research. Focus is an enthralling and riveting read!"--Tim Gunn

"FOCUS is the House of Cards of fashion."--Nino Cerruti

"Amazing... a phantasmagoria of gossip, history, fabulous times, terrible times; the men (and a couple of women) who turned their creative lenses onto runways, clothes, models and (as in the case of Richard Avedon) onto America itself... If you love fashion and/or the art of photography, this book is for you. Focus gives us page after page of down and delicious dish... Gross captures the bizarre hot-house intensity of an industry that is both ever-changing but eternally the same... This is a big, intelligent, exhaustively researched, lovingly written book... Focus finds the fire beneath the ice of glossy magazine pages, and does it without burning down the house."--Liz Smith "New York Social Diary "

"Michael Gross's FOCUS is that rare thing: an equally delicious and deeply informative book, a news-breaking romp through the world of fashion photography, from its beginnings early in the last century to the recent controversial exploits of super bad boy Terry Richardson. Richard Avedon, Bert Stern, Deborah Turbeville, Helmut Newton, Steven Meisel: these and so many others whose work I've enjoyed in VOGUE and BAZAAR are given context and smart analysis, and magazine editors and owners appear, too, revealing an industry of art and commerce. An outstanding work of cultural history."--Sheila Weller, author of GIRLS LIKE US and THE NEWS SORORITY

"Michael Gross takes us on a compelling journey through a hugely desirable culture--a culture which sometimes destroyed its most brilliant children and which is now slipping as irretrievably into the past as Versailles or the Swinging '60s."--Anthony Haden-Guest, author of Bad Dreams, True Colors, and The Last Party

"I loved reading all the juicy details that Michael uncovered in this fast-paced--and clearly insider--look at the rarefied, sexy world of fashion photography."--Lauren Weisberger, author of The Devil Wears Prada and The Singles Game

"This is the best book on the real world of top photographers in the fashion industry ever. Having hired and worked with many of them covered in Michael's book I can tell you the back stories are mind blowing. Anyone remotely connected to fashion should read his book!"--Barry Kieselstein-Cord, designer

"Wine, women and song. Boys too, if required. Not to mention drugs. Cool dudes, flashy cars, psycho-tempers, and sex everywhere to choose from. Work junkets all over the world and surrounded by beautiful people looking up at them rather than vice versa, The photographers were the real story."--David Patrick Columbia "New York Social Diary "

"Does not skimp on the gossipy goods. There are descents into madness, prolific drug use, orgies, blackmail photos and suicide attempts...But this book...is also smart, well-researched and written with an insider's eye...engaging and on point."--Kim France "New York Times Book Review "

"A gossipy exposé ... of the talented, arrogant, philandering, combative, self-aggrandizing photographers whose work appeared in, and defined, such iconic fashion magazines as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Glamour, and Elle from 1947 to 1997. Not a pretty picture of sex, drugs, beautiful women, and raw ambition."--Kirkus

In this rollicking account of fashion photography’s golden age, the New York Times bestselling author of Model and House of Outrageous Fortune, Michael Gross, brings to life the wild genius, ego, passion, and antics of the men (and a few women) behind the camera.

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

Focus 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, Deborah Turbeville, Helmut Newton, 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, Focus takes readers behind the scenes to reveal the revolutionary creative processes and fraught private passions of these visionary magicians.

Tracing the highs and lows of fashion photography from the late 1940s to today, Gross vividly chronicles the fierce rivalries between photographers, fashion editors, and publishers like Condé Nast and Hearst, weaving together candid interviews, never-before-told insider anecdotes and insights born of his three decades of front-row and backstage reporting on modern fashion. An unprecedented look at an eccentric and seductive profession and the men and women who practice it on the treacherous shifting sands of pop and fashion culture, Focus depicts—perhaps most importantly—the rewards and cost, both terribly high, of translating an artist’s vision of beauty for an often cold and cruel commercial reality.