This past weekend, I got an email from Michael Gushue of VRZHU Press containing the image to the left in which he and several other DC-area poets offer their reinterpretation of the famous 1914 Arnold Genthe photograph of young Edna St. Vincent Millay in a flowery tree. Back when I was like, 15, and everyone in my honors English class was assigned to write a long (10 pages!) "research paper" on a poet of our choosing, I chose Millay in no small part because, in addition to liking her poems (I still do), I thought she was super-pretty in this picture (ditto).
Revisiting this image got me thinking about iconic author photos, and what it takes to make a good one—not just one that will arguably endure the test of time, but even one that will be sufficient for the moment. It also got me to thinking about how silly author photos can be and how often they suck/beg for mockery, as Jim Behrle used to point out on his apparently now tragically defunct feature "What the hell is up with your author photo?"
According to Frances Wilson in the Guardian a couple years back, "Author photos are always embarrassing, either for the author or the reader" and therefore we should "get rid of the damn things." Is she right? What, readers, are your favorite author photos of all time? What are your least fave? What are your tips and strategies toward the creation of a book jacket image that at the very least is not "embarrassing"?
May 13, 2008
Edna St. Vincent Millay gave good face.
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9 comments:
Hi there. Dan Vera, from VRZHU here. Thanks for posting a piece about the EDNA project. All the photos can be seen on our site at www.vrzhu.com/edna.html
Anyway, you bring up some good points about author photos. I am always struck by the use of HORRIBLY outdated photos of authors. I mean the poet you love is in his or her 60s and they're still using their photos from the 1960s. Doesn't work. Of course author photos aren't the only case of this -- speakers' photos often do this as well. Then there's the artsy theater gloss photos in black and white that are their own cliche.
In thinking of the Edna project I got to thinking of other iconic poet photos. Aside from the Edna the only one I could think of recreating was the Walt Whitman with butterfly photo of his later years. Perhaps next year.
New author photos generally are embarrassing. Edna's probably was when it first came out. Good thing Jim wasn't around back then. But the patina of time softens all things, so author photos of the past are generally better. Frank O'Hara, Anne Sexton etc. Or back when photos were paintings. Nathaniel Hawthorne was kind of hot.
Candid photos are the way to go...posing is, well, posing. Though I love WCW's photo beneath the blossoms of some tree. He looks so giddy.
I love author photographs. The one of Frank O'Hara on the fire escape,Delmore schwartz looking into the mirror, Cummings standing in the snow 1918 , Elinor Wylie, and Siegfried Sassoon. Robinson Jeffers photographed by Edward Weston. Sure - It helps to be beautiful.A good portrait is always worthwhile. We will never get rid of them.
I love author photographs too, even when they are arguably silly. And I agree, EG, that author photos, like most photos probably, get better/more poignant with time, especially after the subject of the photo has become permanently absent (by dying or disappearing or what have you). I love this photo of Weldon Kees standing on a bridge, for example: http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/NCW/kees5.jpg I think it's a decent photo on its own, but I like it even more knowing that he most likely ended up jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge a few years later. There are other better photos of him available in that they're of a higher quality and he looks more attractive or smart or poet-y, but this one has more meaning thanks to events that couldn't have been predicted at the time it was taken.
Well, all I can think about is how creepy Paul Auster looks in his author photos.
Douglas Messerli of Green Integer books once told me that he's convinced that putting authors' faces on the front covers of his books has greatly increased his sales.
I love those books w/ faces on the covers. Hard to pull it off with your first book, though.
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