J. D.'s Reviews > Rolling Stone: The Photographs

Though, it’s another book off the library sales rack, this - great cover photos and photo shoots of, mainly, USA cultural personages from the 1960s-80s - is probably a collectors’ item.

A lot of effort went into taking these shots - photo shoots - to display these figures in just the right way. Thus, for example, a great photo of the then famous Don Johnson in his white sports coat and pants in the Atlantic surf was meant to reveal “the actor’s steely cool.” The Leibovitz photo of Liberace and his chauffeur (punctuated with matching smiles) and car express the over-the-top (in a good way) style that made him famous. Two photos of Jack Nicholson all captured that toothy, rascal smile of his that made him a 1970s icon (one of them was taken with a magnifying lens over his open mouth).

While I’d say that these particular photos are outstanding, stand-alone photos, it does raise a question about the ephemeral nature of the photos in this book. In time, people will not know who these people are. It’s even more so for the others in this book. But the Tom Wolfe introduction pulls out the essence of many of these photos and puts the book back on the shelf for the ages: They capture an age where “the notion of glamour began to involve a calculated disdain for propriety.”