PHOTO VISIONS

THE PORTFOLIOS OF GEORGE HURRELL, essays by George Christy and Gene Thornton (Graystone Books: $50). Publicity stills ain’t what they used to be--or so one deduces on the evidence provided in this collection of 30 classic images shot during the 1930s and ‘40s by the acknowledged master of celebrity photography, George Hurrell. One of the most emulated photographers of the past 60 years, Hurrell had a large hand in defining the genre of glamour photography, and the style he forged has never gone out of style; his luminous portraiture continues to be regularly featured in American magazines.

The quality of earthy unpretentiousness so valued in public figures today was anathema to the stars of the ‘30s, who aspired to nothing less than perfection; Hurrell did his best to aid them in that quest. A master at invoking a mood of intimacy, drama and atmosphere, he developed a highly theatrical style rooted in the movie close-up; his images are painstakingly composed and unabashedly epic. Lighting is the crucial ingredient in his style, and he favored a heavily shadowed chiaroscuro evocative of Caravaggio that bathed the skin he photographed in a warm, burnished glow.

Hurrell’s women are all radiantly beautiful, his men impeccably dressed, well-mannered rogues--a male archetype that went out of vogue with the arrival of James Dean; in fact, an interesting subtext of this book is the way it chronicles the evolution of American sexual archetypes. In the second half of the 20th Century, women’s lib, the sexual revolution and AIDS, among other things, have played a role in determining what we want from our sexual role models; one need look no further than this book to see how much this aspect of our collective consciousness has changed.

As was no doubt Hurrell’s intent, these images leave one with the feeling that the stars of yesteryear were somehow more spectacular--they seemed at once more godlike and more authentically human. That may have something to do with the fact that rather than drop a lot of money on a plastic surgeon, these stars made the best of the faces they were born with.

TRAVELS WITH COLE PORTER by Jean Howard (Harry N. Abrams: $39.95). The recent subject of a long, adulatory essay in The New Yorker, and the highly touted tribute album, “Red, Hot + Blue,” Cole Porter and his astonishingly brilliant song catalogue are currently being introduced to a new generation. Fans interested in knowing more about this consummate stylist can see quite a different side of him in this, the second book by former actress Jean Howard, whose debut book, “Jean Howard’s Hollywood,” was published in 1989.

Composed of text and 300 photos Howard shot during two trips she took with Porter in 1955-1956 shortly after the death of Porter’s wife, the book doubles as a travelogue and a memoir of a 33-year friendship. It also reads as an essay on privilege. The high style that Porter traveled in was astounding: He took two cars, 37 pieces of luggage, linens, china and silverware! Everywhere Porter went the rich and famous rushed forth to greet him, and along the way on these trips we meet Jean Cocteau, Jane and Paul Bowles, Garbo, Maria Callas and Vivien Leigh, among others--the guy definitely had connections.

He could also be quite a crank. Though it surely wasn’t Howard’s intention, he comes across here as a control freak obsessed with punctuality and adherence to a tightly planned schedule masterminded by him. Thoughtful of others, Porter expected others to be equally thoughtful of him, and he got quite contentious when they weren’t.

One of the more peculiar things about this book is that Howard seems intent on shoving Porter back in the closet. Though Howard makes much of the great love affair between Porter and his wife, she delves not at all into the fact that they lived apart for much of their marriage (this isn’t to imply that they didn’t love one another--Porter was so devastated by her death that he had the house they shared demolished at a cost of $100,000). Nor does Howard comment on the relationship between Porter and his companion of several years, Howard Sturges, or the fact that the entourages on their trips were almost exclusively male. Obviously, this book is not obliged to be a treatise on Porter’s sexuality, but Howard’s treatment of this aspect of Porter’s life seems vaguely dishonest and is a disservice to the gay community.

Howard’s recollections of Porter are fascinating, but unfortunately, only half the book is about him--roughly 50% of it is given over to pictures and explanations of European landmarks and the contents of European museums. This book cries out for tighter editing, as these sightseeing sections reveal Howard to be a merely adequate photographer whose pictures are occasionally out of focus. Howard’s great skill was clearly her talent for friendship with highly accomplished and rather difficult people.

TONY RAY-JONES with an introduction by Richard Ehrlich (Aperture: $39.95). Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of British photographer Tony Ray-Jones’ birth, this book is in essence a bittersweet meditation on what might have been. Struck down by leukemia in 1972 at age 30, Ray-Jones was regarded as one of a handful of photographers capable of taking postwar British photography into the future. This selection of 70 images offers an idea of why he achieved that reputation.

Like Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand, Ray-Jones was a documentary photographer who spent endless hours searching city streets for simple episodes that resonated with poetry and pathos. He had an extremely subtle eye: Very little seems to happen in his pictures; however, if one looks closely, it’s apparent that these masterfully composed images clearly chart the ways in which people unwittingly reveal their relationship to their surroundings and to each other.

Though Ray-Jones shot a large body of pictures in the United States, where he lived for a spell, his best-known work was made in England between 1966 and 1969. The strange, oddly sad pictures he created during that three-year period form an affectionate homage to the genteel madness of the British. Ray-Jones was born into England’s upper-middle class, but reared in poverty after the death of his father. Consequently, he was acutely sensitive to the cruelty of the British class system, and extremes of wealth and poverty frequently surface as a theme in his work.

There’s little formal invention in Ray-Jones’ work, nor was he much of a printer--he was a klutz in the dark room and he never really mastered his equipment (we learn this in Richard Ehrlich’s excellent, refreshingly candid biographical portrait of the artist). Rather, Ray-Jones’ talent lay in his ability to create socially conscious images that were at once metaphorically rich and intensely personal.

MARY ELLEN MARK: 25 Years, edited by Marianne Fulton (Bullfinch/Little Brown: $60). This stunning book, surveying Mary Ellen Mark’s best work of the past 25 years and introducing her recent series on the circuses of India, confirms her as perhaps the most gifted documentary photographer currently working. Other than Sebastiao Salgado, there is no one who consistently deals with subject matter as challenging. Mark focuses on what she calls “the unfamous,” which is the delicate term she uses for society’s outsiders--the homeless, the drug-addicted, the physically afflicted, the insane.

The central theme in Mark’s work (this is her seventh book) is how human beings operate under desperate circumstances, and she goes to great lengths to find answers to this complex question. She spent time at Mother Teresa’s missions in India, at schools for the blind in Russia, and at mental hospitals in Italy, China and the United States. She befriended glue addicts in the Sudan, visited the slums of Australia and Gypsy camps in Spain, hung out on Hollywood Boulevard and with runaway kids in Seattle.

Needless to say, Mark’s travels have proven to her that suffering is the great universal equalizer, and that to patronize the suffering is to separate ourselves from humanity. She treats all of her subjects with profound respect and somehow manages to communicate in every picture the idea that it’s no more than the luck of the draw that assigns each of us our lot in life.

The readily apparent influences in Mark’s work are W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke-White; as in the work of those past masters of socially conscious photography, the spark that ignites Mark’s images is a mixture of curiosity, empathy, grief and hope.

Mark’s work is neither exploitative nor depressing; rather, it’s oddly life-affirming, perhaps because the viewer is aware that a relationship exists between these outsiders and the photographer taking their picture. There’s something hopeful in the fact that Mark had enough courage to make these pictures and that her subjects had enough trust to allow her to.

While the images in this book are fantastic, the text is disappointing. Brushing quickly over key biographical episodes in Mark’s life in favor of a rambling discourse on the difference between photojournalism and documentary photography, it doesn’t tell us nearly as much as we want to know about the artist.

TYPOLOGIES: Nine Contemporary Photographers, essays by Marc Freidus, Rodney Slemmons and James Lingwood (Rizzoli: $35). The catalogue from an exhibition presented last spring at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, “Typologies” attempts to define a style of photography that was pioneered by Ed Ruscha in the 1960s and, to a lesser degree, by German photographer August Sander during the ‘30s. A typology is a study of types, and a photographic typology is a suite of images of similar or related forms, shot in a consistent, repetitive manner; to be fully understood, the images must be viewed as a complete series. This pseudo-scientific method of logging information is neutral but for the occasional flash of irony, and has its roots in formalism. The components of a typology have equal weight and no fixed sequence; hence, they neatly subvert the ideas of uniqueness, originality and the artistic masterpiece.

Surveying the work of nine artists (four Germans, four Americans, one Canadian), the book opens with Ruscha’s photo series on the gas stations between Los Angeles and his birthplace, Oklahoma. Though they’re presented here as a formalist exercise, these images have a highly romantic content that upstages the form; Ruscha’s beautiful pictures of the American road read as a melancholy reminder of the America that used to be, rather than an unemotional exercise in theory.

Also included are selections from Bernd and Hilla Becher’s ongoing photo essay on European industrial architecture, Lynne Cohen’s series on target ranges and institutional observation rooms, Roger Mertin’s study of trees, Judy Fiskin’s images of comically ugly apartments in Los Angeles, portraits by Thomas Ruff, and images of public spaces by Candida Hofer and Thomas Struth.

Though the three essays are a bit dry and occasionally get bogged down in artspeak, they do posit an interesting theory that they succeed in supporting.

This is inarguably a thought-provoking book. However, it’s not for the casual photography fan; these pictures are for the mind rather than the eye.