SEASON’S READINGS : Who You Know

I am a book collector of sorts. Over the years, I have come to appreciate even the mere physical apprising of a hard-covered book, feeling its weight in my hands, treasuring this thing beyond the tale it tells, or the lessons it may teach.

That same eternal quality applies to the telling photograph. Shot in black-and-white or in color, the well-conceived image can often surpass the power of mere words, making it something you want to possess, like a priceless painting. Or youth.

Together--book and picture--they can be a thing of rare beauty.

This season, a bevy of hardcover photographic collections has hit the bookselling market, covering a wide-ranging, eclectic turf: From personality to pop culture to plain old commercial schlock.

There are new books on sports, arts, music and media personalities, such as the one that takes us on the road with jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis or on a personal journey with golfer Arnold Palmer. There are photographic treatments of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and race car driver Mario Andretti, and one that celebrates being gay in America.

There is also a new book combining pictures with the song lyrics of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, a picture book on the Beatles, another on the life of couturiere Gabrielle Chanel, and a pictorial treatment of the classic ballet partnership of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.

Then there’s the one examining the elusive cool of street style in America and abroad; an embarrassing collection of schmaltzy photographs concocted by Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida--animal shots superimposed on pictures of children; and one that relives the finer moments of the first 20 years of the “Saturday Night Live” television show.

Many are keepers--adventuresome marriages of word and image. Others are well-bound trash.

My favorite of the latter genre, which editors call The Art of Barbie, I call the shameless art of holiday money-making. The high--or low--concept is to ask an international cast of visual artists to answer the question that has haunted us all for decades: Who is Barbie?

The answer is a thinly-imagined collection of photographs and paintings that include one shot with blurred images of the naked doll itself, entitled “Nude Barbie Descending a Staircase.” And my favorite, an acrylic painting of a thunder-thighed Barb-o-rama gorging herself on a banana split. This one calls itself: “Healthy Appetite Barbie.”

In Thomas Hauser’s book Arnold Palmer: A Personal Journey, there are priceless shots of the old, fired-up Arnie, his private army in tow, as he charges up Augusta’s green fairways looking like golf’s version of James Dean himself.

There’s the poolside Annie, Arnie on an airplane, Arnie blasting out of numerous sand traps, a grimacing Arnie missing putt after putt. And best yet, there’s a picture of Arnie and a young Jack Nicklaus, arm in arm, prior to the 1960 U.S. Open--an image that so defines the lost brazen youth of both men it makes you want to cry.

In Out in America: A Portrait of Gay and Lesbian Life by Michael Goff and the staff of OUT Magazine, there are priceless color and black-and-white photographs that define the gay experience in America with a knowing, compassionate eye.

There are shots of gay partners two-stepping at the Ramrod bar in Boston, of men playing scrabble at New York’s Gay and Lesbian Community Center, pictures of gays and lesbians engaged in sporting and artistic ventures: Boxing. Sky-diving. Bronco-riding. Baseball and ballet.

More important, perhaps, are images of gay and lesbian couples that show people in both physical and emotional sync--embracing in bed, hugging on a sidewalk, taking vows of marriage. There are shots of old couples and those of the incredibly young--like the photograph of the two Asian teens celebrating the L.A. School District’s first gay and lesbian senior prom.

And just when you thought you’ve seen every shot, from every conceivable angle, of the Fab Four, comes Terence Spencer’s It Was Thirty Years Ago Today. This collection of black-and-white images, most of them previously unpublished, show the Beatles--and their hyper-ventilating teen-aged fans--at their most innocent.

The behind-the-scenes photography showing Our Boys at work and at play is just the antidote for a musical culture overdosed on pointlessly slick MTV images.

My favorite book of the bunch, however, is entitled Sweet Swing: Blues on the Road, a photographic diary of a recent Wynton Marsalis tour. In this collection, photographer Frank Stewart’s compelling black-and-white shots catalogue a jazz musician having fun on the road and on the stage: In smoky bars and dressing rooms, with friends, family members and fans. There are shots of the musician’s expressive face as he blows his notes as well as intimate images of the jazz instruments themselves.

Laden with insight and anecdote and a lexicon unique to modern-day jazz, Marsalis’ text gives syncopation and a sense of rhythm to Stewart’s photographs.

Like this interplay between Marsalis and another player reviewing a piece of sheet music:

“Say, man, what does this mean?”

“What?”

“It just says ‘Veal.’ ”

“That means be Veal in that spot.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“Whatever you hearin.’ ”

The words and the pictures, man, make me feel the music.

THE BEATLES, by Terrence Spencer (Henry Holt: $49.95; 232 pp.)

THE WONDER OF INNOCENCE, by Gina Lollobrigida (Abrams: $50; 192 pp.)

FONTEYN AND NURYEV, by Keith Money (HarperCollins: $60; 256 pp.)

OUT IN AMERICA, by Michael Goff and the staff of OUT magazine (Viking: $34.95; 224 pp.)

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: The First Twenty Years, edited by Michael Cader (Houghton Mifflin: $25; 264 pp.)

THE ART OF BARBIE, edited by Craig Yoe (Workman Publishing: $19.95; 128 pp.)

STREETSYLE, by Ted Polhemus (Thames & Hudson: $19.95; 144 pp.)

SWEET SWING BLUES ON THE ROAD: A Year With Wynton Marsalis and His Septet, photographs by Frank Stewart (Norton: $35; 192 pp.)