Books I Want: Visite Privee by Francois Halard

Francois Halard is perhaps the interiors photographer of which I am most jealous. He's the guy who takes the pictures that make me go, damn! I wish I had made that. It's not just that he's a gifted seer of light (the most important aspect of any good photograph), but that he also has taste and style. He takes interesting projects in interesting places, and renders them with a unique painterly touch. I can almost always spot his work without knowing beforehand who took the picture. Check out my favorite home from his new book, Visite Privee:

Carlo Mollino was a mid century architect, a photographer, a novelist, a furniture designer, and apparently a decorator. He worked on his home in Turin over the course of eight years, but he never even lived there.

Filled with antiques, an avant garde collection of photography (featuring works by Man Ray, among others), and decorated with a contemporary spin on classic design, it could easily pass for the current work of a very eclectic and talented designer.

Hello Stejnar chandelier, Japanese lanterns, and Saarinen dining set -- plus there is a giant clam on the wall. What's not to love?

And is the leopard wallcovering not insane (in a good way)? Other details include:

A peeping butterfly in a portal between rooms.

Wallpaper reminiscent of offerings by Zuber et Cie.

A Mollino designed chair set atop Italian ceramic tiles.

I want this book. Chock full of amazing homes occupied by extraordinary people -- Cy Twombly, Julian Schnabel, and Robert Rauschenberg, just to name a few -- it has a respect for the handmade that I find very refreshing.

Let me get arty on you for just a second (sorry in advance): famed philosopher Walter Benjamin pointed out that photography's most important quality was its mechanized reproducibility, its sameness, its democracy, but Halard appears to employ antique photographic processes to create images as intimate and one of a kind as Twombly's paintings.

Of course the only way to access the images is through the internet or the book, which takes us back to the whole reproduction issue, but that's besides the point. Mostly.

Forget the lecture and buy the book. It's pretty.

Books I Want: Karen Knorr

I really should have added books to my list of acceptable holiday gifts, mostly because I am a greedy hoarder of all things glossy and gorgeous. Just cracking open a new monograph by a favorite artist is enough to give me a eyegasm, but don't worry -- I like to keep my peeping on the down low (insert lecherous laugh here). Feast your eyeballs on the Fables series by Karen Knorr and try to restrain yourself. Stunningly staged rooms + Animals = Perfection in print. Enjoy.

Photographed in large format at museums based largely in France, Knorr's images combine analog craftsmanship with a bit of digital trickery to highlight the chasm between the natural and civilized worlds. The results range from sweetly playful to shockingly menacing.

Buy the book here. This kind of eye candy never gets old.

Found via the very excellent Bertha Mag.

Fight Fatigue With Lartigue

Ok, I am resolving not to work myself into a tinsel wrapped tizzy over Christmas this year. To this end, I have created something of a seasonally appropriate manifesto. I will: #1. Start buying gifts early.

#2. Avoid the mall at all costs.

#3. Spend my free time enjoying lights and smelling delicious trees (and eating eating eating).

I refuse to make this season about expensive electronics and fancy shit no one really cares about. I will buy vintage, unique, handmade; I will not buy sharp edged, plastic crap. I will not become a holiday hating grinch, despite past performances that speak to the contrary. I might even crack a smile or two.

My current hero and inspiration:

Jacques-Henri Lartigue, a photographer whose career began at the tender age of six and spanned almost 100 years.

There is a certain zany elegance in Lartigue's images. As a young man, he exuberantly captured the moment in a radically changing society.

With works beginning in the early 1900's, Lartigue's photos document a modern era emerging from the sooty darkness of the industrial revolution. Drunk on freedom and the shiny newness of technology, everything is a celebratory event met with wonder and awe.

So, this Christmas I'm going to (try to) lose the jaded cynicism with which I generally approach things.

Don't worry -- I'm sure it will come back sooner rather than later. But I think I just might like to spend the rest of the year doing cartwheels in the yard with Ike.

Buy the book for someone special here. It's the autobiography of a life well lived.