Bruce Weber & Jean-Christophe Ammann, Basel: Kunsthalle Basel, 1986. Catalog accompanying the Bruce Weber show from May 17 through June 22, 1986, at Kunsthalle Basel. Softcover with photo-illustrated wrappers. 36 pages. 30,5 x 24 cm. . First edition, first printing.
Full-page b&w photographs. Foreword by Bruce Weber. Catalog text by Jean-Christophe Ammann. Languages: English, Italian, German.
A great selection of Weber's early 1980s work, produced a few years after his 1982 breakthrough ad campaign for Calvin Klein, featuring pole-vaulter Tom Hintnaus in white briefs reclining against a white wall on the island of Santorini. Like Herb Ritts, Weber is known for shooting natural-lit portraits, in a kind of subdued glamourous style. Both Ritts and Weber introduced male sexuality in fashion photography in the 1980s.
Pre-dating the grunge and heroin chic era that would radically do away with Weber's retroclassicist body image, this catalog is an excellent introduction to the style of the photographer who is generally associated with brands like Abercrombie & Fitch, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Pirelli, and Gianni Versace.
Though Weber's aesthetic builds on a mainly gay framework, he is not 'interrogating gender'. He was not 'constructing an exclusively queer iconography,' Vince Aletti wrote in ArtForum. 'Maybe that’s because Weber’s subject is masculinity—its mythos—in the broadest sense; like Larry Clark, he’s not just celebrating it, he’s trying to figure it out.'
A nicely printed, stylish catalog featuring Ricky Womack, Matt Dillon, Andy Minsker and the twins in Pep Boys T-Shirts. A very good copy.