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Background information
"Whether in his virtuously staged advertising images - Ide Collar, his photo of a white shirt collar, became an icon of advertising photography - or the soft pastel tones of his nudes: the American photographer Paul OUTERBRIDGE (1896-1958) was an alchemist of desire. Color was an indispensable part of his aesthetic appeal. He perfected the complex three-color carbro process to create a seductive surface of texture and tone, and was constantly in search of 'artificial paradises' - a perfection of form with a surreal twist. In his cubist-inspired product photography, he was able to transform everyday objects into quasi-abstract compositions and inspire the professional world as a pioneer of color photography, while his suggestively provocative nudes caused lasting disturbance.
Content
Using examples from the entire oeuvre of US-American photographer Paul OUTERBRIDGE, this out-of-print photo book traces his dazzling career between art, commerce and self-dramatization, from his professional peak as the best-paid fashion and advertising photographer in New York, his life in the Parisian bohemian surrealist avant-garde as a friend of Man RAY and Duchamp to his retreat to Hollywood in the 1940s following a scandal surrounding his nude photographs, which were controversial due to their fetishistic appearance. And he answers the question of how one manages to go down in history as one of the most important photographers of classical modernism despite having worked for Good Housekeeping magazine." (slightly adapted publisher's text, © Taschen Verlag, 2017)