Lindsay McCrum: Strange Beauty: Still Icons

photography monograph for Lindsay McCrum / Modernism

foreword by Lindsay McCrum; essay by Sam Yanes

From the essay by Sam Yates:
The worlds that Lindsay McCrum has created and “cast” differ from the use of Japanese plastic-cast figures from the 1950s that Laurie Simmons places in dollhouse settings or at tourist destinations around the world. Nor are they similar to the life-size sexualized dolls photographed by German surrealist Hans Bellmer or the toys employed by David Levinthal. McCrum’s subjects are not photographed on constructed sets. They are shot on location in and around San Francisco. Her models are always in motion, going somewhere mysterious or offering a glimpse of a private moment preparing for a secret assignation. The distinctive mise-en-scène of Strange Beauty: Still Icons combines lighting, costuming, camera placement, and camera angles to create the dramatic look and feel of the book’s photographic vignettes.

From Lindsay McCrum’s foreword:
When I switched from oil painting to photography, I was no longer tethered to a studio. The anguish of a perfect line or underpainting was replaced by the immediacy of a quick capture. All I had to do was pay attention to those common, exquisite moments: the reflected light at golden hour setting windows on fire in the east or the indistinguishable horizon line between the sky and ocean as I looked west on the Golden Gate Bridge. As I wandered in the neighborhood, hidden affairs and vignettes were revealed. Narratives unfolded like fleeting film stills from a movie of domestic disturbances and ordinary intrigue. Like a director projecting mystery and allure onto the predictable landscapes, I meandered and captured indiscriminately.

84 pages
8 x 10.75 inches