Edited by Nicole Delmes, Susanne Zander. Introduction by Cindy Sherman.
An archive of found Polaroids featuring headshots and intimate close-ups of 1960s actresses, from Tina Turner to Jane Fonda
In spring 2012 artist Jason Brinkerhoff (born 1974) discovered a collection of around 950 black-and-white Type 42 Polaroids featuring headshots and intimate close-ups of actresses taken from the television screen beginning in the late 1960s. The origins of the series—and, most notably, its creator—remain entirely mysterious, their author's only trace being the scribbles of actresses' names and dates on the Polaroids' edges. Edited by Nicole Delmes and Susanne Zander, and introduced by Cindy Sherman, Fame Is the Name of the Game showcases a selection of 120 works from the extraordinary archive. Capturing such celebrities as Brigitte Bardot, Doris Day, Catherine Deneuve, Mia Farrow, Jane Fonda, Sophia Loren, Barbara Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor and Tina Turner, the collection wrests the fleeting fame of 1960s cinema into the present, memorializing the fascination it provided for the anonymous photographer.
Featured image is reproduced from Type 42: Fame Is the Name of the Game.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
New York Magazine, The Cut
Jerry Saltz
These nebulous, darkened black-and-white Polaroid pictures of movie stars and vixens were taken by an anonymous artist known only as Type 42 — after the instant self-developing film he or she used — off small TV screens in dark rooms. The images come from the 1960s but didn’t emerge until 2012, when an artist stumbled on the whole cache (hallelujah!). Most are inscribed with the name of the actress, maybe her measurements, and occasionally a film title, and always lettered in a laboriously deliberate hand — the i’s dotted not above, but to the right. In an essay accompanying the recent catalogue, Fame Is the Name of the Game …, the artist Cindy Sherman calls the work “an exhaustive study of what it is to be a woman.” She writes, “We could assume it was a man since almost all the images are of women, but perhaps this was a woman trying to understand her role models.” Above all, “these photos are the evidence of someone who watched a lot of television, had a lot of Polaroid film, and was obsessed.” She’s right: Whoever is seeing these women is seeing them intensely. Anita Ekberg hoisting her chest; Kim Novak in a bathtub; Jane Fonda, in a glittery bra, marked “34-22-34.” Foggy desires and unseen urges attend all these pictures, glimpses of a pre-VCR world when any erotic charge gotten from television had to be held in memory. But this photographer needed those images to exist forever now, close at hand, available for careful perusal. That the film is Polaroid suggests that he or she saw them as something furtive, to be done undercover, without taking film to be developed. Like all good art, these pictures are secrets hiding in the light.
Bookforum
Albert Mobilio
If the ghostly faces in this realm were indeed as evanescent as Pound's "petals on a wet, black bough," they might still be saved on Type 42, a pocket-size mercy that postponed for a while the final fade out.
in stock $45.00
Free Shipping
UPS GROUND IN THE CONTINENTAL U.S. FOR CONSUMER ONLINE ORDERS
Featured image, of Brigitte Bardot in the horror anthology Histoires Extraordinaires (Spirits of the Dead) by Federico Fellini, Louis Malle and Roger Vadim, is one of 950 Type 42 Polaroids made by an anonymous photographer from TV screens in the late 1960s. It is reproduced from the enigmatic and perfect new collection, Type 2: Fame Is the Name of the Game, one of Dan Nadel'sBest Books of 2015. In her introduction, Cindy Sherman writes, "It's an exhaustive study of what it is to be a woman–as if the photographer was seeking the essence of women–so carefully capturing faces close up. Or or it could be someone obsessed with celebrity, actresses on TV or in films or merely someone seeking to capture some televised titillation via Hollywood or soap operas… There are no conclusions I can make other than the mystery they provided me." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 5 x 6.75 in. / 144 pgs / 120 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $60 ISBN: 9783863356439 PUBLISHER: Walther König, Köln AVAILABLE: 2/24/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AU/NZ AFR
Type 42: Fame Is the Name of the Game Photographs by Anonymous
Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Nicole Delmes, Susanne Zander. Introduction by Cindy Sherman.
An archive of found Polaroids featuring headshots and intimate close-ups of 1960s actresses, from Tina Turner to Jane Fonda
In spring 2012 artist Jason Brinkerhoff (born 1974) discovered a collection of around 950 black-and-white Type 42 Polaroids featuring headshots and intimate close-ups of actresses taken from the television screen beginning in the late 1960s. The origins of the series—and, most notably, its creator—remain entirely mysterious, their author's only trace being the scribbles of actresses' names and dates on the Polaroids' edges. Edited by Nicole Delmes and Susanne Zander, and introduced by Cindy Sherman, Fame Is the Name of the Game showcases a selection of 120 works from the extraordinary archive. Capturing such celebrities as Brigitte Bardot, Doris Day, Catherine Deneuve, Mia Farrow, Jane Fonda, Sophia Loren, Barbara Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor and Tina Turner, the collection wrests the fleeting fame of 1960s cinema into the present, memorializing the fascination it provided for the anonymous photographer.
