BOOK REVIEW: Photographer Andrew Zuckerman’s BIRD and brand soar

Andrew Zuckerman‘s latest book Bird (Chronicle Books, ISBN 9780811870986) showcases 200 vividly colorful, intelligently captured studio portraits of 75 exotic bird species. Zuckerman also filmed his photoshoot and posted behind-the-scenes film footage of the plumage.  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that near-rhyme.) Along with Zuckerman’s two earlier books, Creature (2008) and Wisdom (2007), Bird is the third in his series of similarly designed “concept” books — 12″x12″square coffee table friendy, one-word titled books, all shot on location in high key studio lighting against white seamless — a recipe that has become Zuckerman’s signature look, his brand.  And his brand, like Bird, is soaring.

Still in his early thirties, Zuckerman knows and understands branding.  He is co-founder of Late Nights & Weekends (LNW), a creative agency and production company, whose advertising clients include Gap, Puma, BMW, among other brands.  His white seamless aesthetic grew out of shooting what he called “still lifes of bags and shoes” on a “perfectly white background” for Vogue magazine, one of his first photography jobs after graduating from the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

Above, Zuckerman's Chimpanzee image. See this chimp recycled in an ad selling headphones for Vogue, below.

He still shoots on a perfectly white background — a look that has become his brand.  In all three of his photography books, Zuckerman’s subjects, both creatures and people, appear in near shadowless wraparound light shot against white seamless.  The effect extracts all context, as if his subjects were amputated from their environments by an extraction performed with a precision Photoshop selection plugin. No need for background separations in post-production, here. Zuckerman gets it right in his camera. (Geeks take note:  he shoots Hasselblad H2 with a Leaf Aptus 75S digital back and brings Broncolor Grafit portable studio lights on location.)  He used the same lighting recipe when he shot animals, reptiles and other critters for Creature and wise people with smart quotes in Wisdom.  (Click the preceding links to see YouTube film shorts of amazing behind-the-scenes footage of his photoshoots for these two books.)  Creature, now its its fourth printing, features 150 nuanced studio portraits of tigers, baby leopards, a giraffe, chimpanzees, parrots, bears, reptiles, fish and other photogenic creatures.  His second book,

Zuckerman's Giraffe from Creature recycled in an ad to sell soap for Vogue magazine's shopping guide at style.com

Wisdom, published late last year, still is an international sensation. It was produced with the cooperation of Archibishop Desmond Tutu, who made the initial contact with the book’s subjects, international luminaries over the age of 65 with something to say. The fifty warts-and-all honest portraits include, for example, Dame Judi Dench, Desmond Tutu, Vanessa Redgrave, Ravi Shankar, Clint Eastwood, Andrew Wyeth, Frank Gehry, Edward Kennedy, Chuck Close, Robert Redford, Buzz Aldrin, Vaclav Havel, Jane Goodall, Nelson Mandela, Graham Nash, and many others.

Primatologist Jane Goodall in Zuckerman's book, Wisdom.

Fascinating quotes from Zuckerman’s interviews with these iconic men and women are also published in the book and on an included dvd of film footage from these interviews. Zuckerman says that he premised the book on the belief that ”one of the greatest gifts one generation can pass to another is the wisdom it has gained from experience.”  Now, with the publication and marketing of Bird, Zuckerman may have set his sights a bit lower than working towards world peace (as he does in Wisdom), but nonetheless he again has proven himself as to be both a talented and insightful artist, a gifted photographer, and a skillful brand manager.

In the same Vogue catalog in which Zuckerman's Chimp sells headphones, his Bald Eagle image hawks ties.

Zuckerman’s uniformly, uncluttered images and signature whitespace backgrounds grant seamless entry points into his varied projects, while giving Zuckerman the ability to combine images from among different projects to create and market his his own branded merchandise (which already includes his line of Creature Wall Calendars, Creature Floor Puzzles, Creature Notecards, etc.  The formula also contributes to a stockpile (er… stock archive) of images that Zuckerman draws upon to produce commercials and ads for clients to sell their own products.

That is exactly what Zuckerman did when he used shot footage of chimps in a commercial he created to sell Puma shoes (See Ants,” “Butterflies,” “Chimps”) and when he let Vogue magazine use his chimp and other images from Creature and Bird to sell electronics, jewelry, purses, shoes, and even bars of soap, pencils (or were they cosmetics?), pet carriers, ties, and ice skates in Vogue’s online shopping guide.  And circularly, Vogue’s online Holiday shopping guide webpage reciprocally promotes Zuckerman’s Bird book.

Very entrepreneurial.  Very synergistic.  Zuckerman-branded chimpanzees selling headphones for Vogue? Look, in a down market, you gotta do what you gotta do. Wonder what primatologist Jane Goodall, one of Zuckerman’s articulate portrait subjects in Wisdom, has to say about that.

Up in the air… it’s a… a… tennis ball!

© 2009 Mimi Azrael All rights reserved

After what seemed like weeks, but was only days, the rain finally stopped.  So I went roaming around shooting puddles and odd-shaped fallen leaves.  Even threw a pile of leaves up in the air fooling around with some stop-action flash and a high ISO.  And, then I spotted the wet, grimy tennis ball.  Tossed it a couple of times in the air.  On the last toss, it hovered above the basketball hoop.  No, it didn’t go in, but I got this shot.

CAMOUFLAGE ART: Can you find the Invisible Man?

Once again, Stephen Heller — who writes the Visuals column for the New York Times Book Review and The Daily Heller blog for Print Magazine, — gives us shock-and-awe images. This time, he acquaints us with Liu Bolin, a 36-year-old performance artist from Beijing, whose art form is what Heller calls “camo art.” Check this out:

Can you find Liu Bolin??

Liu, known as the “Invisible Man,” steps into his images… literally. He has been known to spend upwards of 10 hours painting his body to nearly perfectly blend into his surroundings, turning an eventual photograph of him into a living, breathing trompe l’oeil image.  In the photograph below, he is barely visible blending into an enormous American flag.

Performance artist Liu hiding in plain sight.

The YU Gallery in Paris has a month-long, one-man exhibition of Liu’s photographs which will close on October 31st.  Nine large images from the YU Gallery exhibition can be viewed here on the website of the Herald Sun, a Melbourne, Australia newspaper.

When asked why he does this, Liu explains that blending into his surroundings communicates social invisibility. “I experienced the dark side of society, without social relations, and had a feeling that no one cared about me, I felt myself unnecessary in this world, ” Liu told the London Telegraph. Liu considers his work a form of protest against the Chinese government, which he said, closed his art studio in 2005.   This photo, one of his most political, is amazing (see right):

Click here to view a YouTube video of Liu being painted.

In Chicago: Blue skies and an October haunting on Michigan Avenue

© 2009 Mimi Azrael All rights reserved

Photos from Chicago: Won’t be long before temperatures in Chicago will dip into single digits… and below!  Meanwhile, while walking up Michigan Avenue last week, I saw vivid, blue, cloudless skies and temperatures in the mild 70s.  Crossing Pearson, past the historic Old Water Tower (built in 1869 see below) and near the shops of Water Tower Place, I snapped the Hancock Building (all 100 stories of it) staring down at me. The day before it was shrouded in fog, so it was a welcome sight.  Still, can’t imagine walking around here in February.

Later on, at dusk, I looked out our hotel window towards Lake Michigan a few blocks away.  Here’s a pic I snapped of the Old Water Tower and beyond lit by the sun’s reflections in nearby buildings.  Built of limestone, the Water Tower took 2 years to construct. It is not, contrary to popular belief, the only building in Chicago that survived the Great Fire 1871.  It is one of several that survived, although it’s true that it is the only surviving building that remains standing.  The fire killed 300 people, left 100,000 homeless, and destroyed the entire central business district of Chicago.  Interestingly, though so many buildings were consumed, the home of the woman — Catherine O’Leary — in whose barn the fire supposedly began, survived.

© 2009 Mimi Azrael All rights reserved

People say that the Old Water Tower is haunted.   Legend has it that the spirit a man who worked in the Tower on Sunday night, October 8, 1871, the night of the Great Fire, has been seen haunting the Tower.  The man was a hero and is remembered for having stayed behind to man the water pumps as the flames approached.  Rather than be consumed by the fire, he hanged himself.  Chicago lore has tourists reporting that they saw the shadowy figure of a man, believed to be this man, hanging in one of the Tower’s upstairs windows.  Great Halloween tale.

Here’s an old photo of the Water Tower (from the Illinois State Historical Library showing what the area looked like long before the Hancock Building and Water Tower Place (mall) came along.  The tower, now dwarfed by high rise buildings, conceals a 138′ standpipe — a reservoir that was used to maintain water pressure. Today, the building houses a Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau Visitor’s Center.

Just Published: David Burnett’s 44 Days

Considered one of the world’s best working photojournalists, David Burnett published a new photography book this week, “44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World.” In words and images, Burnett gives us a behind-the-scenes, extraordinary eyewitness account of what he saw, photographed, and experienced during the chaos, brutality and political upheaval of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Arrested at one point by the Shah’s police for taking photographs, Burnett’s images of street demonstrations, oppression and bloodshed in Iran culminating in the violent overthrow of the Shah — though taken 30 years ago — presage images broadcast worldwide last summer following Iran’s controversial election and its regime’s strong-armed suppression of dissenting protesters. In a telephone interview with New York Times senior photographer, James Estrin, himself a Pulitzer prize winner, who reviewed Burnett’s book in the NYT photography blog, Lens, Burnett observed, “When you look at my photographs, and some of the cellphone pictures this summer, it’s almost spooky because you see the same kinds of moments, except with different cars and different clothes. The irony is that the people in my pictures became the new regime that is now trying to quell the street demonstrations 30 years later.” Estrin reports in his blog that Burnett has tried for years to return to Iran, but Iran has repeatedly denied his requests for a visa. Nineteen stunning images from Burnett’s 233-page book can be viewed on the Lens blog here. CNN commentator and chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, who was born in Iran, wrote the foreward.

Links & Looks

Links & Looks shares news, curiosities, sometimes offbeat ideas, web links, and images that I come across. In analog days, we clipped and saved newspaper and magazine articles and scribbled notes to ourselves (often on envelopes, napkins and scraps of paper that wound up getting lost or accidentally thrown away). Now, blogs make it possible not only to collect and sort these findings, but also share them with others and archive them in always-accessible form. In short, Links & Looks aims to be a one-stop memory jogger of what, at different moments in time, grabbed my interest and curiosity and might be of interest to you, too.

This site is in its infancy, but feel free to browse and see what’s here.

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Also, click here to return to my photography website galleries of archived images shot for editorial and commercial clients, as well as images of people and places I’ve shot just for fun.

Please be sure to leave a comment or email me at blog@azrael.com.

Thanks for visiting.

– Mimi Azrael