Michael Thompson: Portraits

Acclaimed by American Photo as "one of the most important photographersworking today," the fashion and celebrity photographer Michael Thompsonbegan his career in the late 1980s as a studio assistant to Irving Penn,and now is famed for his glamorous portraiture. In our celebrity-besottedculture, the magazine photographer holds tremendous power to sculpt thepublic's conception of a star; and Thompson has done so for such A-listersas Cate Blanchett, Sting, Mariah Carey, Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, PhillipSeymour Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Sting and Meryl Streep. Michael Thompson:Portraits presents work spanning Thompson's illustrious 20-year career.Taken from the pages of fashion and lifestyle magazines including Vogue, W,GQ, Allure and Vanity Fair, the nearly 150 images in this book intensifythe mythic pungency of their subjects while simultaneously inviting anintimate glimpse into their inner lives. The images have been selected bythe widely admired photography critic and connoisseur Vince Aletti, whoconducts a far-reaching appraisal of celebrity, using Thompson's images asa touchstone to examine the emergence of celebrity as cult, as well as thepower of the photographer's astringent gaze to strip artifice from hissubject. As one of the foremost celebrity photographers of the last twodecades, Thompson emerges here as a leading image-broker for our times.