Reviews for André Ostier

The average rating for André Ostier based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-05-25 00:00:00 Morgan McAdams I'm among the billions of fans of HCB's street photography - really his creation of an entirely new artistic genre. But at the core I'm more of a people photographer than a street guy, as much as I love the rush of shooting street. This collection of Henri's portraits - what's the best term here? - shots captured in relaxed moments? - environmental unposed portraits? - PHOTOS is breathtaking. HCB captures that moment of inner silence in his subjects that he famously (as reflected in the book's introduction) could never find in himself when somebody else was shooting him. Favorite from this time through the collection: Ezra Pound - intensity doesn't begin to describe this image. Martin Luther King at work at his desk. Jean-Marie Le Clezio and wife. Jean-Paul Sartre and Fernand Pouillon. Julien Gracq (in perhaps the only eye-contact moment in the collection). Joan Miró, a street scene in Warsaw, Marc Chagall, Carl Jung, Samuel Beckett. Another reviewer here decried the fact that HCB couldn't get any of his subjects to lock eyes and smile. But what these images show is something far more profound about their inner character. It's gorgeous and inspiring work.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-05-03 00:00:00 Tony Hunter I am getting rid of books now, in preparation for death one day. Many of them are books of photographs. People photographs (I despise the word portrait, especially for this book) have always been my greatest interest. I don't own this book, but I will buy it, because it deserves a place in a tiny canon. Not every photograph reaches out and grabs me by the balls, of course, but most of them do. And those that do speak clearly about the person: strong, diffident, weak, arrogant, powerful, gentle, sad, kind, and many more subtle characteristics. Cartier-Bresson usually took fifteen or twenty minutes with his subjects. Sometimes, as with Matisse and Ezra Pound, they never spoke a word to each other, and his little Leica just clicked faintly away, as Truman Capote remembered. I keep opening the book, neurotically, to see what else the pictures are saying. To investigate Colette's expression again, or Marilyn Monroe's décolletage. I am honored and glad that no one ever asked me to write the words for a book of architecture or photographs. I never would, because they are always pathetic.