Seeff left medical school and his native Johannesburg in 1968 to see if he could fulfill his dream of becoming an artist before the malignant tumor growing in his neck cut him down. After three years of treatment and scuffling on the streets of New York City, camera in hand, he got a big break and then a bigger one: He was chosen to shoot the cover for the first album by a little-known group called the Band, and his cancer went into remission.
Seeff writes that the illness was really his wake-up call, and his decision to make "a radical life change" was the true agent of his apparent cure. His brooding, almost chiaroscuro portrait of Dylan's former backup band—seeming, like the group's own music, to spring from some vanished, low-tech past—is one of the defining images of the '60s. But ironically it did not begin to define the visceral, kinetic style that Seeff soon made his own.
Some celebrity photographers seem to conspire in the deification of their subjects and end up embalming them in their own air of superiority, entitlement and cool. Annie Leibovitz brings a visual sumptuousness and a sly wit to her often elaborate setups. Seeff is a kind of human particle collider. The photo session is his laboratory. Releasing his intense and confessional inner energy, he triggers a chain reaction in which the star's own energy and spirit is unharnessed. Seeff's pictures of Ray Charles, Whitney Houston, Carly Simon and many others show their spontaneous, sensual surrender to his lust for sheer life force.
In his sessions, Seeff celebrates his own liberating credo—that you can dodge death by embracing your boldest dreams—and he gets his subjects to revel along with him. (WhaleSong, $39.95)
by Belle Yang
Spilling off the cover in a joyous river of color, Belle Yang's charming folkloric figures sweep you into this very special memoir. The Taiwan-born artist-author, who now lives in Carmel, Calif., uses her twin talents to conjure up the vanished landscape of her father's youth on the plains of Manchuria.
"In a time when the world was a bit wider," Yang begins these yarns spun by her beloved Baba (Chinese for Papa). The fairy-tale narrative and the watercolors that open each chapter have a poetic elegance in their childlike simplicity. Beguiled by the musical cadence and bold strokes, we only slowly become aware of the underlying seriousness of Yang's dual story—an intimate portrait of rural Chinese life in the early days of this century and a wider view of the way distant events, like the Japanese invasion of the province, will forever change it.
But, bright in Baba's memory, the magic remains. Romantic "redbeard" bandits still roam the countryside, ghosts haunt the hearth, and prospective brides' earlobes are inspected for the thickness that portends good fortune. "I thought you had come to this country with empty pockets," Yang writes of her father. "Little did I know they were jingling with stories—my inheritance." And now ours. (Harcourt Brace, $27.95)
by M.G. Lord
Barbie, now 35, is not just a doll, she's an issue. She has an unnatural (and unattainable) figure and her feet are perpetually frozen in a high-heel position. Is she a bimbo? Or, with a boyfriend, a job, her own home, and—every teenager's dream—no parents, is she an independent woman? Whichever position you take, it's hard to deny Barbie's impact: Dolls can be role models of sorts, and every second, two Barbies are sold somewhere in the world. Lord is a fan of semiotics, decoding Barbie's wardrobe for meaning. She also likes synchronicity. Barbie was born in Hawthorne, Calif., she writes, "in a dump, but a dump with a glamor-queen precedent. In 1926, Marilyn Monroe was born there."
Sometimes Lord, a columnist for New York Newsday, goes overboard with daytime talk show psychobabble. She spends three pages recounting the "Skipper complex" suffered by a now-grown woman who feels inferior because as a child, she was given Barbie's younger sister rather than Barbie to play with. But overall, Lord shrewdly uses the evolution of Barbie as a touchstone to chart the evolution of our modern culture. (Morrow, $25)
>THE STORY OF THE NUTCRACKER by E.T.A. Hoffmann Claire Bloom's exuberant reading is beautifully calibrated to ensure that this Nutcracker is not too sweet, even for nogged-out grown-ups. (Caedmon, $11)
A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens Patrick Stewart's robust and dazzling performance hums along without a bug and makes you think you are savoring this hardy perennial for the first time. (Simon & Schuster, $19.95, cd)
A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES by Dylan Thomas A ghost of campuses past, Thomas sounds lugubriously overripe, though his genius for finding poetry in the prosaic remains abundantly clear. (Caedmon, $12, cassette; $14.95, cd)
A TREASURY OF CHRISTMAS STORIES AND POEMS Poignancy without sentimentality is the gift that Jane Alexander brings to this selection of classics, notably, the Christmas at Mole End sequence from The Wind in the Willows. (Bantam, $9.99)
THE HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS by Annie Reiner Gravel-voiced and faintly world-weary, Jack Lemmon breathes oxygen into this anodyne interpretation of what Christmas means. (Dove, $9.95)
SANTOSAURUS by Mary Sheldon Confiding and avuncular but never condescending, Jonathan Winters demonstrates yet another facet of his uncanny genius reading this tale of a toy Brontosaurus who becomes a year-round Santa. (Dove, $9.95)
THE CAT WHO CAME FOR CHRISTMAS by Cleveland Amory An alley cat encountered one Christmas Eve gives Cleveland Amory paws to reflect engagingly on the social history of Felis catus. (Random House, $11)
- Contributors:
- Eric Levin,
- Pam Lambert,
- Lynn Schnurnberger,
- Ben Harte.
