The Best of Beaton

[Cecil Beaton. Truman Capote]


The Best of Beaton is an anthology of Beaton’s “best” photographs from 1922 to date. Reproductions of over three hundred photographs, presented chronologically, provide an objective overview of a hugely-varied, successful and influential photographic career. Chapters include ‘First Stages’, ‘Early Cinema’, ‘Travel’, ‘Fashions of the late Twenties and Thirties’, ‘Branches, Stalks and Stems’, ‘Creative People’, ‘The Performing Artists’, ‘War’, ‘War Fashions and After’, ‘Time Sequences’, ‘Personages’, ‘Charivari’, and ‘The Future Past’. Each chapter begins with a short commentary text by Beaton; pithy and witty stories of how the pictures were made, the sitters, the locations and the technical challenges. Truman Capote provides a “glowing tribute” in his introduction.
 
This copy with an original photograph of Cecil Beaton pasted onto the front endpaper. The photograph was taken by the ballet and theatre photographer Keith Money. Money published several books of his photographs, including titles on Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. The photograph shows Beaton wearing a three-piece suit and hat at an event, perhaps a wedding, perhaps about to give a speech, with flowers in front and flowery fabric behind.


Cecil Beaton. Introduction by Truman Capote. Original photograph by Keith Money. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London. 1968. First edition. Hardback, quarto; black cloth-bound boards, silver title to spine, dust jacket. 248 pages. 300 black-and-white and 8 colour images. English. 310 x 235mm. 1.6kg. . Very good, in good dust jacket; some shelf wear to jacket, occasional short tears, wear to spine ends and forecorners, tape repairs to verso, not price-clipped; slight wear to edges of boards, black-and-white photograph pasted to front free endpaper with ink border and notation - 'CB by KM !'