This year, Benedikt Taschen came up with something huge – literally.
David Bailey’s new photo book is a limited edition hardcover giant of a book, 440 pages of iconic photography SUMO sized 40 x 50 cm. Limited to a total of 3,000 numbered and signed copies, the book is so heavy it comes with a solid bookstand designed by Marc Newson and four different jackets featuring John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Jean Shrimpton, Mick Jagger, and Andy Warhol. So what is this Behemoth about that might not fit into many private libraries?
He turned 81 this year, and an enormous king-sized book seems to be the best way to celebrate a more than successful life and career. It is like walking through a history book and a gallery at the same time: writers, artists, fashion icons and politicians. You name it. They are all here: Francis Bacon, Kate Moss, Jack Nicholson, Margaret Thatcher, and Zaha Hadid as well as dozens, nay, hundreds more.
In the foreword, David’s personal friend Damien Hirst writes: “He’s the master of his art and he’s created a mind-blowing visual language.”
Francis Hodgson, head of the photographs department at Sotheby’s and Professor in the Culture of Photography at the University of Brighton, U.K., wrote additional texts and an essay on Bailey’s portraits.
The editor Benedikt Taschen, another close personal friend of David’s, is the founder and managing director of the edition and series. He started his professional career age 18 in a small store in his native Cologne, Germany, which he named TASCHEN COMICS. Things have changed quite a bit since then. Taschen is surely among best publishing houses world wide.
By the end of the 1980s, TASCHEN titles were available in over a dozen languages at prices that finally made art books affordable for students and collectors alike—still the publishing house’s credo to this day.
