ANOTHER Blow-Up book .....

I thought this coffee-table tome, below right, published a couple of years ago, was the definitive book on Antonioni's BLOW-UP that 1966 film that still resonates now, as people still want to write about it and analyze it endlessly. So it was a surprise the other day to get a package containing another monster BLOW-UP book, left, which I did not even know about - a birthday gift from pal Colin. This one is by Walter Moser and one Klaus Albrecht ~Schroder. 

The blurb for this one states:

Blow Up, the 1966 cult film, can also be regarded as an excursion in photography. On a futile search for evidence of a crime he thought he has seen, Thomas, a fashion photographer, enlarges his pictures, pushing the envelope of the medium s boundaries. Michelangelo Antonioni s milestone in film history revolves around the issue of how much truth exists in perception, inquires into the ways that media reproductions can be manipulated. This publication examines Blow Up from a photographic perspective, investigating in detail the photographic and art-historical stances presented in the film as well as the genres is represents. The stylistic devices discussed range from social reportage, fashion photography, and Pop Art to abstract photography and how, incidentally, Antonioni discovers soft focus as an artistic device.

(Hmm, could be a bit on the pretentious side..)

BLOW-UP is always listed as a 1966 film, it was indeed filmed that summer and opened in America in December that year, but it did not get to Europe until March 1967, when it opened in London and was a wow at Cannes. I remember that well, it was the film one had to see - I was 21 then and it was rather like seeing oneself up on the screen, watching David Hemmings, as we looked and dressed just like him. So it will always be a 1967 film for me. 

I have only skimmed this volume so far, but it is full of essays, and oodles of those photographs - of the park painted extra green, the road painted red (in Stockwell, South London), the models in the studio, the London streets of the mid-60s, and the photographs themselves and what they reveal ...

Fascinating stuff for a BLOW-UP junkie like me! Thanks indeed, Colin. LOTS MORE BLOW-UP at label. It was of course produced by Carlo Ponti, husband of Sophia Loren - see post below. 

Colin incidentally is having a moment. He came across some photographs, stored away in his garage,  of the British pop group The Smiths which he took back in 1983 when they were just starting out, which has caused some media interest with a report on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-34953477)
     and the pictures are being reprinted and used in an exhibition and a fund-raising event. There is even a signing session lined up. Good luck with that Colin.