Description
French publisher Timeless has released a sumptuous collection of photographs created by the artist Jamie McLeod, with the book’s main protagonist and inspiration being the singer-songwriter and performer Marc Almond.
The book consists largely of previously unpublished photos from McLeod’s 20 year archive, working with Almond as both his muse and patron. It contains mostly unseen and new images, as well as variants of images that have been used before as products or in articles. McLeod spent more than a year working on the imagery to create stills with a cinematic feel, spiced up and sliced up for the imagination to go wild with.
The other aspect of the book is what McLeod calls his B-sides. These less commercial images are perhaps the most revealing. Like mini-operettas, they create a space where Marc can role play and invent his persona both in the studio setting and on the street, in urban locations like his beloved Soho.
There is a large section of new portraits of Almond inspired by Marc and the Mambas iconography. There are exotic mug shots and masks, gunshots and poetry, drenched in voodoo and varieté, evocative images of both glamour and decadence. This is as much a book for the Marc Almond fan as it is for the aficionado of unique portraiture, one that celebrates the pinnacle of 21st century art photography.
Interspersed with the magnificently reproduced images are short and longer essays and appreciations by Marc’s friends and collaborators from throughout his career, including Dave Ball, Anohni, Matt Johnson of The The, Jim Thirlwell, Lindsay Kemp, Othon, Anni Hogan, Val Denham, to name but a few.
27 x 33 cm – 200 pages in color – Hardbound – Timeless Editions (France). Exclusive distribution in America by Soleilmoon.
