Most Popular Books by Luc Sante

A cacophonous poem of democracy and greed, like the streets of New York themselves.

"Like it or not, each one of us was made, less by blood or genes than by a process that is largely accidental, the impact of things seen and heard and smelled and tasted and endured in those few years before our clay hardened," writes Luc Sante. The Factory of Facts is his personal account of that process, less a memoir than an Identi-Kit self-portrait. Born in a factory town in southern Belgium in 1954, he was brought by his parents to the United States as a small child. Not quite knowing where he belonged, Sante grew up split: half in the old world, half in the new one, and resentful of both. His native land became ever more an abstraction, until he revisited it at age thirty-five. Suddenly he felt "as if I were taking a walking tour of my subconscious." So Sante becomes a detective, digging for clues to his childhood, to the lives of his parents, to the murky traces of his ancestors. He examines the social history of his native town, Verviers, which turns out to have been the home of his forbears for a millennium--a harsh industrial city, the birthplace of anarchists, autodidacts, and violin prodigies. And he looks at Belgium itself, an "artificial" country, "cast under the sign of ambivalence." The home of Magritte, Tintin, Brueghel, and Simenon is a puzzle, held together by its conflicts and contradictions. And everywhere Sante looks he finds little bits of himself. Navigating among the coordinates of time, place, and language, foraging through flea markets, scrolling through microfilmed documents, deconstructing stray photographs and anecdotes, Sante creates a superb work of remembrance and history. He comes to realize that he is the sum of a pile of accidents, capriciousproducts of history and culture. The specifics of his story may be his alone, but its outline is shared by us all. In our era of political, cultural, economic, and technological convergences, The Factory of Facts brilliantly proposes a template for everyone''s autobiography.

A tour of the lost Paris of the last two centuries - poor, unvarnished and truly bohemian.

"A vivid investigation into the seamy underside of nineteenth and twentieth century Paris"--

Essays offering personal reflections on life in a changing America and a post-Giuliani New York City are accompanied by book and music reviews.

A penetrating analysis of the real-photo postcard phenomenon of the early 1900s. These cards depict the now vanished world of small-town America, but also represent a pivotal stage in the evolution of photography. Their head-on style inherits something of the plain aesthetic of the Civil War photographers, while anticipating the great 1930s documentary artists such as Walker Evans. Fusing his skills as a chronicler of early 20th-century America, a historian of photography and a keen critic, Sante shows how these postcards offer a revealing ''self-portrait of the American nation''.

It was the twang heard ''round the world: Rockabilly was born out of country, bluegrass, jazz, and the blues in the 1950s, becoming rock ’n’ roll and ruling the world. Here’s the story of Elvis Presley’s first Sun records that inspired all. And here’s Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and many more rockabillies from the golden years of 1955–1959, in a book chock full of photos, collectible memorabilia, movie posters, rare records, fashion, and rebel lifestyle. Includes contributions from noted music journalists Greil Marcus, Peter Guralnick, Luc Sante, Robert Gordon, and more. The story continues today, with a rockabilly revival that began with stars, such as the Stray Cats and Robert Gordon, spreading around the globe from Europe to Japan. Today, rockabilly is better than ever, with bands like Rev. Horton Heat and others playing the music and living the life from Memphis to Helsinki to Tokyo. There’s still good rockin’ tonight!

"A collection of 55 evidence photographs taken by the New York City Police Department between 1914 and 1918"--Back cover.

An introduction to Walker Evan''s photography.

"Published on the occasion of the exhibition Revisionist Art: Thirty Works by Bob Dylan, November 28, 2012-January 12, 2013, Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY"--Colophon.

The kind of fame and success The Rolling Stones have achieved in their 50-years and counting career is without parallel; their most famous riffs and catchiest lyrics are indelibly engraved in our collective memory. With their bluesy rock ''n'' roll and mesmerizing off and onstage presence, the Stones redefined the music of the 1960s and 1970s and paved the way for rock as we know it today. They also set the standard for how a rock band should look and behave. Produced in close collaboration with the band, this book charts the Stones'' remarkable history and outrageously cool lifestyle in over 500 pages of photographs and illustrations, many previously unseen, and gathered from archives all over the world. Unprecedented access to the Rolling Stones'' own archives in New York and London adds an equally extraordinary, more private side to their story. For Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie this is their official photographic record. Features: Over 500 pages of incredible images from some of the world''s greatest photographers, including David Bailey, Peter Beard, Cecil Beaton, Bob Bonis, Anton Corbijn, Annie Leibovitz, Gered Mankowitz, Helmut Newton, Bent Rej, and Norman Parkinson A foreword written by President Bill Clinton Three new essays from award-winning writers David Dalton, Waldemar Januszczak, and Luc Sante Appendix including Stones in the media, a Stones timeline, a discography, and photographers'' biographies Standard TASCHEN edition

Published to accompany an exhibition held at International Center of Photography, New York, 9 June - 27 August 2006.

Richard Prince (b.1949) emerged in the 1980s as one of America''s new, highly innovative artists working with the margins of America''s subcultures and visual debris. The appropriation and re-presentation of highly idiosyncratic subject matter - such as one-line jokes, off-colour cartoons, cowboys (''borrowed'' from Marlboro ads) and motorcycle gangs - are essential to his work. In the late 1970s Prince was working for the cutting services of Time Lifepublications in New York, where he had access to thousands of cut-up magazines in which only the advertisements remained intact. He began to re-photograph the advertisements and compose his own pictures from this highly familiar imagery, updating 1960s Pop art''s homage to consumerism and its icons. Decades later, his career took an unexpected turn, and the artist emerged as a consummate painter, producing some of the most unusual and intensely admired works in the current painting scene. Prince is one of America''s best known artists and in 1992 was honoured with a one-person retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Other museums that have held solo shows of Prince''s work include the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, IVAM in Valencia and the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Prince''s highly readable Interview with Jeff Rian ranges in its subject matter from rock and roll to folk art, from criminals to celebrities, as well as his experiences and history as an artist. In her Survey, Rosetta Brooks examines the variety in Prince''s art through two key themes: the notion of artistic authenticity and the artist''s construction of his own beguiling personality. Renowned photography critic Luc Sante takes a close look at one of Prince''s best known and most disturbing series, Girlfriends, a confounding combination of sexiness and sexism. For his Artist''s Choice Prince has selected the lyrics from "Fallen for You", a 1992 pop song by singer/songwriter Sheila Nicholls. Prince''s signature laconic writing style is represented by autobiography, fiction, observations and confessions.

Depuis plus d''un demi-siècle, Annie Leibovitz est l''auteur de photos qui décrivent la culture de leur époque. Ses portraits de politiciens, d''artistes, d''athlètes, d''entrepreneurs et de têtes couronnées composent une galerie de notre temps, imprimée dans notre conscience collective autant par la singularité de ses sujets que par le style inimitable de Leibovitz. Catalogue de l''installation présentée par la Fondation LUMA, à Arles, Annie Leibovitz : The Early Years, 1970-1983 revient sur les origines de Leibovitz. Il commence par une révélation artistique : un cliché pris sur le vif, celui qui lui a donné à penser qu''elle pourrait étudier la photographie plutôt que la peinture au San Francisco Art Institute. Ce recueil, composé personnellement et avec le plus grand soin par Leibovitz, présente ensuite des planches contact et des Polaroid qui racontent de façon saisissantune époque charnière et la formation d''une jeune artiste. Les séries de photos presque documentaires que Leibovitz publie dans Rolling Stone, où elle commence à travailler alors qu''elle est encore étudiante, rendent compte d''événements politiques, culturels et contre-culturels aussi exaltants que les manifestations contre la guerre du Vietnam, le lancement d''Apollo 17, la campagne présidentielle de 1972, la démission de Richard Nixon en 1974 ou la tournée des Rolling Stones en 1975. A cette période, comme encore aujourd''hui, Leibovitz gagne la confiance des célébrités et des puissants, si bien que les pages du livre s''animent de visages connus, parmi lesquels Mohammed Ali, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ken Kesey, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Didion et Debbie Harry qui côtoient John Lennon et Yoko Ono, immortalisés dans une étreinte devenue iconique, quelques heures à peine avant l''assassinat de Lennon. D''un bout à l''autre du livre, portraits et reportages sont ponctués d''images de voitures, de ses trajets et même d''une série sur les patrouilleurs d''autoroutes en Californie. A bien des égards, il s''agit d''une célébration de la vie nomade, avec ses cadences effrénées, ses rencontres impromptues, ses fenêtres méditatives. Elles forment aussi des archives précieuses témoignant d''une époque révolue et montrant la maturation d''une jeune photographe au sein d''une culture elle-même en transition.

Présente une rétrospective sociale de la cigarette au cours du XXe siècle : sa naissance, son apogée, sa chute. Alors que pendant des décennies, fumer correspondait à une attitude chic adoptée par les stars et que la cigarette était associée à la liberté, son usage est aujourd''hui considéré comme une provocation, voire une agression.

Este libro no trata sobre la historia canónica de Nueva York. No hay inmigrantes pobres que dan la vuelta a su fortuna, ni filántropos dadivosos inaugurando hospitales, ni bardos que gloriquen sus rascacielos. Este libro es más bien un desfile de rufianes —en bandas callejeras, en partidos políticos o en uniforme de policía— y de desheredados —quienes quedaron en la cara oculta del progreso por convicción o porque no les quedó otra—. Y también es un libro sobre los callejones y las casas de vecindad por las que arrastraron su vida y se divirtieron desde 1840 a 1919. Una compilación de los mitos sobre los que se asienta el reverso sombrío del Nueva York actual. RESEÑAS DE PRENSA «Luc Sante es uno de los comentaristas más incisivos de la cultura estadounidense actual», Eduardo Lago, en El País «Maravilloso [...] Una indagación inusual y libre de nostalgia sobre aquellos que empezaron abajo y no se movieron de ahí», Joe Queenan, en The Wall Street Journal. SOBRE EL AUTOR Luc Sante (EE.UU., 1954) es uno de los observadores más brillantes de la cultura contemporánea. Su prosa, delicada y tensa al mismo tiempo, apresa pequeñas escenas y nos devuelve un fresco completo de nuestra época, ya sea a través de libros viejos o de estrellas del hip-hop. No es extraño, pues, que The New Yorker dijera de él: “Es uno de los pocos maestros en vida de la lengua americana, y también un historiador y filósofo singular de la experiencia estadounidense”. Del mismo modo, su libro Mata a tus ídolos fue uno de los seleccionados por el director de cine Jim Jarmusch con motivo de los debates literarios que organizó en el Festival ATP de Nueva York. Ha escrito también Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Folk Photography, colabora frecuentemente con The New York Review of Books y enseña historia de la fotografía en el Bard College.

París, la ciudad de las paradojas ! París es la ciudad de la gastronomía delicada, de la alta costura y del alarde intelectual. Pero a la sombre de estos grandes hitos latía una ciudad fascinante: la de los pobres, los excluidos, los criminales, los inconformistas. En El populacho de París, Luc Sante repite la fascinante fórmula de Bajos fondos y nos ofrece un recorrido por esta segunda ciudad, que se lee en las piedras, en los ladrillos y en las leyendas de una ciudad arrasada, como pocas otras, por el desmemoriado progreso. Apoyándose en el testiomio de literatos —desde Balzac a Víctor Hugo—, pero también en el de truhanes, situacionistas y diletantes de todo pelaje, Luc Sante nos ofrece una profunda reflexión de las dinámicas urbanas y de clases. Decrubre una profunda reflexión de las dinámicas urbanas y de clases en París. EXTRACTO Después de la Primera Guerra Mundial, la lista de îlots insalubres aumentó de seis a diecisiete. Estos incluían las áreas de Belleville, La Villette, Picpus, Glacière, Plaisance y Les Épinettes (un barrio en el Decimoséptimo, al oeste de Montmartre y al sur de Clichy), al igual que buena parte de la zona más antigua del Quinto, un barrio que anteriormente se llamó Saint-Séverin y que comprendía los alrededores de Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, justo al otro lado del río, frente a Notre-Dame, y también una larga franja que más o menos correspondía al Continente Contrescarpe de los Letristas. Estos lugares tampoco habían escapado al ojo de Georges Cain. Consiguió acceder a una vieja casa en la Rue Maître-Albert (antes Rue Perdue, «calle perdida»), a media manzana del Sena. SOBRE EL AUTOR Luc Sante (EE.UU., 1954) es uno de los observadores más brillantes de la cultura contemporánea. Su prosa, delicada y tensa al mismo tiempo, apresa pequeñas escenas y nos devuelve un fresco completo de nuestra época, ya sea a través de libros viejos o de estrellas del hip-hop. No es extraño, pues, que The New Yorker dijera de él: “Es uno de los pocos maestros en vida de la lengua americana, y también un historiador y filósofo singular de la experiencia estadounidense”. Del mismo modo, su libro Mata a tus ídolos fue uno de los seleccionados por el director de cine Jim Jarmusch con motivo de los debates literarios que organizó en el Festival ATP de Nueva York. Ha escrito también Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Folk Photography, colabora frecuentemente con The New York Review of Books y enseña historia de la fotografía en el Bard College.

"Vik Muniz''s "Verso" is a group of three-dimensional trompe-l''oeils of the actual backs of such iconic works as Picasso''s Les Demoiselles d''Avignon, Van Gogh''s Starry Night and Seurat''s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte that, over a period of six years, Muniz photographed and systematically studied in partnership with the curatorial and conservation departments of MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as with a team of dedicated craftsman, artists, forgers and technicians. These disconcertingly faithful, 1:1 scale reproductions are the result of an inch-by-inch process that did not spare the slightest detail; every scratch, dent or scribble is physically reproduced to photographic precision. Authentic looking labels, worn-away tape, faded pencil notations and actual period hardware and carpentry make it hard even for an expert to disbelieve they are seeing the actual backs of these masterpieces." --Book Jacket.

Vanity Fair''s Oscar parties have become a legend of their own over the last decade. A summit of the greatest Hollywood stars, they are the ultimate melting pot of beauty, fame, glamour, and wealth. For ten years American photographer Larry Fink, famous for a keen, uniquely sensual documentary eye, has been the official interpretive Vanity Fair photographer of these events. His view of superstars and their entourages is in sharp contrast to everything we know and expect of official Hollywood. His look is clear and honestly searing; his flash light is married to the instant in devilishly expressive ways. His photographs capture the atmosphere of these meetings reminiscent of evenings at a royal court. With his sensual and intuitive eye, Larry Fink shows the celebrities of the glamorous movie world anxiously at leisure.

This book explores that tradition in depth through superb reproductions of 183 photographs from the outstanding collection of The Museum of Modern Art.

Fireflies Issue #5 pairs a living legend of French cinema with an artist yet to receive due recognition outside of her native Germany, despite being one of the country''s pre-eminent cineastes. The issue discusses, dismantles, reinterprets and creatively plays with their cinema, featuring insightful longform interviews with both directors, alongside 29 responses from critics, novelists, poets, filmmakers and visual artists who work with video, sound, photography and sculpture.