Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers Paperback – 29 Aug. 2017

really really interesting info about some top photographers - terry richardson, bill king, steven meisel & bruce weber among others. my jaw literally dropped in places!

A great read. Really well-research and well-written.Nothing salacious about this book. (Contrary to the strap-line on the cover). The author knows his stuff and the book is full of the revealing anecdotes and stories that are so lacking in the many books spun out of fashion industry puffs. I had read several books about Avedon and Brodovitch, about Harper's and Vogue, and felt I was getting nowhere. This has been the one book from which I really learned a great deal.Not only is it full of psychological insight but it also brought into focus women I had not really paid much attention to ... such as Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Toni Frissell. I had come across their names before but it is only when you are offered real insight into their careers that they really come alive.

A very good read.

I threw this book into my travel kit before boarding a plane to Milan. I intended to snooze during the flight but started reading "FOCUS". I didn't sleep the whole trip. This is such an interesting book for me. I spent my career as a photojournalist and knew fashion photographers only by reputation. This book is filled with loads of information for any student of photography. There is information about how different photographers worked. I now know to credit Avedon's assistant, Gideon Lewin, for "light on a stick". Even more interesting are the behind the scenes rivalries of photographers and art directors. Michael Gross mentioned an Alexey Brodovitch Workshop Session that was taught by Irving Penn and Richard Avedon together. I never knew such a thing existed. Two masters going toe to toe. I just printed the 54 page transcript from the Penn archive at MOMA. What a treasure! This book is filled with many more gems. I'm rereading it now as a photo history book.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. When I lived in New York in the early 1970s, I met and befriended a couple of the photographers featured in Mr. Gross' story, so I had some previous knowledge regarding this less-than-glamorous side of the fashion world. I especially liked reading about Avedon; his larger-than-life ego and his insecurities. I actually admire him and his work even more after reading this book. What I like about Mr. Gross and his writing is that it is well-researched, and I consider his work "historical"---many of the names in this story are all but forgotten today---trendsetting artists such as Bill King and Chris von Waggenheim, to mention just two---I recommend this book to anyone who wonders just what went on at some of the fashion studios of the most well-known and innovative photographers, and how some of the most iconic fashion images of our time came to be.

Many great stories but not sure what Big Point the author wants to make.

This is required reading for anyone with a serious interest in the history of fashion photography, though at times it seemed to lean way too much towards gossip.For example, I don't know why Gilles Bensimon's penis is so prominent in this book.I'd have enjoyed more information on how these photographers worked and did business than their sex lives. Mr. Gross should have just put a list up front of the photographers that cheated on their wives (basically all of them except Helmut Newton), which would have left more space for 'real' information.But I still liked this book quite a bit, because what it gets right, it gets really right.In particular, I enjoyed the sections on Irving Penn. Mr. Penn was the King of Kings for 50 years, but there is very little information on him in the public sphere.Also, I liked reading about the business gamesmanship among photographers, magazine editors, and advertisers.Butt my biggest qualm with this book was the structure.At times, it felt more like a series of stories about individual photographers than a series history of fashion photography. It wasn't as cohesive as Model.But it's still worth buying if you're interested in the history of fashion photography, because it packs an awful lot of detail in about some of history's greatest photographers, including Richard Avedon, Bert Stern, Bruce Weber, and plenty of others.