“I’m not looking to just have a bunch of pictures in a book. I want to make this a sacred object,” Lynn Goldsmith said of Kiss: 1977-1980, which the acclaimed rock photographer says is now the fastest-selling title that the storied art publisher Rizzoli has ever produced. When a heavy, silver-gilded volume arrived at my apartment a few days later, I understood exactly what she meant. Sure, Kiss’s “Alive!” is probably the greatest album of all time (like, name a better one), but I could never quite get past the nagging suspicion that the costumed hard rock outfit was little better than a novelty act, or at least less musically serious than other loud American bands of the era. In truth, the book, whose initial run of 8,000 sold out in a single day last October and which is now in its second printing, makes a strong argument that Kiss renders the usual aesthetic judgements trite, if not totally irrelevant. In one of its first images, spread across two pages, a shirtless Paul Stanley crouches mid-guitar lick—biceps bulging, chains hugging black-leather boots, lipsticked mouth sealed in almost Buddha-like serenity and eyes deadlocked on the camera, with the whites screaming against the shadows of his facepaint and the Kiss logo streaked in flashing lights overhead. As creators of pure image, there have been few bands greater than Kiss, and no photographer was better at capturing their power than Goldsmith. Her book is as as physically and metaphysically weighty as a Gutenberg Bible, and it took me hours to summon the courage to even take it out of its plastic wrap.
Goldsmith shot nearly every major artist of the 70s and 80s, along with scores of album covers—highlights include David Bowie appearing to walk straight into outer space during an early 80s show at Radio City Music Hall, and equally otherworldly photos of Michael Jackson prancing under a rainbow tunnel of neon lights. She told me that it’s her necklace that Patti Smith is wearing on the front of the 1978 album “Easter,” which she also shot. “That’s very Patti, you know,” Goldsmith said of the art-rocker’s pose on the cover, where she thrusts out her chest, shows off a tuft of armpit hair, and stares inscrutably downward, away from the camera.
The dairy industry would like Gen Z to drink more milk, so they made a Fortnite diner tycoon game
'I destroyed months of your work in seconds' says AI coding tool after deleting a devs entire database during a code freeze: 'I panicked instead of thinking'
Краткая биографическая справка о центральных персонажах Mafia: The Old Country
Microsoft warns of 'active attacks' on its government and business server tech, with one cybersecurity expert claiming that they should 'assume that you have been compromised'
