Carolyn Burke

This is an exhaustive biography, and I can totally understand why some readers would feel bogged down by it; a good editor could have pruned some of the content and eliminated the names of people who are only referred to a few times but who the reader has to look up in the index as a reminder when they recur many pages later. I do admire Carolyn Burke's dedication to painting a full portrait of Miller, a woman with a great lust for life who, like many women who participated on the frontlines of World War II, had difficulty adjusting to civilian life after the war ended. Miller was often overshadowed by her husband, Roland Penrose, and Burke doesn't shy away from probing into the reasons for that while also honoring the love they shared over several decades. And I like that Burke delves into Miller's passion for cooking, which sustained her throughout the postwar years and probably served as a form of therapy for what she had endured as one of the first war correspondents to photograph the liberation of the death camps (at one point, Miller had 2,000 cookbooks--I hope these were given to an archive!). Although Miller's subsequent disavowal of her past as a photographer and her difficulty with completing magazine assignments in the 1950s and '60s is a sad postscript to a freeform and inspiring career, Burke's careful writing illuminates the reasons for this and corrects the notion that Miller's postwar life and marriage to Penrose were complete repudiations of her promise.… (mehr)

Reading about those one admires can, at times, be dangerous to the pedestal you have placed them on. Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz have long been two of my favorite photographers, although to be honest, I frequently confuse their work, especially their depictions of New York. Georgia O'Keeffe is one of the brightest stars in America's artistic firmament. Rebecca Salsbury, the fourth member of the cast, was entirely unknown to me before reading Foursome, Carolyn Burke's account of the lives of the quartet. Burke's recounting of their work and lives together is engaging, warm, and works hard to look at each of the individual artist's perspective. But life is a messy adventure that is rarely concluded unmussed.

Paul Strand's embrace of communism, even after the world saw the Lenin, Stalin, Mao totalitarian waltz, is troubling and head-scratching but does not change the majesty of his work.

Dr. Phil might be willing to offer a diagnostic guess to the behavior of someone he has not met. I don't feel comfortable doing so, especially if that someone I've never met died before my parents graduated kindergarten. That being said, the life of Alfred Stieglitz could easily be an early snapshot of sex addiction. Although to be fair, he could be your garden variety, misogynistic cad.

But for me, the bloom has been slapped off the Georgia O'Keeffe flower by her own hand. After Alfred and Georgia were married, some of his family came for a summertime visit. One young girl skipped up excitedly and said hello to her, "Aunt Georgia." O'Keeffe slapped the child and told the girl, "Never call me "Aunt Georgia" again." Obviously, this doesn't change a single brilliant brushstroke of her work. However, it creates such darkness around her that her art becomes very hard to see.… (mehr)

Why this book? Saw it in passing on a new book shelf. And thought it would be good to know more than I did about O'Keefe. I discovered O'Keefe in my mid-twenties, when I started paying a bit of attention to art.

I learned quite a bit about these four people, as well as their relationships, although the writing kept me at a distance – it was writing about them, rather than writing that got in their heads, or humanized them. Perhaps a biography or examination of O'Keefe's and Steiglitz' letters to each other would do that, or not, depending on the writer.

The relationships among these four people were complicated; they both learned and grew from each other and hurt each other. Though the author never says why she chose to write this book, I think it would be difficult to get a full picture of each individual artist without being aware of and having some understanding of their relationships.… (mehr)

It was only recently that I discovered Edith Piaf and her songs. After listening to both Non, je ne regrette rien and La Vie en rose, I was hooked. I have since then bought a two CD collection of her songs, a picture, the movie based on her life, and this biography.

I enjoyed this book. I knew some of her life story, but I had no idea how passionate she was about singing and love. Though she didn't find any long lasting happiness with any man, her fans were always there for her.

I would recommend this book to anyone who's a fan of this extraordinary woman and anyone else who wants to know why Edith Piaf is considered one of the best singers of the 2oth century and understand why she is still fondly remembered in both her home country, France, and the rest of the world.… (mehr)