Publisher: International Center of Photography/D.A.P., ISBN: 9781636811178, Author: Simon Baker, Format: Hardback, 281 x 197 mm, 208pp
Through the myriad lens of intimate relationships, Love Songs brings together series dating from 1952 to 2022 by some of the leading photographers of our time that explore love, desire and intimacy in all their complex and contradictory ways. The book is conceived and organised in the fashion of mixtapes, music compilations exchanged between lovers. Among the major series reproduced here are Nobuyoshi Araki's Sentimental Journey (1969) and Winter Journey (1989-90), which present the beginning and end of the relationship with his wife Yoko, from their honeymoon to her death; Nan Goldin's seminal 1986 photobook The Ballad of Sexual Dependency; RongRong and inri's tender and poetical Polaroid series Personal Letters (2000); and Leigh Ledare's Double Bind (2010), a complex account of a love triangle between himself, his ex-wife and her new husband. These and the other series in Love Songs together make a portrait of love in all its mess, risk, complexity, sensuality and tenderness.