Story about author photos in the NY Times

easyrider

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"I decided that I wanted to pose like a man. I also thought: No wonder books by women don’t get reviewed as often as those by men. Maybe it was the poses."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/how-to-pose-like-a-man.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

Entertaining read but methinks too much is made of the issue. Most author photos are slightly larger than a postage stamp on hard cover books although some are used for publicity. Thoughts?

My own collection of author photos is a mixed bag:
http://torontophotog.smugmug.com/Other/Portraits/12964169_XrjNxD#!i=4101121585&k=xMNc5hC
 
Marion Ettlinger shot my wife years ago; she's a great lady. Shoots with a Pentax 35mm SLR, I don't recall which one. I had to wheel our then-infant around Chelsea during the session, stopping back occasionally so that Rhian could nurse the baby and I could accept the scotch Marion was offering. This is my favorite from that session:

Corbis-OUT031530.jpg


For what it's worth, an author photo does make a difference and is quite complicated for women. Women writers, in America, are treated very differently from men.

I photograph a lot of writers and did R's last author photo, which is certainly not as good as Marion's, but was fun to take:

P1000219 by J. Robert Lennon, on Flickr

I recommend Ettlinger's book Author Photo, which Rhian is in and which is a really nice gloss on her distinctive style of portraiture.
 
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