Glitterati

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       January 21, 2018

 

Author  Robert Rosen

Distributor:      New Holland Publishers
ISBN:                 9781742579368
Publisher:         New Holland Publishers
Release Date:   September 2017  

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What happens when you decided you have a talent for art, your teacher tells you, you really don’t have all that much talent as a painter and try taking up photography: you become famous, that’s what!

Such was the story of Robert Rosen’s journey into becoming one of the top, if not the top photographer of the rich and famous, the people at the top of society from all walks of what is termed these days, as the ‘A’ List.

Over his lifetime as photographer Rosen has built up an enviable reputation for his non-invasive manner of working, while managing to get the ‘shot’ of moment, but behind the flamboyance, the hyper and the eventual fame, there was years and years of hard work, refining and experimenting with his camera and grabbing any and every opportunity to photograph people. As an unsophisticated boy from Melbourne discovering the magic of photography in 1964, to a sophisticated and renowned photographer, was something he never envisaged when he took his first photograph.

Never ever giving up on his dreams saw him finding his way about the world, sometimes on an offer of accommodation from a friend, other times simply because he was offered an opportunity to take pictures. Through a wide and diverse network of friends and acquaintances he was introduced to the people who mattered and gave him entre into the world of glitter he craved.

The paparazzi world was beckoning on the streets of London and he was asked to be the social photographer for the Avant Guarde magazine followed by the Ritz Newspaper and so it began.

In this absolutely glamourous collection of his work, selected by Rosen, he presents his story through words and pictures of the beautiful people over the past 50 years he has had the privilege to work with and photograph, in some cases many times over.

From Presidents and Prime Ministers to rock stars, models and movie star, along with, in the early years the people whom he shared digs with, Rosen has capture them for all times, with his remarkable and subtle talent of being able to make them all look beyond beautiful.

The illusive androgynous Grace Jones, Paul  and Linda McCartney, Joan Collins and hundreds more along with the catwalks of Paris, Rome, London and Australia have all been presented in Glitterati as a representation of a life well lived, by a man who never ever gave up following his dream.

More than a coffee table book, this could rate as a work that should be considered by followers of fashion, photographers beginning their journey in life and anyone who has a keen eye for all the very little and big beautiful things that do, definitely add that little bit of glamour to what would otherwise be a rather dull and often times, ordinary life.