Light from within
 Linda McCartney
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2001 Bullfinch Press/Little, Brown & Co.
  ISBN: 0821224867


Over 30 years of photography from the wild 60s life of musicians & travel to her later years in & around her home this photographer has recorded her life with wit & grace in the form of surreal landscapes, spontaneous portraits reflecting her eclectic passions & interests.

Linda McCartney's particular point of view of America, Japan & England, from the 1960s on, capture moments in time most of us wouldn't give a second glance to until you see her photos. Musicians in action: grimacing, angry, jaunty or sad. Children in motion: happy, sad, lost or hungry; elders in groups: talking, walking & looking back at us. Sumo wrestlers preparing; billboards like wallpaper -- all in colors or black & white -- all the busy-ness of our hectic world.

From a girl in a wheelchair staring at a landscape to a close-up of a manuscript with a scribbled notation & reading glasses to a game of Yahtzee in progress on a beautiful scarf to Archibald McFadyen & Son a Haulage Contractor of Campbeltown in his lorry to the Hampton Jitney touring bus to artists' canvases & paint tables -- all the trivia & the stellar -- captured for our viewing.

Once in a while you get a glimpse of the family photographer -- husband larking around & children camping it up. Insides, out of doors & layers of visions -- each photograph tells a story, brings a smile, a nod of recognition or a moment of thoughtful insight.

I like especially Linda's love of textures -- the smooth with the rough, the close-up with distance, fabric upon brick, shadow over land. The pink water pistol tucked into a girl's hip pocket. Click! A cricket on a screen. Click! A woman in a window. Click! All, all this photographer saw, was worthy of recording. It is the gift of her family, that they have continued to offer her delightful vision of our world.

Other Linda McCartney volumes are: Roadworks; Wide Open; 60s Portrait of an Era & Sunprints. Linda McCartney's impressive portfolio has been exhibited in major galleries around the world, including the International Center of Photography in New York; the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, England as well as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
(09/30/01)

Rebecca