Taschenista
I’m crazy about books. I love their feel, their promise to carry me to the next big adventure. We ski in Aspen each February. While the rest of my family takes on the back bowls of Ajax, I’m off to the Explore Bookstore on Main Street to contemplate their incredible selection, and to ponder how they can fit so many books into so compact a space.
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So, we’ve established that books move me. And stunning books that take on unusual subjects really move me, which explains my obsession with Taschen, the iconic publisher of elegantly designed innovative books on art, anthropology, design and photography. Whether it’s Helmut Newton’s SUMO, a 480 page tribute to this influential photographer’s body of work, or Leroy Grannis’ Surf Photography of the 1960s and 1970s, which invariably leaves me singing Help Me Rhonda, Taschen entertains, enlightens, and challenges.
The new Dennis Hopper book, Photographs, 1961-1967, is my current fave. 
It’s not cool enough that Dennis Hopper is Dennis Hopper – you know, Easy Rider, Blue Velvet, Apocalypse Now, Rumble Fish and Hoosiers, to list some of his credits. But he also took his camera with him wherever he went — on film sets and locations, at parties, in bars and galleries, driving on freeways and walking on political marches as he moved through the 1960s. Photographing Tina Turner, Andy Warhol, Paul Newman and Martin Luther King, plus other writers, pop artists and sometimes even complete strangers, he captured the essence of the period. This stunning book, which comes numbered and signed, will definitely command attention on any table. You’ve got my word for it.
Hirshleifers ETC offers a unique selection of Taschen publications on photography, fashion and destinations. Adventure awaits!
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