JH Engström: Sketch of Paris [Paperback]

For more than 20 years, Swedish photographer JH Engström (born 1969) has spent time living and working in Paris, a city that, like New York, has a long photographic pedigree; countless photographers have been inspired by its iconic architecture and busy streets. Sketch of Paris, however, is hardly a catalog of classic Parisian scenes, offering instead a raw yet lyrical portrayal of the artist’s misadventures, loves and random encounters in its streets, bars and artist lofts--an entirely personal Paris. Drawing more from Nan Goldin and Anders Peters than Atget or Henri Cartier-Bresson, Engström brings us on a gritty, no-holds-barred guided tour of life in his adopted city. The book brings together more than 250 color and black-and-white photographs--self-portraits, nudes, portraits of lovers, friends, strangers and the occasional street scene--all shot between 1991 and 2012, tracing a critical time during the development of the artist’s own voice and vision.Twenty years of photos taken in Paris and, thankfully, nary a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. Engstrom’s photos are more about the unseen Paris. Scary, tough, smoking-cigarettes-and-partying-hard Paris. This book is a sensory overload of full-bleed photos, mixing black and white with color effortlessly. It’s a diary of a life lived very, very . . . interestingly.SKETCH OF PARIS...offers a refreshingly diverse perspective on a well-trodden subject.Collected from the bars, streets, and homes Engström frequented, the end result is an intensely intimate, raw, and expressive document and portrait of past loves, adventures, and characters adrift in an ever-shifting cityscapeKitten heels, tattoos and telephone booths punctuate this edgy 1980s series, that dwells on the smallest of details rather than the grand tourist destinations. The results give an intimate view of the Parisian underbelly that makes us want to hop on a plane (and a time machine) immediately.A far cry frlc)