Couples: PHOTOGRAPHS

by Arthur Shay

In the 120 photographs in Couples, Shay shows us couples in love - walking, talking, kissing, embracing, dining, arguing - as well as many other pairings, human and non-human, whose relationship he has skillfully crystallized in a single instant of interaction. Inanimate air vents and grain silos, as well as parents and children, siblings, friends, neighbors, famous actors and athletes, unknown passersby, dogs, and livestock. All these rub shoulders - so to speak - in the pages of Couples, sought out by Shay's keen eye and coupled forever by his impertinent camera.

Genres: Photography

156 pages, Hardcover

First published July 28, 2003

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Art Shay was born and grew up in NYC, but he lived most of his life in Chicago, where he produced dozens of books of photographs. His photographs were everywhere. He was a life-long friend of tough guy Chicago novelist Nelson Algren, whom he photographed a lot, and he produced books with Algren in mind: Nelson Algren's Chicago, Chicago's Nelson Algren. Shay took well-known pictures of one-time Algren lover feminist existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (nude and portrait) when she visited Chicago to be with Algren. Algren makes it into this book in a couple places, but it's not about Algren.

Shay had a reputation for photographing Chicago, but he also did a lot of books for kids. He was both an "art" photographer and a kind of working class, every-day photographer. He didn't seem to have a hierarchy of art, as in: these are pics of dogs, these are ones of flowers, so the flowers are better. In the last decade there have been retrospective collections of his work, Museum of Contemporary Art and Museum of Contemporary Photography shows. He's kind of legendary in photography, or especially as one thinks of particularly Chicago photography.

Here's some examples of his work, if you are at all interested, attractively presented:

http://www.artshay.com/galleries-1.html

Shay had been given advice on photography early on: 1+1+3. Make photographs where two things are going on, that lead you to think of a third thing. These photographs would have greater depth, more meaning. And the best of these photos in this collection are provocative, and make you think, in that fashion. It's the kind of juxtaposition that I think of in connections with imagistic poetry: You make an image (an urn), then another image (the curve of a woman's arm on a chair). You read those, you make these connections, you make something out of those images in tandem, you make meaning or significance out of the relations between those images.

The provocative and enticing cover photograph notwithstanding, this is not a book about sex. Shay's wife thought that title, Couples, would make people think it was a book about "coupling," which made him smile, but he left it as is, probably hoping to prey on what he knew to be people's interest in stuff like that. But to tell you the truth, sorry, it's mostly just a collection of photographs with two people in it, twins, couples, two dogs, and so on. I liked it, it's amusing and sometimes does that 1+1+3 thing, I thought 3.5 as a rating, but I liked Shay's Algren books better.

But the book I am trying to find is the one about his 70 year relationship to his wife, Florence. My Florence: A Seventy Year Love Story. Right?!

Here's five photographs from an exhibit of seventy Shay photos of his wife in an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Photography here in Chicago in October, 2014.:

http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2014/...

Don't you want to read/see that one, too!!?? You see those five photos and you know you want to read the whole thing, of course!! That's the one I am going to buy, finally, since my library system doesn't have it yet. Just ordered it, damn it! But the Couples book is good, too.