COWBOY KATE & OTHER STORIES
Sam Haskins
Sam Haskins: COWBOY KATE & OTHER STORIES. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1965. First American edition. Folio. Green cloth titled in brown. Photo illustrated dust jacket. Unpaginated. Numerous full-page black-and-white reproductions. Printed in Switzerland. Top cloth edge and textblock lightly discolored and spotted. Unclipped jacket with very mild edgewear. Interior unmarked and very clean. Book design by Sam Haskins. A very good or better copy in a very good or beter dust jacket. Uncommon in this condition.
11 x 14 hardcover book fully illustrated with full-page black-and-white reproductions These are the kind of photos that make you wish for a pre-Photoshop world. Sigh. Photographs and foreword by Sam Haskins. Introduction by Norman Hall. Synopsis by Desmond Skirrow.
Cowboy Kate became one of the style defining books of the sixties and remains to this day one of the most important black and white books of post war creative photography. Jonathan Heaf, writing as Senior Commissioning Editor at GQ Magazine said about Cowboy Kate “. . . one of the most recognisable and most referenced photographic books ever published — every art director’s shelf looks empty without it.” Cowboy Kate won the prestigious Prix Nadar and went on to sell roughly a million copies worldwide. ‘Kate’ as the book is referred to, saw the first use of pure visual narrative in a creative photography book and was also the first to use (highly manipulated) grain as a conscious creative element in print making.
Cowboy Kate won the Prix Nadar in France in 1964 and was included in the 'The Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present' Exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York in 2005.
Writing in 1964 Norman Hall said of this book: The main story is a sort of allegory with a theme as old as the folklore of humanity. Nostalgically, it guys the props, the conventions and sentimentality of vintage "Westerns" but the point it makes is the triumph of beauty - young and wholesome, innocent beauty. Technically, the telling has more in common with a slick ballet sequence from a well directed film than with the conventional picture story. It flows and it tingles. It has continuity and superb presentation. It is made up of an agreeable mixture of fun and hyperbole, extravagance and restraint. Nothing is just plain statement, so that the reader has the pleasure of exercising his own powers of interpretation. Spiritually, it is a song of praise for the loveliness of woman and it has a lyrical fragrance which harks back to Spencer or Ben Jonson. It has a pervading sense of fun."
"As photographer Nick Knight noted, 'Haskins' work is often referenced because it offers an untroubled vision of life. There's a joie de vivre, a sexiness and hipness, that designers and photographers are always looking to tap into.' Often copied but rarely equaled, Haskins has an exceptional ability to photograph women with a sensitivity that has won him accolades from men and women alike."
From "Sam Haskins: A Photo Essay" posted by Thessaly La Force (September 25, 2009), New Yorker Books Department: "In 1962, the South African photographer Sam Haskins published a book called “Five Girls,” a study in black and white of the nude female form. Three years later, he published “Cowboy Kate,” an adventurous photo essay of a model, her hat, and the Wild West. Both are iconic representations of the sixties (“Cowboy Kate” went on to sell over a million copies), capturing the era’s sexual freedom and independence. They also launched Haskins’s career as a commercial and fashion photographer."
"Andreas Feininger, writing in the photography journal 'Infinity' in 1963, noted that 'Haskins is fully aware of the importance of face and expression upon the effect of a nude and shows the faces of his models. Whether smiling quietly, laughing in exuberant joie de vivre or seriously looking into space, they appear completely unconscious of their nudity. It seems to me it is precisely this frankness -- those large clear eyes candidly looking at me -- that gives Haskins nudes and semi-nudes their bewitching quality, that indescribable mixture of sheer physical beauty a sensuality and honesty which, no matter how provocative their apparel or pose, makes these girls appear as natural and as much part of the universe, as a tree of the sea or the sky.'