NOVEMBER GIRL
Sam Haskins
Sam Haskins: NOVEMBER GIRL. New York: Madison Square Press, 1967. First American edition. Folio. Tan cloth stamped in black. 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 a short closed tear to rear panel and a couple of tiny nicks and very mild edgewear. Rear jacket panel lightly soiled. Interior unmarked and very clean. Book design by Sam Haskins. A very good or better copy in a very good 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.
November Girl explored a melancholic theme of heartbreak and technically advanced the use of montage first explored in Cowboy Kate. Creatively this work laid the foundations for the complex in-camera multiple-imagery work done mainly in colour after Sam moved to his Chelsea studio in London.
"November Girl is poetry in pictures. It is the elegy of a lovely girl's longing for the return of the lover who is dead, of her heart and soul bared in a vain attempt to recapture a love that is forever lost. November Girl casts a unique spell, for it achieves photographically an appeal that is universal and timeless"--from the jacket copy (really, I didn't make this up.)
"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.'