📖 Total Records. Photography and the Art of the Album Cover

The history of photography is teeming with portraits of musicians made iconic through their use on album covers: Thelonious Monk by W. Eugene Smith; Miles Davis by Irving Penn; Grace Jones by Jean Paul Goode; Laurie Anderson by Robert Mapplethorpe. This history of album cover art also includes collaborations between prominent figures, such as Mick Rock and David Bowie; Annie Leibovitz and John Lennon; Lee Friedlander and John Coltrane; Nobuyoshi Araki and Bjork; Anton Corbijn and U2; Robert Frank with the Rolling Stones; not to mention Francis Wolff's legendary work with Blue Note, the record label he co-founded. Musicians and designers have also sifted through photography's rich history for powerful photographs to match and keep company with the music enclosed within: Anders Peterson's classic Cafe Leibnitz portrait of a man nestled into a partner, stands in for Tom Waits on the cover of Swordfish Trombones; Big Star and Alex Chilton push the listener into a corner with William Eggleston's Red Ceiling on their album Radio City; Rage Against the Machine goes for the jugular with the anonymous Vietnam War photo of the self- immolation of a Buddhist monk. Iconic images like the Abbey Road crosswalk are deeply inscribed in our collective memory, but we know few details about the photographer of the image. All of these and more are included in this compendium of electrifying images and the albums they grace. Total Records reveals the artists behind some of the most striking images on vinyl sleeves and takes us on a journey through the cultural history of the twentieth century. Includes record albums featuring images by David Bailey, Guy Bourdin, Anton Corbijn, Roy DeCarava, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Luigi Ghirri, John Paul Goode, Brian Griffin, William Klein, David LaChapelle, Danny Lyon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Ryan McGinley, Helmut Newton, Martin Parr, Anders Peterson, Pierre et Gilles, Hiro, Cindy Sherman, W. Eugene Smith, Pennie Smith, Jurgen Teller, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol, Albert Watson, William Wegman, and more.