Pictures I Had to Take - Hardcover

Joel Grey is best known for his Academy and Tony Award-winning performances as the emcee in Cabaret. He also received The Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his portrayal of Amos Hart in the Broadway revival of "Chicago." Grey has garnered numerous awards for his bravura work in theatre, film, television, and concerts, from his Tony-nominated work in the musicals "George M" and "Goodtime Charley and the Grand Tour" to his Emmy-nominated appearance in the TV series "Brooklyn Bridge." His film credits include Dancer In The Dark, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, and Kafka, among many others. Grey lives and works in New York and Los Angeles. Duane Michals (Introduction) has published more than twenty books, including Eros and Thantos (Twin Palms, 1992), Salute, Walk Whitman (Twin Palms, 1996), and Questions Without Answers (Twin Palms, 2001). He lives in New York City.

"For as long as I can remember, I have loved taking photographs," recalls the Tony and Academy award-winning actor Grey. A few years ago, friends encouraged him to take a second look at photographs that he had taken over 25 years of travel and unceremoniously assembled in shoeboxes. The resulting collection reveals an unabashed enthusiasm for the picturesque (wizened peasant faces, gaudy religious shrines, busy market places), the rustic (jumbled junk heaps, weather-beaten wood) the quirky (laughing drag queens, listless sidewalk musicians), the recognizable (Venice, Machu Picchu, the Statue of Liberty), and cats. In a short post-script, Grey rhapsodizes about the spontaneous pleasure of photography: "I never considered a tripod, zoom, or light meter." Except for a delight in brilliant colors (a yellow and blue school bus in Mexico, flashy red dresses in Tahitian shop windows), Grey's indifference to technique and formalism is evident. His images are unconstrained by attention to composition, light and shadow, or even focus. Nor do they celebrate what Henri Cartier-Bresson-the ultimate sharp-shooter-calls "the decisive moment"; for snapshots, these photos are quite static. In his introduction to the book, photographer Duane Michals (Questions Without Answers) describes acting and picture-taking as shamanism. And indeed there is something mysterious about Grey's work; his "private act" of photography reveals memories and emotions perhaps visible primarily to him. 72 full-color photographs.
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