Why am I passionate about this?
Photography has been a passion throughout my life. I remember so clearly my first experience of the dark room: the dim red light, the chemical smell of the developing solution, and a ghost-like image gradually coming into focus. In my novel I Stopped Time I wanted to pay tribute to the pioneers of photography, but would I be able to bring that same depth of clarity to the written word? It was an incredibly proud moment when one reviewer wrote, "This book voiced everything I’ve held inside of me as a photographer."
Jane's book list on pioneering and trailblazing photographers
Why did Jane love this book?
I loved the ambitious concept behind William Boyd’s novel. Take seventy-five ‘found photos’ and construct a life around them.
At the age of seventy, Amory Clay is reflecting on her long photographic career, which took her from London, where she photographed the smart set, to Berlin where she captured its nightlife. Like Lee Miller, Amory Clay transitioned from New York fashion shoots to photojournalism, reporting on war-torn Normandy, and, much later, in the Vietnam war. Now, she’s about to embark on a personal mission—to track down her daughter, Blythe.
Boyd seamlessly weaves fact with fiction. This was one of those books that had me Googling the names of characters, thinking that there must be two photographers I had overlooked, only to conclude that they were fictional. (I shan’t give the game away and tell you which!)
1 author picked Sweet Caress as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Amory Clay's first memory is of her father doing a handstand - but it is his absences that she chiefly remembers. Her Uncle Greville, a photographer, gives her both the affection she needs and a camera, which unleashes a passion that irrevocably shapes her future. She begins an apprenticeship with him in London, photographing socialites for magazines. But Amory is hungry for more and her search for life, love and artistic expression will take her to the demi-monde of 1920s Berlin, New York in the 1930s, the Blackshirt riots in London, and France during…