In Camera - Francis Bacon: Photography, Film and the Practice of Painting

An exploration of the interplay between photography and painting in the work of Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon famously found inspiration in photographs, film stills, and mass-media imagery. This book draws on a broad range of source images and documents, many hitherto unknown, to reveal how these media informed some of Bacon's most important paintings and helped to trigger significant turning points in his stylistic development. Martin Harrison locates Bacon's work in a tradition of artists making use of mechanical reproductions, including Picasso and Walter Sickert. Harrison also reviews Bacon's painting in the context of key influences: film directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge and John Deakin, and masters such as Velazquez, Poussin, and Rodin. In addition, Bacon's work is considered in the context of his contemporaries, including Lucian Freud, Mark Rothko, Graham Sutherland, and Patrick Heron.