Conville & Walsh

Francis Bacon famously found inspiration in photographs, film-stills and mass-media imagery. BACON – IN CAMERA, a bravura accomplishment of original research, reveals how these new media informed some of Bacon’s most important paintings and triggered decisive turning points in his stylistic development.

Martin Harrison, who was granted privileged and unparalleled access to unpublished material from the archives, provides a new understanding of the thought processes and working methods of the creator of one of the most compelling bodies of work in twentieth-century art. Bacon’s painting is considered in the context of key influences – whether film directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge and John Deakin, or masters such as Velázquez, Poussin and Picasso. His work is also reviewed in the context of his contemporaries, including Lucian Freud, Mark Rothko, Graham Sutherland and Patrick Heron. Throughout the book, sharp analysis leads to startling insights into this complex, tortured and hugely creative genius and into the unique iconography of his art.

With the aid of over 270 superb illustrations, including a broad range of source images and documents, many previously unknown, this is a book that addresses important questions about Bacon’s practice and that, in re-assessing key paintings, sheds new light on his life and work.