For ten years Irving Penn - one of the greatest fashion photographers of the post-war era - and Issey Miyake - probably the only designer of the century to take design into the realm of art - have shared an extraordinary collaborative relationship. 'Penn's photographs allow me to see my own designs, ' claims Miyake.
This book springs from Penn's huge regard for the Japanese designer -and his recognition that the photographs depict pure, timeless and sculptural designs, designs that run counter to all the eroticism displayed in fashion. The photographs are directly connected to Penn's celebrated ethnographical studies, just as the designs reflect Miyake's interest in a global culture. The collaboration has come to fruition at the end of the century, when the boundaries between East and West, so often challenged by Miyake, are finally being discarded.
The books' titles are taken from actual streets in Cairo, the city of Mahfouz's childhood and youth. The trilogy follows the life of the Cairene patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad and his family across three generations, from World War I to the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952.
As a literary subject, Christmas has inspired everything from intimate domestic dramas, to fanciful flights of the imagination, and the full range of its expression is represented in this wonderfully engaging collection. Goblins frolic in the graveyard of an early Dickens tale; a love-struck ghost disrupts a country estate in Elizabeth Bowen