Text engl. - This work presents a wonderfully idiosyncratic and compelling collection of photographs assembled around a particular theme: in each image, the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured or the eyes firmly closed. The pictures present a catalog of anti-portraiture, characterized at first glance by what its subjects conceal, not by what the camera reveals. Amassed over the course of thirty years by New York collector W. M. Hunt, the collection includes works by masters such as Richard Avedon, Imogen Cunningham, William Klein, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Robert Frank as well as lesser-known artists and vernacular images. Hunt’s instinctive pursuit of striking images has resulted in a collection that manages to evoke a picture of humanity from birth to death, with all the associated nuances of memory, wit, eroticism, fear, grief, and horror. - More than three hundred and fifty intensely evocative and frequently surreal images are brilliantly sequenced in this volume—the cumulative effect is unnerving and riveting. Most critically, the images are drawn together by the narrative of the collector himself—a highly personal monologue that weaves throughout the book, in which Hunt offers his own perceptive responses to the images he has gathered over many years. The end result is a series of surprising epiphanies about how and why one collects. This volume is a must for anyone who collects or has considered putting together a collection of their own. - W. M. Hunt is a frequent lecturer on the art of collecting and an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts, New York. An earlier exhibition of his collection launched to critical acclaim at the Rencontres d’Arles Photographie in 2005 before traveling to the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, and FOAM, Amsterdam. William A. Ewing (introduction) is the former director of the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, and has curated a number of international exhibitions on the themes of the body and the face. He is the author of more than a dozen books on diverse aspects of photography.“ (Publisher’s text). - Nur Kurztitelaufnahme 06.2012.