CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/10/2016

Gus Van Sant: Icons

This 1991 photograph of River Phoenix is part of a series by Bruce Weber, shot to promote Gus Van Sant's haunting early masterpiece, My Own Private Idaho. Published that year in Interview magazine, the series is here reproduced from Gus Van Sant: Icons, Actes Sud's beautifully produced new monograph presenting Van Sant's photography, painting and music, filtered through the perspective of his films. Van Sant seeks to dissolve or infuse his world, Fréderic Bonaud of La Cinémathèque Française writes, "depending on his inclinations, experiences and opportunities. From this point of view, he adopts, with evident pleasure, all the casts-offs of the postmodern author, alternating between radical affirmation and deliberate—and feigned, of course—effacement."