108 Portraits - Gus Van Sant

VAN SANT, Gus.
108 Portraits.
First edition. Large 4to. 116pp with gravure portraits throughout. Black boards with gilt titles and dust wrapper. Santa Fe: Twin Palms, 1992.

This beautiful book brings together the reference photographs that Gus Van Sant experimented with during early auditions for “Drugstore Cowboy” and “My Own Private Idaho”. The Director says in his intro “The faces in this book were originally Polaroids used to cast the movies I have made… I took the pictures of the lead actors, so that when planning the details of the shoot I could stare at the pictures and imagine the characters coming to life, and how they might visually relate to one another.” Shot with minimal lighting and a simple frontal pose these photographs would become a full-fledged project and an iconic Who’s Who of the 20th Century. The incredible portraits gathered here include William S. Burroughs, David Byrne, Annie Leibovitz, Sophia Coppola, Keanu Reeves, Alan Ginsberg, John Waters, Dennis Hopper, Faye Dunaway, River Phoenix, Udo Kier, Steve Buscemi, David Bowie and many more.