Book of the Day: Tight Heads by Candy Clark
From the publisher: "After interviewing actress Candy Clark for his All Night Menu Questionnaire in 2022, writer Sam Sweet asked her for a Los Angeles memento to be posted with the piece—a keepsake of the city in the form of an object or image. Candy casually mentioned that she had some Polaroids she’d taken when she arrived in Hollywood. She promptly shared a set of 18 strikingly beautiful close-up photographs taken with her Polaroid SX-70 camera. The faces represented the major directors, actors, writers, and producers of 1970s American cinema. Beyond that, the photos reveal a wider circle of artists, writers, musicians, and singular characters from a golden time in Los Angeles. This discovery led to Tight Heads, a hardcover photo book with 78 images culled from her file cabinets, where they had sat unnoticed for 50 years. Looking back on the Polaroids evoked a range of memories from Candy; these remembrances are included in the book alongside her images. Taken as a whole, this collection offers a fresh and disarmingly intimate glimpse of 1970s Hollywood, a time that forever altered the movies. When it came to photography, Candy says she always liked the descriptive words 'tight heads,' which she first heard during her modeling years. It was a term for close-ups, but could just as easily be code for dear friendships or inflated egos; it might allude to secrets or resentments; or an overaccumulation of memories. It’s just right for a set of photos in which layered histories lie beneath a casual surface. When asked why she decided to start taking photos, she says, 'If Warhol could do it, why couldn’t I?' But Warhol’s Polaroids are glamorous mugshots—hard flash portraits of beautiful creatures of the night. Candy's images come from a world of car rides, living rooms, and backyards. Famous faces become softer and more intimate in her presence. Her photos offer a different kind of light." Tight Book of the Day!