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Distributed for Hirmer Publishers

Poultry Suite

Photographs by Jean Pagliuso

Jean Pagliuso is a world-class fashion photographer whose photographs of fashion models and film stars from Susan Sarandon to Sophia Loren filled the pages of Vogue and Rolling Stone for nearly three decades. But for her most recent work, Pagliuso trained her lens on a much less conventional subject: the chicken. An homage to her childhood in Southern California, where she helped her father breed and show Bantam Cochins, Poultry Suite showcases more than twenty breeds of chickens—from Sebrights to Spangled Hamburgs—as they have never before been seen.  
           
Just as in conventional fashion photography, Pagliuso has applied her well-developed eye to creating interesting compositions while also bringing out each subject’s unique beauty and personality. In one photograph, a plump hen stares head-on at the camera through a mass of white feathers. In another, a proud red-combed rooster turns to peer curiously at the camera. Each portrait in Poultry Suite features a chicken arranged against a simple background, encouraging viewers to explore the animals’ anthropomorphic traits. The photographs are complemented by an accessible collection of texts.

Carefully designed by Shahid and Company, New York, and with reproductions of nearly fifty photographs, Poultry Suite impeccably applies the aesthetic excellence of fashion photography to form a true appreciation of the diversity of these birds.

112 pages | 45 halftones | 9 1/2 x 11 3/4 | © 2015

Art: Photography


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Reviews

“Leave it to an artist to transform a barnyard animal into a thing of beauté.”

Artforum, on the exhibition

“Believe me, these bird portraits are magnificent works of art. . . . Pagliuso, a former fashion and commercial portrait photographer, has an eye for the traits that are peculiar to each bird. . . . She has endowed her subjects with nobility.”

New York Times, on the exhibition

"Jean Pagliuso takes pictures of chickens. It’s a risky subject—to hear about it, you’d worry you were dealing with the same kitschy, quasi-ironic veneration of farm and fowl that animates many an Etsy shop—but there’s nothing decorative or trite about these portraits. . . .They’re chickens and owls, sure. But they’re . . . elegant. And in the time of 'Put a Bird on It!,' that’s a remarkable thing."

Paris Review

“Pagliuso’s latest series spotlights a wholly different, unexpected model: the chicken. Framing each fowl alone, she has captured these birds with remarkable, individual expression, inviting us to take a much closer look at the common species.”
 
“Portraits of animals are, of course, not novel, but rarely are they elevated, with such subtlety, to possess a natural nobleness.”

Pagliuso, Jean | Hyperallergic

Table of Contents

Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Epilogue
Plate List

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