Mary Allen Knihy

"Portrait Photography in Practice" is an updated and expanded version of Mary Allen's highly individual and successful book originally entitled "Portrait Photography: How and Why".Now re-designed and re-illustrated in the style of the "Photography in Practice" series, it provides a more direct demonstration of techniques than was possible in the earlier book.All good portraiture depends on the effective cooperation between two people. Mary Allen's book shows how the ability of any photographer to "see into" the subject can be greatly extended and developed, resulting in pictures that provide an insight into the character of the sitter - the essential property absent from so much portrait work.The author's honest approach to the psychology of portraiture and the problems of age, differences in complexion, handling child subjects and the scope and challenges of lighting effects are followed by a description of the process through to the printing and presentation stages, with advice based upon a lifetime's experience of photographing people.

Although this is billed as a memoir, a more accurate label might be spiritual autobiography . After Mary Allen's drug-addicted boyfriend, Jim, commits suicide, she enters the classic dark night of the soul, confronting the denials as well as the truths that existed prior to her beloved's suicide. A less courageous author might have stopped there, but Allen has the guts also to reveal her mental anguish and psychiatric institutionalization. She delved into the underworld of the afterlife, desperate for connection with her boyfriend's spirit. Although Allen does not dismiss the possibility of "Summerland," a spiritualist term for the afterlife, she stays grounded in her personal experience with contacting Jim's spirit, instead of making sweeping assertions about the hereafter. The effect is engrossing and at times laugh-aloud funny. Overall, Allen's narrative rings with dignity--clearly the voice of an accomplished, award-winning writer as well as a woman who has risen from the ashes of a lover's suicide and codependency (a cliché she skillfully avoids lingering over) to become a person who can finally love with ferocity and self-respect intact. --Gail Hudson