In Camera Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon famously found inspiration in photographs, film-stills and mass-media imagery. In Camera, a bravura accomplishment of original research, reveals how these new media informed some of Bacon’s most important paintings and triggered decisive turning-points in his stylistic development.

Martin Harrison, who was granted unparalleled access to unpublished material, provides a new understanding of the creator of one of the most compelling bodies of work in twentieth-century art. Bacon’s painting is considered in the context of key influences – film directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge and masters such as Velázquez and Picasso. His work is also reviewed in the context of his contemporaries, including Freud, Rothko and Sutherland.

Sharp analysis – chronological and thematic – leads to startling insights into this complex, tortured and hugely creative genius and into the unique iconography of his art.

With over 270 superb illustrations, including a broad range of source images and documents, many hitherto unknown, this is a book that addresses important questions about Bacon’s practice and sheds new light on his life and work.