A Hundred Years of Sail
99: The Harvill Press, 1996. Hardcover. Text in English. The back cover has a scratch that has gone through the dust jacket.
Frank Beken sold his first picture when he was fourteen in 1894. He learned his trade from his father Alfred. All he knew he taught his son Keith. The great firm of Beken of Cowes is, a hundred years after Alfred Beken started taking pictures of sailing ships in the Solent, under the guiding hand of Keith's son Kenneth. It is a remarkable family, with a record that is unique in the annals of British photography of whose finest work this book is a celebration and to whom it is a tribute. In his Introduction Hammond Innes writes: "This is a sailing man's dream of a book mine anyway. And not just because it spans a hundred years of the finest in racing yachts. Artistically it is unique, a photographic collection that has no equal." Keith and Kenneth Beken have chosen these photographs from an archive of black and white plates and prints that numbers more than 75,000. Keith Beken has written the detailed captions to the photographs and Kenneth an appendix on the tools of their
trade.
The publishers have had it as their aim to create the finest book on sailing ships that it is possible in this age to create. If they have in any measure succeeded it is due to a combination of artistic genius and technical accomplishment that passed from one generation to the next and to the next. The evidence of both is plain, and the deep love of all manner of sailing ships and of the sea will be shared by sailing folk the world over. Near Fine / Near Fine. Item #3961
ISBN: 1860462537
Price: $40.00