Tom Waits by Matt Mahurin: Portraits

by Matt Mahurin, Tom Waits (Foreword by)

Overview

A collection of wildly inventive portraits of musician Tom Waits, the result of a 30-year collaboration with photographer and illustrator Matt Mahurin.

This visually arresting book is a testament to the unique collaboration, going back three decades, between the photographer and illustrator Matt Mahurin and the musician Tom Waits.

Having shot magazine portraits, album covers, and music videos of Waits, Mahurin was inspired to resurrect 100 dormant film negatives as a jumping off point to explore his own surreal, poetic, and occasion­ally dark vision. The images vary from traditional por­traits to ones that capture Waits in concert—but the majority are richly imagined scenes in which Waits is more muse than musician.

In addition to the diverse images, Tom Waits by Matt Mahurin includes a foreword by Waits, an essay by Mahurin on their longtime collaboration, and 20 original paintings, drawings, photographs, and digital images inspired by Waits’s song titles.

“At once mysterious and revealing, photographer Matt Mahurin’s Tom Waits is an evocative visual tribute to one of rock’s visionary eccentrics.” —Rolling Stone

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781419739095
Publisher:	Abrams
Publication date:	10/29/2019
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	633,069
Product dimensions:	11.90(w) x 11.80(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Matt Mahurin’s work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times. He has directed music videos for Waits, U2, Metallica, Sting, David Byrne, Lou Reed, and Joni Mitchell. He lives in California.


Tom Waits is an American singer-songwriter, musician, composer, and actor. He has won multiple Grammy Awards and was nominated for an Academy Award for the original score for One from the Heart. In 2016, he received the PEN Literary Award for Song Lyrics.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/09/2019

Mahurin has been photographing musician Tom Waits for more than 35 years, and in this superb collection, he displays his previously unpublished illustrations, paintings, and photographs of Waits. Fans will recognize the black-and-white image of a lumbering Waits with a hat in his hands that adorned the cover of Mule Variations, as well as his images of Waits in his trademark sport coat and fedora. Mahurin intersperses throughout illustrated interpretations of songs such as “Filipino Box Spring Hog,” depicted by an inferno-red painting of a man basting a hog in a fire pit, and “Martha” (a black-and-white drawing of a table set with two coffee cups and roses circling above). Photos capture a contemplative Waits leaning back in his chair with a manual typewriter at his desk; a maniacal, cigar-chomping Waits with an eye patch brandishing a sword; and Waits cracking a whip in a moving horse carriage. The book appropriately concludes with two images: a color shot of a grinning Waits behind the wheel of a car driving off, and a black-and-white photo of him at the piano, head bowed as if he’s finishing a song. This is an absolute must for Waits fans. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"At once mysterious and revealing, photographer Matt Mahurin’s Tom Waits is an evocative visual tribute to one of rock’s visionary eccentrics."

Rolling Stone

"At once mysterious and revealing, photographer Matt Mahurin’s Tom Waits is an evocative visual tribute to one of rock’s visionary eccentrics."—Rolling Stone

From the Publisher