Unlike a lot of solo artists, Kate Bush never really had to
go it alone because she always had a very strong and involved support system in
her family. Her brother, John Carder Bush, was a particularly powerful
presence, both writing and reciting the rap in her awesome “Jig of Life” and
shooting the photos that appear on her album covers, promote her work, and most
fascinating of all, catch her at her most casual moments. Much of the latter
surely appeared in Cathy, an
anthology of images of Kate Bush before her unusually early fame. Her brother
is now following up on that volume with Kate: Inside the Rainbow,
which captures the artist in her star years (though a few choice shots of his
subject as a girl are thrown in to stoke the interest of anyone who hasn’t
looked at volume one). Some of pop’s most iconic photo sessions are present
between this book’s pages, but it’s the ones that reveal the woman within the
star that are the most captivating. Seeing Kate Bush without makeup or big
hair, grinning naturally, rubbing her eyes, and cuddling with two huge dogs
makes me wish that such a disarming shot appeared on the cover of Hounds of Love. While Bush has a
penchant for mugging like a mime on stage and in videos, we see her dropping
her jaw for a very candid, utterly natural, and completely disarming "Ha!" on page 40. Bush’s more glamorous
and staged shots are in here too, and let’s not dance around the plain truth
that she is a gorgeous woman and looks great in these pictures as well. But
it’s the ones that didn’t appear on LP sleeves or press releases that make this
book really worth owning.
John Carder Bush’s text is pretty great too, as he reveals
his poetic gifts without coming off as a pretentious jackass. His biography of
his sister is not as extensive as others, but it does come with an insider’s invaluable
insight, and his description of his work methods will interest fellow
photographers. Amazingly, Carder Bush doesn’t consider himself a professional
photographer, even though his work has been used in ways that would make most
pros immolate with envy.
My only knock against Inside the Rainbow
is that it’s a lovely, big book with big pages, and too often the images are
shrunk down in the middle of huge frames of useless whiteness. I realize that
this is a pretty standard design decision, but what’s the point of having this
book’s impressive size and Carder Bush’s impressive images if you aren’t going
to take full advantage of both? Photo books as nice as this one deserve a new
standard.
