Review: 'David Bowie Treasures'

Ignorant critics have regularly accused David Bowie of being an artist of greater style than substance. Truth is, he is has both in spades. Mike Evans's David Bowie Treasures, has no aspirations of substance, but it pulls off the style pretty well. Like all books in the Treasures series, this slip-cased installment is light on biography, heavier on photos, and augmented with pockets containing removable reproductions of posters, concert adverts, tickets, and contracts. The interesting thing about Evans's book is that so many of the photos capture the primary artist with others famous people: Jagger, Dylan, Lennon, McCartney, Mercury, Townshend, Tina, Iggy, Lou, Bing. One almost gets the sense that the author (assuming he was the one who chose the photos) wasn't sure if his subject was a big enough star to carry the book on his own (obviously, he is). Nevertheless, we get some pretty neat shots, my favorite being one of Bowie and Liz Taylor, who looks like she just finished raiding his closet.