Total Records: Photography and the Art of the Album Cover

The art of the vinyl LP sleeve has long been a vital ingrediente in the iconography of the album, an many of the LP sleeves featured in "Total Records" are established emblems of the defining music of our time. What is less well-known is how particular photographers have contribuited to this visual iconography. We know the album covers, and we know the photographers... "Total Records" tells the story of how they came together.

Featuring more than four hundred illustrations, "Total Records" reveals the great portraits made to illustrate albums - Thelonious Monk by W. Eugene Smith, Miles Davis by Irving Penn, Patti Smith by Robert Mapplethorpe, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono by Annie Leibovitz. It uncovers the artistic collaborations across genres, including Grace Jones with Jean-Paul Goude, David Bowie with Mick Rock, U2 with Anton Corbijn, and the Rolling Stones with Robert Frank. It features how great photographs have been appropiated to give albums their identity - a photograph by Elliott Erwitt used by Led Zeppelin, Weegee by George Michael, and Emmet Gowin by Cat Power. It includes chapters about the contributions to the art of the album made by David Bailey, Lee Friedlander, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, and Andy Warhol, as well as Francis Wolff's legendary work with Blue Note and the radical art of the design group Hipgnosis.

A compendium of electrifying images and the albums they grace, "Total Records" was first published in France as the catalogue of a traveling exhibition, originally presented at Les Rencontres d'Arles.

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