Hollywood Royale, Out of school of Los Angeles

Isabella Rossellini, Bird, New York, 1988

Tom Waits, Bird, Los Angeles, 1986 

  Hollywood photographer Matthew Rolston has published several books of his work over the last few years. Now comes his latest production, Hollywood Royale : Out of the School of Los Angeles. This beautifully-produced 270-page coffee table book, from teNeues of Germany, is a retrospective of this influential artist’s work and centers on his editorial photography from the 1980s. Hollywood Royale includes Rolston’s portraits of some of the era’s most prominent pop stars, models, and icons, including Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington – the list goes on. One of the hallmarks of Rolston’s work in this period was a desire to break the norms of gender presentation and to represent, sometimes with a tongue-in - cheek approach, the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood.
The images are redolent with a perfume of the glamorous past.