John Stewart is a rare combination: an artist, an adventurer, a survivor
of a prison camp, a great photographer and a rambunctious, rollicking
prose writer. He's had marvelous, unlikely experiences everywhere from
the fashion salons of New York to the wildest mountains of Asia. The
soul presented in this book is like none you've ever met.--C. K.
Williams
In these shimmering analects, photographer John Stewart offers gleanings
of vivid experiences from more than ninety years of living. Though he
has discovered no avowed meaning to his life, Stewart finds moments
where he touched something here and there--where he experienced moments
of being awake.
Stewart shares his encounters with the famous and fascinating: drawing
with Henri Cartier-Bresson in the south of France; on the set of The
Bridge on the River Kwai in Sri Lanka; a comical meeting with John Cage
on the Williamsburg Bridge at midnight; Picasso at a café; Matisse in
his bedroom; Muhammad Ali; Isak Dinesen; Francis Poulenc; Diana
Vreeland. From these accounts of travels far and wide to a poignant
elegy for his son, Stewart's Flotsam is full of wit and tenderness.
Looking at John Stewart's pictures, what first comes to mind is the word
stillness . . . stillness is not immobility, nor calm. Within this
stillness there is the tension of time, a contained vibration.--Jonathan
Littell
John Stewart began his career in photography in the 1950s, having
previously served in the British army during WWII (including three years
in a Japanese POW camp). His photographs have appeared in Vogue,
Harper's Bazaar, Life, Esquire, and Fortune and in museums and
major collections around the world. He now lives and works in Paris and
Provence.
