Masquerade
by Saul Steinberg and Inge Morath

After looking at Inge Morath's pictures from The Road to Reno, I started googling for more Inge. Her name was familiar but her work wasn't. The few pictures online from The Road to Reno whetted my appetite. Ordering the book from my library wasn't enough. I wanted more. Now! So I started googling and pretty soon I ran across the picture that's on the book cover, above, attributed to Inge Morath. Then two associations flashed quickly into my mind. The lady in the leapard coat with the paper bag over her head with the Saul Steinberg mask drawn on it was on the cover of a book that was on my desk buried in a pile of other books, read and ready to post in this blog as well as some unread, that had recently surfaced in a recent cleaning frenzy. The second association was one of the pictures Alec Soth had in his post on The Road to Reno:

That's Inge Morath with her husband Arthur Miller. I'm a huge Saul Steinberg fan and I had purchased this book some time ago but hadn't really gone through it. After all it's a small book and it isn't really very thick. I passed it over for weightier and far more important books. [Irony alert.] At this point I didn't know who had taken the pictures for the book but it was obvious that Inge Morath had something to do with the book since it was obvious she was on the cover. I retrieved the book from the pile and, lo and behold!, all the photographs were taken by Inge. From Amazon:

Photographer Inge Morath and the late New Yorker artist Saul Steinberg engaged in a unique collaboration in the late 1950s and early 1960s by having friends and acquaintances don paper bags drawn with fantastic faces and then posing them for photographs. In a delightful series of individual and group portraits--now published together for the first time--otherwise respectable people have been implicated in their mischief. Morath's straightforward, reportorial style is the perfect counterpoint to Steinberg's charming, whimsical masks. The deadpan of the photography, the Paul Klee-like humor of the drawing, and the intriguing anonymity of the figures--we don't know who they are, but we know exactly who they are--stir a spirit of mischievious charm that will make this the perfect little gift book.

Saul and Inge had way too much fun making these pictures. The tall guy in the book is Inge's husband, Arthur Miller. The paper bag masks are works of art and they are what first attracted me to this book but, now that I've looked carefully at it, the photographs are totally amazing. Absolutely fun and absolutely...something else. Overnight this book has become one of my most treasured. Who knew?

I bought it at an online remaindered book store, Daedalus Books & Music, and it seems to be out of print but there are lots of used ones at great prices. Do yourself a big favor. Buy it. You won't regret it.

Here are some pictures to whet your appetite.