Author Description

Beny, Roloff. A Time of Gods. A Photographer in the Wake of Odysseus. First Edition. London, Thames and Hudson, 1962. 4°. 272 pages. 132 photogravure plates and 16 band-tipped black and white plates. Original Hardcover with original dustjacket. Very good condition with only very minor signs of wear to the dustjacket. The volume itself in excellent condition. Roloff Beny, who is certainly one of the greatest and most imaginative photographers of our time, here transcends the minutiae of topographical and archaeological argument. Completely immersed in the mood of Homer's world, he evokes its gods and its heroes by showing us, in superb photographs, the Homeric background in the light of a contemporary odyssey still available to every traveller today Includes: Council of the Gods - Athena's Complaint / Telemachus and the Goddess / Telemachus to Pylos and Nestor / Telemachus to Sparta and Menelaus / Council of the gods - Odysseus and Calypso / Odysseus and the Phaeacian Princess / Odysseus at the Phaecaecian Court / Odysseus begins his Tale - the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclops / His Tale continued - Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, Circe / Book of the Dead / The Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis - Hyperions Flocks / Odysseus' Return to Ithaca / Telemachus' Return to Ithaca / Odysseus' Recognition and Conquest of the Suitors / Order Restored - Athena's Triumph / Notes on the Plates by John Lindsay Opie / Roloff Beny, OC (January 7, 1924 - March 16, 1984) was a Canadian photographer who spent the better part of his life in Rome and on his photographic travels throughout the world. Born Wilfred Roy Beny in Medicine Hat, Alberta, he later took as his first name Roloff, his mother's maiden name. Beny had a considerable reputation and exhibition record as the maker of progressive painting, drawing and printmaking in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He was recognized as one of the leading abstract artists of his day with works of t..