A photobook dedicated to players throughout time who have tried their hand at the beloved cerebral game, featuring text penned by chess enthusiast and acclaimed author Martin Amis
This is a book for chess Grandmasters, novices and inquiring laymen alike. It is a book for anyone who has wondered, as Martin Amis wryly asks in his contributing text, What are they playing at?
Marcel Duchamps iconic quote, All chess players are artists, resonates throughout the volume. David Hockney likened the games strategic thinking to that of making art: Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make. Chess is war over the board, said Bobby Fischer, Grandmaster and World Chess Champion, but here John Lennon and Yoko Ono checkmate this notion, with their all-white chess peace set.
Chess Players: From Charlie Chaplin to Wu-Tang Clan compiles photographs of notable figures playing the beloved game of strategy over the course of 130 years. The volume strings together zany and remarkable moments in time. In one image, players are captured on board a steamship crossing the Atlantic in 1888; in another, an astronaut studies a board in space. And, as the title suggests, Hollywood celebrities frequent the books pages, playing chess on and off the screen: Humphrey Bogart deploys a Sicilian Defense against Lauren Bacall, while Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen plot their next gambit in the iconic chess seduction scene from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).
Featuring an introduction by Dylan Loeb McClain, former chess columnist for the New York Times, the photographs in Chess Players evince the enduring attraction of this cerebral game. The volume also features an interview with Viswanathan Anand, who is inarguably one of the greatest chess players in history.
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An incredible collection of images of chess players from the last 130 years, showcasing the unique relationship between chess and culture, featuring world famous actors, artists, politicians and musicians.
The book has been compiled and edited by Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell who have been publishing critically acclaimed books on design and architecture since 2004. They also published Masterworks: Rare and Beautiful Chess Sets of the World (2016).
Introduction and image captions written by Dylan Loeb McClain, former chess columnist for The New York Times, FIDE master.
Essay by Martin Amis (1949-2023), novelist, essayist, memoirist and screenwriter. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience (2000) and was twice listed for the Booker Prize.
Viswanathan Anand is unarguably one of the greatest chess players in history. Five times winner of the classical world championship as well as the rapid and blitz world championships, he was ranked no. 1 in the world for 21 months, remaining among the worlds top-10 players for more than 30 years an almost unmatched feat. These achievements have earned him some of Indias highest honours, including the Khel Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan awards. In a sports-mad nation of 1.4 billion people, he is among the countrys best-known figures.
