What do you think of when I say “coffee table book”? An oversized collection of Georgia O’Keefe’s dirty-old-lady paintings or maybe a limited-edition pop-up of Frank Lloyd Wright’s horrendous habitations? Yeah, so do I.
Sadly, coffee table books have become synonymous with pretension; it’s a quick and sad way to make people think you’re a high-cultured member of the literati, probably even more successfully than sitting in a coffeehouse reading Balzac. I say be honest with yourself and about what your tastes are. What’s on my coffee table? Things that reflect what I like: TRASH: THE GRAPHIC GENIUS OF XPLOITATION MOVIE POSTERS and now LUCHA LIBRE: MASKED SUPERSTARS OF MEXICAN WRESTLING, a collection of astoundingly beautiful photographs by legendary Mexican wrestlers photographer Lourdes Grobet.
Running counter to the typical Sports Illustrated action shots Americans are used to, her pics went way beyond the outside spectacle of the sport and into the worlds of the superstars themselves, creating a line between real emotion and pure kitsch. See Santo relaxing behind the scenes of one of his films, bloodied luchadoras fighting tears after a loss, Solar at home with his family and fan-pics galore. Grobet’s photos are real works of outré art that should be hanging in a museum, as well as a brilliant testament to the power and fury of this much-mythologized but barely known sport.
So throw out that big book of Life Magazine photos. Who needs another picture of a toddler JFK Jr. saluting his dad when you can have pics of Fray Tormenta, the Luchador Priest, leading mass and jumping off the ropes? –Louis Fowler
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