Between the Covers

Unbound. Gelatin silver portrait photograph. Measuring 8" x 10". Image size 4½" x 6½". Neatly and archivally mounted in 11" x 14" card mat. Signed by the photographer (“Cynthia Farah”) on the mount beneath the image. Fine. McCarthy is pictured from chest up with a surprisingly beatific smile. According to the website The McCarthyist, compiled by Umberto La Rocca, this is an unpublished portrait of McCarthy: “…taken in the second half of the 80s in El Paso by Cynthia Farah Haines, photographer, writer and Cormac McCarthy’s friend. It was not included in her book Literature and Landscape [1988] which collects 50 portraits of southwestern writers and was saved in the Cynthia Farah Photograph Collection Writers of the Southwest held at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.” Reportedly Farah didn’t publish the McCarthy image in her book because of her close friendship with him, and her awareness of his desire for privacy. Provenance on request.

Item #598493