Chess coffee table books are as rare as hen’s teeth, so when one comes along it attracts the attention. Fred Lucas is one of the biggest names in chess photography, and this is a retrospective of his work over the first couple of decades of the twenty-first century. In his preface he explains the rationale behind his work: ‘…I think photos have the power to connect people across time and distance. Photos capture moments and emotions that transcend language and cultural barriers. They preserve memories and remind us of the beauty and diversity of our world.’
The photos are all black and white. Monochrome is more effective for capturing texture, light and shadow; moods, emotions and atmosphere. Where people are concerned, a skilled photographer can reveal the character of his/her subject, moving photography into the realms of fine art in a way that is harder to do with colour. All of these are evident in the examples in here.
The photos feature portraits, events (e.g. simuls), games, tournaments, and are both formal and informal. This is where the individual reader’s tastes come to the fore. If you’ve ever wandered round an art gallery you’ll know that what moves one person will leave another thinking ‘so what?’, and so it is with this collection. I was fairly unmoved by the photos of mass events, e.g. the Kasparov simul at Zürich Central Station in 2009. Yes, I can grasp the sense of occasion, the air of excitement, even Kasparov’s focus, but… it’s just him playing a lot of games. They don’t speak to me. Same goes for the two-page spread of the Calvia Olympiad. Yes, you get an idea of the scale of the event, but what I take from it is just a picture with a lot of people in it. I admit, that’s just me; you might be completely the opposite! Or maybe it’s just the philistine in me coming out.
On the other hand I lap up portraits, especially candid shots, and the book is full of wonderful examples. Alas, there are no page numbers, so I can’t direct you to the spot, but there are some particularly stunning images of Shirov, Radjabov, MVL, Korchnoi and Navara (so subtly posed as to be almost unrecognisable,* a truly fantastic example of the portrait photographer’s art). And in the paired double page spread of Kramnik and Topalov the players look less like top GMs than a couple of guys you wouldn’t want to be standing in a bus shelter with on a dark night.
(*Talking of unrecognisable, I would defy anyone to look at the first shot of Mamedyarov in here and recognise the player with his head in his hands.)
Two players feature most prominently – Giri and Carlsen, from their early years through to grandmasterhood, and Lucas succeeds brilliantly in capturing the evolution from boy to young man. That said, some of the posed shots of Carlsen struck me as a tad unnatural, so that I wasn’t sure what the image was trying to convey. The angry young man?
If I had to pick a favourite from the many wonderful images contained herein, I think I would plump for the one of Kramnik and Anand at Bilbao in 2010, a candid shot (it looks like one of the click-and-see-what-you-get variety) capturing the two great chess minds sharing a laugh. And an honourable mention for the young Nepo who could pass as a member of a boy band.
The big question is: is this a chess book or a photography book? The answer is it’s both. A photographer could get lost in studying and appreciating Lucas’s technique, while a chess player could simply enjoy seeing lots of big names quite probably as they’ve never been seen before.
Illuminating Chess is sumptuously produced on high-quality photographic paper, beautifully bound, and is a superb testament to the photographer’s craft, containing so much to savour about Lucas’s skill with a camera. It’s the sort of book you could dip into again and again. I loved it. Next time someone asks you what you’d like for Christmas or your birthday, point them in its direction.
Ian Marks
April 2025
