Arthur Elgort's Models Manual.

In the doling out of human gifts, one suspects, some were deemed best fitted for the pleasures of the flesh, others for the life of the mind. Since human nature is weak and abhors, above all, confusion, we find it convenient to group people in one or the other category. Traumatized by a prime example of either, we demand, like Ionesco, "God owes me an explanation!" and begin to interpret, clumsily reassuring ourselves, when jealous of a brilliant mind, that it has no chin, or when smitten by a perfect face that it converses like a container of bean curd. How fun, then, to see what philosophers look like and what models think (or at least say!).

In Philosophers, photographer Steve Pyke reveals to us that most absurd and uncanny substance, the body of the philosopher, in a collection of 80 portraits of "great minds," disproportionately heavy on the Brits, for this reader. Each mug is accompanied by a short comment, by each sitter, on philosophy. In such a wide inventory of faces (including several lady philosophers and philosophers of color) I was shocked not to find the visages of two of my favorite wise guys, Gilles Deleuze and Pierre Klossowski. Most of the shots are extreme close-ups, the better to see the wrinkles, liver spots, nose hairs, and enlarged pores developed, one begins to imagine, from engaging in years of speculative or analytic thought. While the extreme-close-up device may have been chosen to allow us to look "into" the eyes of these contemplative types--at best setting up a wonderful tension with photography as it reveals the profound superficiality of surfaces--the main effect of Pyke's portraiture is to encourage, of these great minds, a dermatological reception. Never before has one been able to examine the skin of so many leading thinkers.

Professor Susan Hurley, an Anna Magnani-ish rationalist with a lustrous-looking wavy bob, is the most attractive lady philosopher to this reviewer, her complexion exceptionally free of the ravages of thought, perhaps because in early middle age she's the closest thing to a philosophical waif-model, perhaps because the shot is slightly overexposed. In the august profile shot featuring several of the subjects, critical theorist Dr. Hans-Georg Gadamer looks out into a black void, his complexion like a moonscape with folds, crevasses, craters, and mysterious white dots dancing like little galaxies near lengthy ear-hairs. Jacques Derrida looks less dandyish than usual, his mouth scrunched up in mid sentence, as if collapsing a "binary," with a good-natured smile on his face. Emmanuel Levinas has no comment. Tzvetan Todorov looks the most wired, his eyes bugging out, his white hair standing erect like the outward sign of well exercised neurons. Professor Bernard Williams, an ethicist, and Professor Dorothy Emmet, a moralist, tie for the most remarkable wrinkles, their cheeks striated like magnificent aerial views of the Sahara. Shot starkly against black or white grounds, displayed like objects of visual curiosity vulnerably reduced to their materiality, these "great minds" seem lifted out of context, somehow denuded of the interpretative heft by which they derive their power. Evoking the existential numbness explored by Chuck Close, this book is a provocative example of the way photography can't help but alter its subject into photographic terms. All in all, a fine collection, the built-in poignancy of the topic more than compensating for the affectation of the photographer's quasi clinical style.

Arthur Elgort's Models Manual is misleadingly named: if you're looking for practical hints on how to pose and look fabulous, forget it. Crammed with the work of photographer and fabulosity maven Arthur Elgort, which graces leading fashion magazines like Vogue, it should have been called "lots of candid and posed pictures I took of models and a smattering of quotes by me, assorted handlers, and the girls, stretched thin, zapping the viewer with impossibly gorgeous people and assertive graphics." Mesmerized, I visually devoured it in one evening. According to Elgort himself, "It takes more than a pretty face to be a model. Sooner or later your hands, feet, even your ears, will enter into a photograph." His photos are wonderful. And whatever models say is fascinating to me: take this example of model humor--please!: "Q: Do you ever wake up in the morning and think you look like hell? A: All the time!" (Visual: million-dollar-a-day supermodels radiantly doubled over in hilarity.) Prime evidence of a pitiless, silent God, models are both just like us and they are special. Models' remarks confirm suspicions that we are in a random, self-contradicting universe animated by a capricious combination of free will and chaos: "There is no logic in this business. It can be frustrating--even if you do your homework and work hard there are no guarantees, you can have a perfect chin, perfect hair, a great smile--you can have it all and not do well. There's no formula," attests model Vera Cox. According to Elgort, "When I first saw her she . . . had her cowboy boots on. She's wise and provocative."

To glamour pusses just starting out, Christy Turlington offers sisterly encouragement: "You have the power to make your career go in any direction. Above all, have fun." Naomi Campbell provides a practical pointer: "The way to get covers sometimes is to ask for them. I asked for my first Vogue cover, the French one. I didn't used to but I saw Linda Evangelista asking for hers." On a page of thoughtful remarks by Veronica Webb, model slash journalist, they chose to boldface the lines "I'm over shoes. Now I collect CDs." Attentive weight-watchers can gather some informational crumbs: Helena Christensen reveals "I love New York because I love junk food." And Paulina comes out as a nonexerciser! As does Yasmin LeBon. The book is sandwiched with spreads on the Coke and Pepsi of fabulosity, opening with Linda and closing with Christy, who (by the way) got the cover. While Cindy Crawford crows of the book, "I love the behind-the-scenes feeling!" A "manual" it's not, but like a good binge reading of an extra-strength issue of your favorite fashion magazine, this lively book offers the voyeur tantalizing tidbits of our favorite glamour ciphers, but ultimately refuses to satisfy us--which is as it should be. According to the circumspect Linda, "I don't diet. I just don't eat as much as I'd like to." I was amused to read in a recent New Yorker that Arthur Elgort's Models Manual is preferred reading of the best-selling 13-year-old girl author aka "the Anne Frank of Sarajevo," who said that her bedroom in that war-torn city is covered with pictures of supermodels.

Rhonda Lieberman's column "Glamour Wounds' appears regularly in Artforum.