Portable light, lights for portraits?

I got that book from a mild mannered librarian. I posted about it without reading anything more than the title. I do not share their beliefs.

Ansel Adams called the author the anti christ.

That book was written by William Mortensen in 1938 apparently. The between wars years were a period when aesthetics took a very strange swerve, and people like Mortensen, Man Ray, Angus McBean and others influenced by the surrealist movement came to the fore. To my eye, most of the output of these photographers looks quite ludicrous, even childish, and in total conflict with the ability of the camera to capture reality 'as is'.

Having said that; Mortensen's (crude) analysis of what attracts us to certain pictures remains reasonably valid. Whether that analysis is used to aid the evil of all-pervasive advertising, or for more benign purposes, is down to the individual.