A new book from the University of Texas Press presents more than 200 images taken over 12 years on the set of director Richard Linklater’s critically acclaimed new film, Boyhood.
Boyhood: Twelve Years on Film features photos by Austin-based photographer Matt Lankes, along with commentary by Linklater, actors Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane and others to create a behind-the-scenes portrait of the film. Cathleen Sutherland, a University of Texas at Austin alumna and the film’s producer, also provides commentary.
In 2002, Linklater began filming the “Untitled 12-Year Project.” He cast four actors (Arquette, Hawke, Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater) in the role of a family and filmed them each year over the next dozen years. Seen through the eyes of a young boy in Texas, Boyhood unfolds as the charactersand actorsage and evolve, the boy growing from a soft-faced child into a young man on the brink of his adult life, finding himself as an artist.
Lankes captured the progression of the film and the actors through the lens of a 4×5 camera, creating a series of arresting portraits and behind-the-scenes photographs. His work documents Linklater’s unprecedented narrative that used the real-life passage of years as a key element to the storytelling. Revealing, personal recollections by the actors and filmmakers accompany the photographs.
“Unlike the film, which embodies the passing of time, Matt Lankes’ stills and portraits capture something very differentsingle moments suspended in time,” Linklater wrote in the foreword. “I have really been looking forward to the day all his work, this long-term photographic project, could be viewed as one collection. I’m so glad this book exists as a gallery of his portraits and a testament to the memories that we created in making Boyhood.”
Lankes is a professional photographer whose clients include Livestrong, HBO, Fox Searchlight, Texas Monthly, Interview, Time Inc., Newsweek, GSDandM, Austin Monthly, Lee Jeans, Random House, Warner Brothers, Cowboys and Indians, Chevrolet, and Pentagram Design. His work is in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian and the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.
Screenwriter/filmmaker Richard Linklater has directed 18 feature films, including the indie classic Slacker (1991); the ’70s cult hit Dazed and Confused (1993); the animated feature Waking Life (2001); the hit comedy School of Rock (2003); Fast Food Nation (2006); Bernie (2012); and the critically acclaimed Boyhood (2014). His Before trilogy Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight has received many accolades including Academy Award nominations for Before Sunset and Before Midnight, and the Film Critics Choice Louis XIII Genius Award for all three films in 2014. Linklater serves as the artistic director for the Austin Film Society, which he founded in 1985.
The 200-page book will be published November 1. It features 214 color and black and white photos.
The University of Texas Press, founded in 1950, is a scholarly and general interest press that is part of The University of Texas at Austin. For more information on the book, please visit www.utexaspress.com.
