With the aid of over 250 source images and documents, many hitherto unknown, this book reveals how photography, film, mass-media imagery and other sources informed Bacons painting and, in particular, how alens-based images, as he put it, helped to trigger the most significant turning-point in his stylistic development. Key influences, including the masters VelAzquez, Poussin and Rodin, the photographer Eadweard Muybridge and the film director Sergei Eisenstein, are discussed. So too are the precedents set by other artists working in the tradition of making use of mechanical reproductions a ...