DAVID HOCKNEY A Rake's Progress By Christopher Simon Sykes Illustrated. 363 pages. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $35. The casual David Hockney fan thinks immediately of his crayon-bright Los Angeles landscapes, saturated in heat and light, and the childlike interiors rendered with the charm of Matisse. We think of the dazzle of his incomparable swimming...
In the 1960s about half of all American households owned a Polaroid camera, according to the company's own estimates. And while the instant thrill of having a tangible record of first birthdays, prom nights, vacations and Christmas dinners was the driving force behind the company's success, its revolutionary product also changed forever the way...

IT was a brilliantly sunny autumn day in East Yorkshire, and the artist David Hockney was taking me for a drive through the countryside. ''What it is I'm going to show you is an alleyway of trees,'' he said in his gruff Yorkshire burr as he turned his open-topped Audi roadster off the one-lane road into an even narrower byway bordered by swaying...