This book, actually the catalogue to the multimedia museum exhibition curated in collaboration with the Corcoran Gallery's Philip Brookman, is an emotionally draining look at the underworld of runaway children. Instead, what Davidson presents is a habitat - as he calls it - where people of all colors and strata can and do come together to enjoy a bucolic miracle in the center of the urban universe. The result is a paean of praise to a place that too often is viewed by outsiders as a dangerous playground for muggers and rapists. Though he began the project in color, he eventually decided to concentrate on black-and-white, and worked in a number of formats, from panorama, to ultra wide-angle medium-format to 35mm. Davidson spent four years photographing life in that great, perplexing oasis that sits in the heart of Manhattan island. The humanity of this work, masterfully printed by my colleague and former teacher Neil Selkirk, is what leaps from every beautiful page.Ĭentral Park by Bruce Davidson (Aperture, $40). This does a disservice both to her and to her subjects. Diane Arbus has been too easily categorized as a photographer of freaks. "No one else had ever posed for her so unselfconsciously, with such abandon, such equanimity about their own sense of identity," writes Arbus's daughter Doon in a spare and perceptive afterword. Like so much of Arbus's work, the photographs are arresting in their oddness, yet compelling in their honesty. This portfolio - environmental portraits of residents of several homes for the mentally retarded - was made between 19, the year Arbus took her own life. This is the final work by one of the greatest photographers of our time - a complicated, tormented woman who documented those on the fringes of society with a dispassionate, yet oddly compassionate eye that never approached voyeurism. Any would make a fine gift for someone who appreciates the intricate art of "writing with light." This year I offer for your consideration a varied collection of books, all superb, all tackling a specific subject and reflecting it with visual eloquence.
Good photography books are like fine wine - the best can be expensive but all are well worth it. In addition, serious photography books often must compete with point-of-sale quickies on any number of frivolous topics. They are hellishly expensive to produce and therefore are that much more expensive to buy. The stiff competition for the book-buyer's buck is all the more pronounced among art books. Sympathy because I know that, in the midst of so many other fine photography books, your clarion voice may seem like a muted peep as you try to get anyone's attention. Sympathy because I know how difficult it can be to market a book. Sympathy because, as an author myself, I know what it takes to produce a book. EVERY YEAR produces a slew of new photography books - and I offer every one of the authors my sympathy.
0 kommentar(er)
