Morris Dancing, Stained Glass, and the Industrial Age [November 24]
Recommendations from Me
We have such easy access to photographs, but we usually interact with them in scattered ways: on our phones, on newsfeeds. We rarely give deliberate attention to this magical human technology. There is something so special and refreshing about photobooks: large format, screen-free, curated collections of emotions and compositions. It’s like having a small gallery exhibition in your room— rich, portable worlds you can step into whenever you want. It’s so easy to digest a photograph: to connect with the compositions, and the human faces. At their best, they are a wonderful tool to understand a part of the human experience, a place, a time.
Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age by Sebastião Salgado is one of the most rich and ambitious documentary photography projects I’ve encountered. Salgado documents the lives of manual workers in 26 countries: tea farmers in Rwanda, automobile workers in Ukraine, Gold miners in Brazil. It’s a testament to the 12,000 years of agrarian civilization, and the accelerating scramble for resources launched by the industrial revolution.
Ed van der Elsken's Love on the Left Bank playfully pairs photographs of a group of 1950s Parisians with fictional descriptive text; the resulting narrative gives a cheeky and personal account of the Left Bank’s bohemian and alternative communities. A compelling portrait of this time and place.
Nan Goldin’s wonderful photobook ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’ transposes a similar theme to document the experiences of her friends in the 1970s and 1980s; a floating, libertine world preceding a dark chapter of the AIDS crisis. Goldin’s photobook is both a shockingly vulnerable archive of her life, and a valuable artifact of a queer culture.
Fan Ho’s retrospective collection ‘Photography. My Passion. My Life.’ is full of gorgeous, high contrast black and white images chronicling the Hong Kong of the 1950s and 1960s. Despite all of the changes since (the economic miracle, the trading of administrations, and the influx of cultural revolution refugees), there is a timeless character common to Ho’s photographs and the Hong Kong of today.
From the age of 13 to his death at age 81, René Burri produced thousands of varied and compelling images. ‘Photographs’ is the best retrospective collection of the artist's work. The compositions are as masterful as those of his mentor Henri Cartier-Bresson, but more closely centred on human stories. I can’t think of a more exciting photographic account of the 20th century than this book.
Recommendations from Others
Daniela 2024
‘Some old Mexican songs: La Gata Bajo la Lluvia - Rocío Dúrcal, Dies Pasos Hacia Ti - Daniel Me Estás Matando, Eso y Más - Joan Sebastian, Sabor a Mí - Los Panchos’
Jonny 2024
‘I would recommend dipping your hands in any body of water you come across and spreading the water and your shoulders and pressing your wet hands against your stomach. I also think you’d love Morris Dancing’
Ingrid 2024
‘Open Water - Caleb Azumah Nelson. Read to make you believe in love again.’
Matteo 2024
‘Identify one strong opinion that you have, talk to people: be willing to change it.’
Joel 2019
‘Buy coloured tissue paper and cut it into interesting shapes and stick them on your big window like pastel stained glass.'
Cover photo - Great Zimbabwe Ruins, Zimbabwe.
