Left to nature 3/5

An interesting wrap-up of abandonment around the world but nothing new in the selection. The usual favorites are here, for example: Henry Ford's Fordlandia in Brazil, the jet boneyards in Arizona, Bulgaria's Buzludzha monument and Japan's Hashima island. Everything in the book is available on your favorite search engine (and Wikipedia) with tons of photos.

The book, though has some serious editorial flaws. The main one is the whole page map for every place; it's just a waste of space because on the left-hand page facing the map is a sort of large thumbnail of a globe with a red dot locating the place. Also on the page are the geographical coordinates, again locating the place. It's unfortunate also that there are too few photos. The crazy housing estate Burj Al Babasin in Turkey, has a page photo and a small one on its opening page. If the large whole map wasn't there, it could be used for photos.

The one advantage this book has over the usual abandonement titles is that Oliver Smith has written a reasonable amount of background to each place. Most other books are more photographic than text driven. The other advantage is that this book can be picked up quite cheaply.

UK

The Atlas of Abandoned Places: A journey through the world's forgotten wonders: Amazon.co.uk: Smith, Oliver: 9781784726928: Books

US

Amazon.com: The Atlas of Abandoned Places: A Journey Through The World's Forgotten Wonders: 9781784726928: Smith, Oliver: Books

 

Just your type...case 5/5

Anyone of a certain age who worked in the graphic arts industry will be familiar with a type case. For all others, it was a wooden tray with lots of sections that held lead type at a printers. Capital letters were on the right-hand side, lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation and spacing material in bigger sections on the left.

Arno Stolz was a typesetter and had the brilliant idea of writing to creative folk around the world to ask for small items to go in his type case. It eventually filled two of them. The book reproduces the letters and items he received. Sixty-nine pages at the back of the book have essays (in German and English) about the contributors, which originally appeared in Graphis and other design magazines.

The book will interest creative folk and maybe inspire some to buy an old type case (available on the net) and create their own wall art.

US

A Gallery in Type Cases: The Arno Stolz Collection: Fischbach, David: 9783721209860: Amazon.com: Books

UK

A Gallery in Type Cases: The Arno Stolz Collection: Amazon.co.uk: Fischbach, David: 9783721209860: Books

Building the peace 5/5

Though this could be called a book about the war, the photos are from 1944 to 1949 and show the extraordinary Allied destruction of Germany and its effect on the population. The four chapters: Liberation; Occupation; Reconstruction; Life in peace, reveal Vacarro's excellent photos of the post-war years, mostly in the American zone of the country.

The photos show the everyday life of Germans struggling to make do in their ruined towns and cities. Vacarro took a lot of photographs of children, he says in the text that boys especially had a hard with so many of them now orphans, girls fared better because they stayed at home with a mother. I thought the last chapter Life in peace had an interesting selection of photos from 1947 to 1949. Children are playing outdoors, fruit and vegetables are available, outdoor swimming pools are open and nightlife in cities is returning. Slowly the country is sorting itself out, at least the western part is, thanks to the Allied powers.

Vacarro's photos in Entering Germany do a remarkable job of revealing life in a war-torn country.