Mat Hennek is probably better known as a portrait photographer for the music business but in recent years he's concentrated on the natural landscape. 'Silent cities' is a slight detour from that theme. The eighty photos feature cities around the world but minus the human activity that most other photographers would search out.
What I found quite fascinating about these photos is the way Hennek's eye captures almost abstract shapes out of buildings and the street architecture of public spaces. A shot from 2013 in Tokyo shows part of a wall made from large blocks in pastel shades of brown and it looks quite stunning, other photos, in long shots. blend the vertical shapes of tall buildings with the horizontals of fencing, railings and streets. There are, in fact, two photos that do show people, one is looking down on a Osaka station with a few passengers but hardly visible, another is a rather small lone cyclist in a Tokyo street.
Another worthwhile feature of the book is that all the photos are landscape and the same size and position on each page, I thought this helped emphasise the horizontal feel of so many of them. The pictures are printed with a 175 screen on a wonderfully silky matt art paper.
These photos reveal something unexpected in cities but it takes Henning's creativity to reveal it to us even though what he sees has always been there.
I found this in a second-hand bookseller some years ago and I always enjoy looking through it now and again (usefully it has an good Index). What makes it stand out from similar pictorial histories of the period are the captions written by Frederick Lewis Allan. He was an Editor at Harper and Brothers for many years and with his wife Agnes they edited a similar looking visual book in 1934 called 'Metropolis' also published by Harper, revealing twenty-four hours in the life of a generic big city (actually New York). He also wrote two well known histories of the twenties and thirties.
'I remember distinctly' has a good selection of photos, especially personalities of the day (probably more than three-quarters of all the images have people in them) and others of notable news events from 1918 to 1941 but nicely it also includes photos of culture and entertainment, products, sport, fashion and more. The layout is rather bland and oddly the two authors 1934 'Metropolis' book looks much better.
If you are curious about the state of the Nation decades ago I think it's worth searching out a good copy, it shouldn't cost too much.
Austin Briggs gets the Auad treatment in this handsome book. It follows the style of their previous titles like Al Parker and Albert Dorne (I've reviewed both) with lots of illustrations, either color or black and white drawings. As expected Briggs, like all the great illustrators from past decades, was a stunning draughtsman. Page fifty-six has a whole page pencil drawing of a group of people relaxing on sun-loungers for a magazine story. It looks quite casual but if you study it carefully it's actually incredibly precise, all the bodies are anatomically correct and in perspective as the scene stretches into the near distance. Page sixty shows a pencil illustration from a 1965 edition of Look magazine, a policeman is walking towards you and in the background is a quite detailed yet casual rendering of a Victorian looking building, the body and the building merge together beautifully though they would be far apart in reality.
The book's first two chapters covers the life of the artist with illustrated essays from his son and David Apatoff. There are several Flash Gordon strips and individual panels plus two comic ads in color for Wheaties (The breakfast of champions) from 1939. The remaining eight chapters look in depth at Austin Briggs creative work like 'Advertising illustrations' with several ads for leading brands of the day and 'Airline illustrations' features color work for American Airlines and five superb black and white drawing for Douglas Aircraft from 1959. 'Magazine illustrations' features, as you would expect, plenty of those single page or spread paintings from the main consumer weeklies or monthlies. Some of these are just the picture, frequently page size but nicely others show the painting on the editorial spread with the headlines and story. The last two chapters cover illustrations for Lithopinion and Reader's Digest during the fifties.
I doubt that anyone else will publish a graphic book about Austin Briggs commercial art as good as this one.
