The graphics of war (4/5)

 A worthwhile book of 'art' that will interest any graphic artist that does this sort of technical work. I think some of the other reviewers give a misleading impression of the title's content. It certainly isn't a history of the subject but an arbitrary collection of WWII technical illustrations about aircraft from four countries.

Great Britain has the most pages (123) with technical drawings from the RAF Museum in London. An interesting part of these pages is eleven cutaways of the main German warplanes. One of these, the Junkers-JU87 is here and it's also shown as a cutaway in the German pages. The US chapter has two beautiful colored cutaways of the pilot's compartment and armaments of a B-17F. Both of these go beyond the normal technical illustration because they have extensive shading to create a dimensional feel. The Soviet Union has only fourteen pages but it has a good colored renderings of an II-2 Shturmovik cockpit.

The book deals with WWII aviation in the broadest sense, there are the obvious cutaways of planes and engines but also plane recognition charts, the proper handling of equipment when aircraft are on the ground, and several pages in the United Kingdom pages show printed matter relating to abandoning aircraft over land and water.

The book is a pleasant production (printed with a 175 screen on matt art paper) but I was disappointed with the page format. Each spread has an almost an inch-wide colored upright band on the page edge, it serves no purpose and if it wasn't there all the illustrations could have been much larger, so four stars out of five.

Five star photos in a two star book

Photography: the whole story. ISBN 978-3791347349

THE PHOTOS

I thought the selection was excellent, from Joseph Niepce 1826 shot to Bryan Smith's 2015 color photo of the Empire State Building. The book's scope is broad, too, with portraits. documentary, news, war, still life, art, photojournalism, fashion, sport, nature in fact any kind of photography that involves some creative input by the photographer rather than photos for the record like first past the post horseracing or police mug shots.

The photos are obviously arranged historically,   pages 20 to 363 have photos before 1945 and 364 to 945 photos up to 2015. The pictures, obviously reflecting the author's selection, had some omissions, in my view. Nothing from Stephen Shore, David Bailey, Diane Arbus, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton or Annie Leibovitz. On the other hand, there are plenty of photographers I've never heard of so their work is a voyage of discovery for me.

THE BOOK

The before you die numbers book is a standard for general publishers: 1000 record covers, 200 places to visit, 1001 books to read et cetera. They all require images but one on photos is different because it's the image that counts. To put 1001 photos, one to a page, in a brick of a book (960 paperback pages, printed with a 175 screen on a matt art paper) doesn't seem the best way to reveal artistic intent. So many of them are not much bigger than postcards or largish thumbnails. To a certain extent, this is because there is too much background copy about the photos.

The book's front pages have an unusual index listing titles, is a reader really going to look for Congo Free State page 154, or Polar panorama page 842? The back pages are more useful with a glossary and photographer index (though regrettably in tiny type).

'1001 photographs' is a sort of history of the subject and a better title could be Juliet Hacking's 'Photography: the whole story' published in 2012 (ISBN 978-3791347349).