Look and see 5/5

Originally published in 1973 by MoMA and reprinted several times over the years (my copy is from 1999) and worth buying for some great historical photos but also in equal measure John Szarowski's excellent comments on the hundred photos. All of them are mono, this is because color wasn't considered 'art' until Szarowski curated the work of Bill Eggleston in a 1976 MoMA exhibition. I've always liked this selection of photos, of course, people are the dominant point of many of them but here are still lifes, landscapes, a strobe shot of a foot kicking a football, first world war aerial reconnaissance, architecture, street scenes and more. 

On page 151 is Eugene Smith's famous photo of a doctor treating a head wound of a young girl, which was from a photo essay in Life magazine, September 1948. Szarowski makes the point that millions of people primarily experienced photos in newspapers and magazines (and in their advertisements). Still, it's impossible to tell looking through the pages what images were commissioned or a photographer's personal shot.

The book's first photo is a portrait of a mother and daughter taken by William Shaw around 1850, the last is a 1968 landscape by Henry Wessel. Between these dates, you can enjoy looking at some amazing photos (printed as three hundred screen duotones) that are part of the medium's history. 

The printed matter decades 5/5

This is not the same format as Opie's wonderful large-size scrapbooks but a smaller book covering two hundred years of commercial art, basically packaging and booklet covers. It was probably the mid-eighteenth century when color printing got into its stride and companies started to print eye-catching graphics. For example, pages fifty-four and five have a selection of French fabric and thread labels using color for illustrations, borders and type. 

There are pages and pages of basically throw-away printed matter, which Mr Opie wisely collected: matchbox labels, cigarette packets, luggage labels, ice-lolly wrappers, can labels, tobacco wrappers and cigar labels, milk bottle tops (from the US 1930-1940s) sheet music covers, Russian drink labels, the list goes on and on. The contents run up to the turn of the century, though there is a spread of drink containers from 2023.

The book is all color (plus a ribbon bookmark) and I'm guessing that a lot of the material is in one of the Opie scrapbooks, which cover the decades from Victorian times up to the 1970s (surely time now 80s and 90s?) but the interesting thing is seeing so much printed matter from decades ago.

US

The Graphic Design Sourcebook: 200 Years of Glorious Graphics from the Robert Opie Collection: Opie, Robert: 9781911397373: Amazon.com: Books

UK

The Graphic Design Sourcebook: 200 Years of Commercial Art from the Robert Opie Collection : Opie, Robert: Amazon.co.uk: Books

 

Burtynsky captures the hand of man on our world 5/5

The eighty color photos in the book are a look backwards to Burtynsky's assignments from 1982 to 2024 and they all reflect his interest in the human control over nature. He was born and raised in Ontario and his earliest work featured food production in that state; the first seven photos were all taken there. 

Throughout the book, a significant number of photos are aerial shots, from a plane and in recent years, he's been using drones. The world from above, not normally available to the public, gives Burtynski the opportunity to reveal to us just how ravaged by industry many parts of the world are. Tailing ponds (the waste from mining) were photographed in Canada, Australia and dry tailing in the Congo. Mine photos from Ontario, British Columbia, Utah, New Mexico, Russia and Italy shot from above, show just how vast some of these operations are. Pivot irrigation (watering circular agriculture) provides almost abstract shapes when seen from the air, taken in Arizona and Texas. Ship building, in China and breaking, in Bangladesh, is revealed in seven powerful photos.  Away from the sky there are photos of vast manufacturing lines in China and of two indivuals recycling electronic waste.

The book's first few pages have an appreciation, by David Campany, of Burtynski's work in depicting the extraction of raw materials from the ground, making things from it and finally the dumping it. Much of his work is used in exhibitions with huge color prints; this photobook is an excellent permanent record of his work in revealing the hand of man on our world. I think it's worth saying that Steidl, the publishers of this book, have also several other well-produced titles of Burtnyski's photos.