A superb reprint of a classic 1976 book with 274 FSA photos. Two things made the original unique -- firstly, the photos were selected by the photographers as their best work for the agency and secondly, it reproduced the photos as their original size in the Library of Congress files (mostly 11 inches wide) making it the only book to have such large photos of FSA work, this new book has the same 274 images but they are a bit smaller (9.25 inches, so it's the second largest book).
Hank O'Neal came across FSA files in the early seventies and was surprised that there was really only one published photobook (In this proud land,
1974). Convinced that the work needed a wider audience he selected
eleven photographers who had contributed ninety-nine percent of the
files: Arthur Rothstein; Theo Jung; Ben Shahn; Walker Evans; Dorothea
Lange; Carl Mydans; Russell Lee; Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, John
Vachon; John Collier. Contacting them after so many years was initially
difficult but nine were still alive and were happy to help with the
project, Shahn and Lange had died so Shahn's wife Bernarda and Lange's
husband Paul Taylor selected their photos.
O'Neal chose forty to
sixty of each photographers work and they picked what they considered
worthy of including in the book. When it was published in 1976 this was
the first time in years that most of the photos had been seen, now, of
course, so many of them have appeared in dozens of FSA photobooks.
Arthur Rothstein's Cimarron County dust storm is here, Bud Field and
Mogantown by Walker Evans, Marion Post Wolcott chose Woodstock in the
snow, Dorothea Lange didn't select her famous 'Migrant mother' but two
other shots of Florence Thompson with her children sheltering in a tent.
This
edition has a slightly changed format. Both books present the 274
photos historically from 1935 to 1943 but the original had essays about
the photographers dropped in at various places throughout the pages,
this book has the eleven essays after the photo section, I think this a
much better solution. The only extra in the book is O'Neal's essay about
how the original publication was received and interest in it over the
years until Steidl decided on this wonderful re-issue.
The look of London Transport, whether it's trains, buses, architecture or art has inspired some wonderful books. Claire Dobbin considers the art of the train map combining the best of Leboff and Demuth's No need to ask! Early maps of London's underground railway, 1999 and Ken Garland's excellent Mr Beck's Underground map, 1994 (both of these were published by Capital Transport).
What I found interesting about this book is that the author features several decorative maps. These include the underground lines but as a secondery importance to the real purpose of the map which was to reveal what was happening on the ground above the railway, all kinds of buildings, monuments and parks. The master of this sort of map was MacDonald Gill and the book has seven of his poster maps including several enlargements over a spread to show the wonderful graphics and lettering. The book moves on to Harry Beck and his inspired solution to do away with geography and just use straight lines with a mark for each station. London Transport's Underground map today is basically what Beck designed in 1933. Lots of slight variations to the basic map are illustrated, including a short-lived 2009 version that left out the River Thames.
If you look at each map to the late forties you'll come across stations that disappear, in central London there are eight: Wood Lane; Brompton Road; Down Street; British Museum; Dover Street; York Way; Post Office; Mark Lane. Some were demolished but others remain, one at least with everything as it was when it closed. The Underground maps of today include some surface lines that have connecting stations and in 1947 Fred Elston made a brave attempt to include bus routes which, of course, do require some geographic sign posting making the map far too complex, it's illustrated on page eighty-four.
The last chapter in the book: Beck and beyond, looks at the way the London Underground map has inspired maps for rail services around the world and the way the map has been used by creative folk including Tim Fishlock who managed to create an alphabet by using sections of the map (it makes a lovely looking poster).
German photographer Kai Loffelbein captured the e-waste phenomena in this book with 117 photos from Abogbloshie, Ghana, New Delhi, India and Guiyu, China. Tons of this electronic waste is send to these countries and though there are no captions it looks like some of this waste, in particular TV sets, are checked to see if they are usable for sale in local markets.
The photos of Abogbloshie (a suburb of Accra) don't actually show much recycling of the valuable parts of e-waste, rather the locals seem to be scavenging through the rubbish to see what they might find. The Indian and Chinese photos show a much more practical approach to sorting through the electronic components, Chinese ladies are sitting at tables with lots of different small containers to hold the various parts. Several photos show the waste arriving in big sacks with no earlier separation of the contents, other photos show piles of the same components having been sorted and frequently just left in a factory yard.
There are two essays in the book and both suggest that the world cannot carry on producing such huge amounts of electronic waste but I thought the Chinese photos showed that it is possible to organise recycling though in a very crude way at the moment. I wonder if robots might do all this in the future?
These documentary photos are certainly a powerful reminder of the e-waste problem but without any captions the images tend to lose some credibility and it's left to the reader to make sense of each picture. This also applies to the book's twenty-four page loose insert. It has no text but some wonderful close-up photos, taken by Loffelbein, of circuit boards showing hundreds of tiny parts found in any of today's electrical products (the book's cover has one of these photos). The production of these circuit boards is done by robots.
