Reviews Written By: A1ZH52JAC70RIRprovided by Amazon.com |
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 | CB4 - The Movie | |
 | "Straight out of Locash and Lostyle" | 2009-09-06 |
| Clearly one of director Tamra Davis early efforts. Made in 1993 after she was fresh out of the music video scene. I thought this had all the hallmarks of an amateurish quickie (and probably low budget, too)
Rap music culture is a rich vein of over-the-top personalities and quirky business dealings that obviously has the potential for some knockout satirical fun and to wrap it up in a fake documentary like CB4 was the best way to go, but to work well it needs creative talent in writing and direction that is so lacking here. Best bits, for me, were the songs and these worked because all that was required were the lyrics from well known rap hits and then change the words. Making a movie though is a lot more effort. A year after CB4 was released 'Fear of a black hat' came out. Exactly the same premise but I thought it was so much better. All the usual suspects were included but it actually hung together as a movie rather than a series of potentially funny vignettes which is CB4. | ||
 | Prison Break - Season 1 | |
 | "Brilliant, though with inherent limitations" | 2009-07-25 |
Having just sat through the sixteen hours of this first Break (over five days though) I'm pleased to see that the overall impression of Amazon customers is that this is a winner and rightly so. The story is most likely known to you considering how much PR this first season generated. I was very impressed by the way the writers consistently came up with credible twists and turns and I particularly like the secondary story of the government political intrigue which took the action outside the confines of the prison. A couple of points occurred to me while watching the episodes. The forty minute length of each part meant that twenty-one cliffhangers had to be created to pull the viewers into next week's show. This creates some rather artificial plotting situations which could have been avoided if the length was longer but that is one of the problems of network TV being ad supported. The other point is more critical and goes to the authenticity of Prison Break. Because it was a network show there is a complete absence of swearing. Prisons by their nature are probably the most aggressive male environments around and to have bored and desperate convicts not expressing themselves in the only way they know how seems to lack credibility. More so for poorly paid guards, who in the program, lose no opportunity to express their disdain and frustration for their charges but express this in dialog that has to be acceptable to Middle America. Had the show been on HBO or Showtime I feel the writers would have created dialog with more strength which would have given Prison Break an extra layer of realism. The last disc has some worthwhile extras: a thirty minute Making of...feature that tends to be the usual back-slapping stuff from the principal actors and creative team but did have some interesting material about shooting scenes in Joliet. A fascinating sixteen minute feature about creating the tattoo that covered Wentworth Miller's body: about two hundred hours of work and $15,000 to $20,000 if it was for real. A short about the history of Joliet (closed in 2002) and now part of the Illinois Film Office property inventory. Despite the constraints of the show being on network TV this is well worth seeing and I know I'll be watching it more than once plus there is the supreme luxury of seeing it ad free! | ||
 | Samuel J. Hoffman - Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman and the Theremin | |
| "Chorale EZ" | 2009-04-15 |
| *The first thing to say about these three CDs is that the total playing time is a few seconds more than fifty-two minutes so I think it's worth searching around for the cheapest price or go for this single CD: Waves in the Ether: Electronic Music 1947-49. * The second thing is that the theremin is (fortunately, I think) not the dominant sound on any of the tracks. It's heard most on Music for Peace of Mind. * The third thing is that Music Out of the Moon and Perfume Set to Music are lovely easy listening tracks with a delightful wordless chorus as the dominant sound. Music out of the Moon was originally released by Capitol in 1947 on three boxed 78s. The six arrangements by Harry Revel and Les Baxter's orchestra produce a gorgeous sound thanks to the chorus of sixteen singers. I thought it was typical of the kind of thing you might hear at the end of a Hollywood movie of the forties that featured an angelic chorus over the end credits. Perfume Set to Music is, of course, no more than a marketing gimmick sponsored by Corday perfume with RCA issuing the discs in 1948. Revel and Baxter repeat the lunar style with six beautiful choral tracks. Peace of Mind was a Capitol 1950 78 release with Billy May using Revel for the arrangements (minus the chorus) and a more prominent theremin sound. All the tracks are period easy listening that happens to use a theremin. The instrument really can't be considered much more than a novelty item, a sidebar in the history of electronic music, totally superseded these days by the humble pc. If you like strongly melodic instrumentals (and a wordless chorus) with a period flavor this is the set to buy. | ||
 | Harry Revel ,Leslie Baxter ,Billy May ,Samuel J. Hoffman - Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman and the Theremin | |
| "Chorale EZ" | 2009-04-15 |
| *The first thing to say about these three CDs is that the total playing time is a few seconds more than fifty-two minutes so I think it's worth searching around for the cheapest price or go for the CD with all the tracks: Waves in the Ether: Electronic Music 1947-49.
* The second thing is that the theremin is (fortunately, I think) not the dominant sound on any of the tracks. It's heard most on Music for Peace of Mind. * The third thing is that Music Out of the Moon and Perfume Set to Music are lovely easy listening tracks with a delightful wordless chorus as the dominant sound. Music out of the Moon was originally released by Capitol in 1947 on three boxed 78s. The six arrangements by Harry Revel and Les Baxter's orchestra produce a gorgeous sound thanks to the chorus of sixteen singers. I thought it was typical of the kind of thing you might hear at the end of a Hollywood movie of the forties that featured an angelic chorus over the end credits. Perfume Set to Music is, of course, no more than a marketing gimmick sponsored by Corday perfume with RCA issuing the discs in 1948. Revel and Baxter repeat the lunar style with six beautiful choral tracks. Peace of Mind was a Capitol 1950 78 release with Billy May using Revel for the arrangements (minus the chorus) and a more prominent theremin sound. All the tracks are period easy listening that happens to use a theremin. The instrument really can't be considered much more than a novelty item, a sidebar in the history of electronic music, totally superseded these days by the humble pc. If you like strongly melodic instrumentals (and a wordless chorus) with a period flavor this is the set to buy. | ||
 | The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954-68 | |
| "A vivid picture of the past" | 2009-03-03 |
| I saw Alan Parker's excellent movie Mississippi Burning earlier this year and I wanted to know about the civil rights movement and this book, now well over ten years old, creates a vivid picture as the movie did. Some of the news photos are now icons of photojournalism, in particular the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama demonstrations but others, selected by Kasher, are equally as compelling and combined with his text and extended captions to the photos gave me an appreciation of the people and place involved . The book is well designed and printed and the photos really do give credence to the words as the story unfolds. The back of the book has a timeline, useful bibliography and index. As a pictorial record of this period in American history it couldn't be better. ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York (first Edition) | |
| "There goes the neighborhood" | 2009-02-28 |
| "Well, it was open last week, I went in and bought something" A familiar thought if you live in a city, large or small, across the Nation and discover that the store that had been there for decades is now closed: probably for good. James and Karla Murray have done us all a favor by capturing, for ever, the changing store front scene in New York. Amazingly, as mentioned in their introduction, almost a third of the stores in the book have closed! The 220 photos (with some repeated in four huge fold-outs) cover the five boroughs with each getting a simplified street map and the relevant neighborhood indicated, some copy provides background to the name and how the area originated. What gives the book a lift though is the frequent addition of interviews with the storeowners who provide insights about the history of their premises and the products they sell. All the photos are straight on shots of the store fronts but don't think for a minute that this might be sort of boring because these stores are a kaleidoscope of colorful window displays with products, notices and neon signs, awnings, and an amazing selection of lettering for their names, plus many of them desperately need some renovation and this adds texture to the surrounding building. Photos that are this content rich just don't need any gimmicks or trendy angle shots. The book's large size also adds to their impact (check out the Product Details). This is a large, chunky, beautifully produced coffee table book (though a shame it wasn't printed with a finer screen than the 175 used). I wouldn't have thought that photos of store fronts would have yielded such a fascinating collection of stunning photos but here they are. A visual treat! ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | New York in the Forties | |
| "The real Big Apple" | 2009-02-22 |
| An impressive 162 photographs from a master photojournalist which really capture the feel of the city without seeming too nostalgic. What I love about this book is the straightforward way these photos present an amazing amount of detail. Feininger one said "This world is full of things the eye doesn't see. The camera can see more and ten times better", all these photos reflect that point-of-view beautifully. You just have to flip quickly through the book to realize how comprehensive the selection is: Wall Street business area; the waterfront; Mid-town skyscrapers; Times Square; stations; bridges; parks; the El; customers looking in shops; New Yorker's going about their business; the city at night and Feininger's trade-mark: the telephoto lens landscape shot. The book starts with one of these Manhattan photos, taken fourteen miles away in New Jersey. Another thing that lifts the title out of the usual photo book format are the detailed captions to most of the photos. Dover are to be congratulated on producing a lovely book for the price though I find it rather frustrating that the photos are only printed in a 133 screen. I recently bought a Andreas Feininger: That's Photography monograph with the photos printed as 200+ screen duotones, it includes many of these New York photos and they look just stunning. ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Andreas Feininger: That's Photography | |
| "The Master" | 2009-02-06 |
| As a record of the work of Andreas Feininger this has to be the book to own. With just over two hundred photos I doubt there will be anything better published. The 320 pages show his work from 1930 to the mid-Eighties with, I thought, a really first-class selection of photos.
European work from the Thirties includes: architecture; figure studies and portraits, then from the Forties onwards, when he was in America, work for the Office of War Information and Life magazine assignments of the Californian oil industry (those famous Signal Hill oil derricks) and probably the best from Feininger's sixty-year love affair with Manhattan. In between the industry, transport and city work there are forty-two photos of nature, either close-ups of plants or desert and mountain landscapes. I love Feininger's work and I have to say that this book is rather special. As a collector of photo books (nearly exclusively dealing with America) I would normally expect to see monographs as landscape with the images centered on the page with generous margin but here is something different. The book is upright with the size and thickness one would expect for a non-fiction title, the margins on each page are quite narrow, the paper is a super matt art just right for the 200+ screen duotones . The binding and printing is impeccable as one would expect from art publishers Hatze Cantz (they did the print as well). It is one of those rare books that is a joy to hold, turn the pages and be overwhelmed by stunning photos. A masterpiece! ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Roadside Americana | |
 | "Drive-by exubrance" | 2008-11-18 |
| You can probably fill a bookcase or two with books like this. They pop-up in tourist souvenir shops everywhere, aimed at a general readership and most of them are easily forgotten. I bought this one mainly because of the large size though as another reviewer has rightly said the photo quality, overall, is average and I can add to this by saying the page design is bland and predictable.
However I think there are good points: the coverage is rather comprehensive, from the Hollywood sign, Randy's Donuts in Inglewood, Los Angeles, Haines Shoe House, York, Pennsylvania to the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. These are all sort of national treasures and there are plenty more in the book, as large photos, too. Americana in the title helps define what should be included though that also raises the question: just how tacky and temporary can a structure be before it's not worth including, fortunately not too many here fall into that category. If you can find it cheap enough this isn't a bad buy (at the original price I would have definitely passed) but if you like this sort of roadside exuberance check out Jim Heimann's lovely California Crazy and Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture, David Graham has done four roadside books and the leader of the pack John Margolies has several books. Ones I've enjoyed are: Fun Along the Road: American Tourist Attractions - Another Amazing Album from America's Number One Roadside Observer and The End of the Road: Vanishing Highway Architecture in America in several editions. ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Arrivals & Departures: The Airport Pictures of Garry Winogrand | |
 | "Plain coming and going" | 2008-10-07 |
| On the strength of seeing twenty-five of his airport photos in the excellent 'Winogrand: Figments from the real world' I bought a copy of 'Arrivals & Departures'. Certainly it contains some remarkable photos but I am not convinced that it is a great book of images, good yes. 'Figments from the real world' works for me because of the huge number of photos, just over two hundred. So many that I've found it best to look at three or four chapters at a time. 'Arrivals' has eighty-six photos selected and edited by Alex Harris and Lee Friedlander from hundreds of contact sheets and prints (mostly unpublished) in the Winogrand archive at the University of Arizona, Obviously the choice of what to include was personal to them but I thought there were too many bland photos mixed in with the greats. In all of the photos the feel of an airport is captured and interestingly though there are more than ten featured you would be hard pressed to identify them. One is clearly the Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal in New York, a stunning architectural shot and my favorite in the book. Turning over the pages I was conscious of so many photos that looked like they were taken in a hurry and included because Harris and Friedlander thought they best represent the feel of an airport. The book's production is in the usual photo book format: one photo to a page with generous margins and 250+ screen though it has the usual annoyance of having the brief captions at the back of the book and rather oddly the page numbers are printed near the gutter rather than on the outer margin of each page. I would put 'Arrival & Departures' with Winogrand's 'Public Relations', both of them celebrate a great American photo journalist but I thought each has too many average images. ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Structures of Utility | |
| "A landscape of emphatic structures" | 2008-09-28 |
| Who would have thought that abandoned grain elevators, old elevated wooden tank houses (to hold water and supply pressure to agricultural areas) and hydraulic mines from California's gold rush would produce such remarkable photos. In the hands of photographer David Wilson these ancient commercial structures take on a life of their own. Sited in the mostly flat Central Valley and slowly disappearing this visual record fortunately captures many buildings for the record. Just to have Wilson's photo book of these structures would be enough to make a purchase but I think the book goes a lot further. I think it is a very successful attempt to produce a package that works from the cover onwards. Book designer Todd Foreman has used the photos to create a sense of pace and interest as you turn over the pages, sometimes it is the use of a fifth color panel between photos on a spread or repeating one image several times on a page, butting some photos together, running some of the photos of the page edge or enlarging a section of an image. Don't think though that this sounds like an over designed photo book because it isn't. The book's basic format is of oblong images (printed in 200 dpi) untouched on the page with the more graphic treatments blending in perfectly. Include the jacket, cover, fly-leaf, title, imprint, the five caption pages at the back, paper, layout and typography have all been considered. Structures of Utility is one of those rare books that goes the extra mile for the reader. ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Salton Sea Atlas | |
| "Salton Sea splash" | 2008-08-24 |
| I think it is remarkable that a rather small part of California could produce such a fascinating (and visually stunning) book but the Salton Sea is a quite remarkable place, especially considering it's only a few decades old. One bit of information that grabbed me is on page forty where a graphic profile of the Sea reveals that it is, on average, only fifty-one feet deep compared with Lake Tahoe which is 1645 feet at its deepest. The Atlas is sectioned into five chapters: Physical geography, Cultural history, Limnology, Ecology, and Maps. The first four take up about half the pages and assorted maps, index and bibliography the rest. The main strength of the book, I think, are the non-map pages because they present a lot of complex information in a beautifully designed graphic format. Old maps and photographs, charts, illustrations of marine and bird life, cut-away graphics of land and more are all laid out with very clean typography on the large page size. Add quality paper and printing (with a 175 screen) and anyone looking through these pages will be easily drawn into this on going story of the Salton. The map pages are equally interesting and there really is a lot of technical data here but still presented in an accessible format. The range of information is quite comprehensive, for example: public land ownership, recreation areas, commercial facilities, energy usage, property values and median incomes, early exploration, earthquakes, soil types, surface hydrology right down to four maps showing the Sea's sediment grain size distribution. The nice thing about the maps is that they not only detail the Sea area also large parts of southern California. This Atlas is a credit to all those who worked on it (and should really be template for any similar publications) for making the Salton come alive in such a stimulating way. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Hoover Dam: The Photographs of Ben Glaha | |
| "Hooverville" | 2008-08-24 |
| The Amazon Editorial Reviews above will give you a good idea of this book's contents but what isn't said is that this is not a photo book of Ben Glaha's work. His fifty shots included are really an adjunct to Barbara Vilander's excellent text. She clearly has done a lot of research into the dam's construction by the Six Companies and how Glaha photographed all aspects of this activity. Her coverage extents to placing the photos in the context of the Machine Aesthetic (chapter four) and use of the photos by the Bureau of Reclamation (chapter five: The Photographs as Propaganda).
Though the text is interesting I was disappointed that the book's production is quite bland. Glaha's photos (and others) are presented on the page with far too much surrounding white space and they have been scanned as ordinary photos as you would see in a picture book so that light areas merge into the whiteness of the paper, dark parts of so many photos nearly turn to black. Overall there is a feeling of grayness as I look through the book's images. Glaha's work really needs proper scanning, quality paper and printing as duotones in a photo book format to bring out the creative and information aspects that are inherent in his photos. With the existing text such a book could look quite stunning. If you are interested in all aspects of the dam's construction the best book I've found is The Story of the Hoover Dam, a remarkable record originally published in various issues of Compressed Air Magazine, 1931-1935. It has plenty of maps, diagrams and photos some of which were taken by Glaha. It is quite technical though. Click on the link to the book to see some spreads I've uploaded. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Blue Note Jazz Photography of Francis Wolff | |
| "Looking at the sound" | 2008-07-27 |
| I had thought that this was the paperback version of The Blue Note Years: The Jazz Photography of Francis Wolff but as it says in the book this is another selection of Francis Wolf photos, most unseen, too. If you've ever seen a Blue Note LP cover from the fifties and sixties you'll know what Wolff's photos look like: mostly photographed in Rudy Van Gelder's darkened recording studio, so the musicians leap at you because there are hardly any other visual distractions, their bodies have a texture that fades into the dark background. I particularly like the photos because Wolff doesn't make his presence felt, no one is looking at the camera, these guys were captured socking out another cracking Blue Note session. With these photos you can see what the BN sound looked like and nicely, the captions list the titles to the sessions so if you have any of the recordings you'll be able to add an extra dimension to the listening experience. The book looks pretty cool, too. The black and whites are printed in four color to give them a solid appearance but surprisingly the screen is only 150 though the printing gives the impression that 175 or 200dpi might have been used on the matt art paper. The contemporary looking layout enhances the images. There are several musicians who get more than one photo but oddly only one of the great Rudy Van Gelder. To my mind he is the one responsible for the success of the label over the years. Maybe the first book had more of him at work. Overall a beautiful book of jazz photos and it certainly goes well with Blue Note: Album Cover Artby Graham Marsh where designer Reid Miles does wonders with Francis Wolff's camera creativity. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Art Deco Jewellery | |
| "Deco elegance" | 2008-07-13 |
| A first-class survey of Art Deco Galalith jewelry which focuses on the output of the German watch-chain and jewelry manufacturer Bengel. The first ninety-seven pages look at thirties fashion, jewelry and the art movements that created such a vibrant look to pendants, bracelets, earrings and brooches. Clearly Christine Weber-Stober has done a lot of research into European Art Deco jewelry and the items made by Bengel from Galalith (from the Greek 'gala', milk and 'lithos', stone) It was made from milk protein and formaldehyde and was one of the new synthetic products developed in the middle and latter part of the nineteenth century. The beauty of it was that it could be made cheaply, was heat resistant and easy to color, so makers of buttons, belt-buckles, knitting needles and similar small items were able to churn them out by the millions. It did have one drawback though: it couldn't be cast like later plastic but was made in slabs, tubes and rods then cut and worked into whatever simple shape was required. The various new materials developed in the early years of the twentieth century were ideally suited to designers and creative folk influenced by the new 'isms' of the age: cubism, futurism, vorticism and especially modernism via the Bauhaus. The second part of the book has 253 photos of mass produced jewelry from the Bengel company. Their expertise in metalwork combined with the simple colorful shapes of Galalith makes all of these pieces look quite stunning. Strangely, despite the author's research, there seems to be no real explanation as to why this German metal working factory made such remarkable work. None of it was stamped with the company name, their Galalith jewelry output went to wholesalers who sold it on to retailers who added their brand names. The book's production is as gorgeous as the jewelry. Printed on matt art paper with a 175 screen, the elegant layout throws up the excellent photography. The text is in German and English but the designers have avoided any potential reader confusion by splitting the text pages horizontally with German occupying the top section. In comparison the books for collectors from the main American publishers in this sector look bland and visually uninspiring (expensive, too). Art Deco Jewelry is a beautiful celebration of past jewelry style that still looks fresh and lively today. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Visions from America: Photographs from the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1940-2001 | |
| "Camera contrasts" | 2008-05-25 |
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I included this book in a Listmania I did on titles that took an overview of American photography in recent decades. It is, though, slightly different from the other books I mentioned because it sees photography as a much more creative experimental art. The 176 page portfolio section of the book starts with a Robert Frank work from 1952 followed by Lisette Model, Weegee, Helen Levitt, Saul Leiter, Andreas Feininger and so on. Included are 158 artists with a photo each but as the following years are covered the images get much more personal and subjective. In the front of the book Andy Grundberg contributes a short essay detailing the changes in photography from the fifties and from the Whitney's point of view the interesting change (and increasingly so) was loss of distinction between photographers work and artists who took photographs. The museum, rightly I think, collects work that displays innovation whatever the photo medium, which now includes video and digital imagery. New technology will increasingly blur the edges of traditional brush art and photography. The book's production is rather conservative in design but the portfolio section works well with each photo having generous margins. The matt art paper supports the 250 screen the images are printed in. Because of the very creative and personal nature of so many of the works I think the book might achieve an interesting stature in the future. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Typologies of Industrial Buildings | |
| "Industrial strength dedication" | 2008-05-22 |
| Reading the introduction to this remarkable book I came across the fact that Bern and Hilla Becher are continuing the German tradition of companies photographing their industrial premises. Alfred Krupp, about 1860, was the first to have his own photographer and a printing plant to produce promotional material. Other companies followed and printed ever more lavish photo books about their plants. The Bechers though have pursued, since 1957, a unique photographic objective in attempting to record as much of the industrial landscape as possible but in a way that is personal to them. Their head on, flat perspective and grey sky backgrounds just seem so right as you turn the pages. I think this is the only book to show so many of their photos: just over 1500. They are divided into 130 Plates with between six and thirty photos to a Plate though they are mostly fifteen throughout the book. The structure sequence is water towers, cooling towers, gas tanks, colliery winding towers, preparation plants, gravel plants, lime kilns, grain elevators, coal bunkers, blast furnaces, details (close-ups) and industrial facades. Winding towers has thirty Plates with over four hundred photos. The briefest of captions locate the place, country and the photo date. Armin Zweite writes a thirty page introduction (translated from German which makes it seem overly complex) but full of interesting insights about the Bechers work, style origins and their place in contemporary photography. The book is beautifully produced as one would expect from the German publishers Schirmer (MIT have the English language rights) with quality paper and printing in a 200 screen. Because Typologies contains so many works taken by these two remarkable photographers I think it is way above the usual art monograph. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Lee Friedlander: Sticks And Stones: Architectural America | |
| "Mr Chain-Link Fence delivers again" | 2008-05-07 |
| I doubt I'll ever own Lee Friedlander's masterpiece 'The American Monument' (not on retirees budget anyway) but I recently bought Sticks & Stones and I'm content to at least own his second masterpiece. What treat this book is! Here are 196 square format photos of buildings and street scenes that only Friedland could have taken. Turn over the first few pages and you'll immediately be aware of his trademark: utility poles and chain-link fences (though it could also be any kind of street furniture) which form an integral part of the way he sees what is beyond them. By placing these visual elements up-front creates all kinds of wonders when his camera reveals what is in the distance. Throughout the book you'll come across photos that just stop you because they are so overwhelming in detail, foreground vertical and horizontal shapes and shadows merge and frame buildings in the distance which also create other shapes between themselves. So many of these images made me smile inwardly at the way Friedland saturates many photos with irregular shapes and shadows yet what he uses to do this is just the everyday environment. There is a playfulness here that will grab your imagination and nicely you'll discover something fresh each time you open the book. Outstanding photos demand quality printing and the book's production is superb. Printed by Meridian of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, using three hundred screen duotones on a matt semi-coated paper (in an edition of 6,000). Meridian have printed several Friedlander books. Incidentally you can see seventy-one similar photos in the fascinating monograph Friedlander though I have the impression that not all are in Sticks & Stones. The book is a visual celebration by one of America's great photographers. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Car Hops and Curb Service: A History of American Drive-In Restaurants 1920-1960 | |
| "Auto eats" | 2008-04-26 |
| The humble drive-in gets the Jim Heimann treatment: well researched, excellent photo and graphics selection, bibliography, index and he designed it, too. Though it was published in 1996 I don't think there is a better book about the subject. Michael Wetzel's `The American Drive-in' (1994, ISBN 0879389192) comes close, with a lot of the same images but I thought his rather too superficial.
Heimann has clearly done a lot of research and I liked the many architectural references. Drive-ins, because of their rather temporary nature, could be designed with latest visual gimmicks and building styles yet could be easily changed to a newer look. Heimann refers to Exaggerated Modern as a suitable name for drive-in style. The book has plenty of historical photos to show the changing face of the eatery, especially in sunny California. It seems LA was the experimental center of drive-in style with architects like John Lautner, Armet & Davis or Wayne McAllister designing establishments always that little bit different from the competition. Incidentally neither Lautner or Armet & Davis are mentioned in the index of Witzel's book. Visually the book is a treat. Plenty of really good historical exterior black and whites of establishments backed up with color postcards and graphic material like menus or book matches. All the material is presented in a straightforward layout (and this is another area where the Witzel book falls down: the layout is far too scrappy with too much unused white page space). It is unfortunate though that the captions are set in a rather small type in long lines and frequently they refer to photos on a preceding or following spread. Heimann has written the definitive book about a little bit of Americana and I bet it will remain in print for many years. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | George Tice: Urban Landscapes | |
| "NJ commonplace" | 2008-04-20 |
| I would have written this review some time ago if the publisher had been a bit more accurate with the book's title. I have the original 1975 edition and I always assumed this same titled edition was just a reprint until I noticed that it had 168 pages and the original had 112. So now I have most of photos in the original plus more photographed up to 1999 and nicely, this book is printed in 250 rather than the 150 screen of the first edition. I've always preferred images of the man-made landscape with its visual vibrancy and George Tice has the eye to deliver. His street photos of commercial premises, signage and traffic in the gritty cities and towns of New Jersey (his birth State) provide plenty of eye-grabbing work throughout the book. For example: on pages 126 and 127 there are two streets in Atlantic and Jersey cities which are just stunning, the Jersey City one always reminds me of Walker Evans work in Reedsville, West Virginia in June 1935. In the 1975 edition Tice says that 'Urban Landscapes' is an extension of his 1972 'Patterson' book. I haven't seen the original but I recently bought 'Patterson II', published in 2006 with photos taken from 2000 onwards and the contents are in the same style as his previous work. Incidentally, I think, 'Patterson II' an important book for a technical reason: the black and white photos are printed in six hundred screen which really is on the cutting edge of graphic reproduction and Tice's pin-sharp, detail saturated photos are the ideal subject for such quality printing. I just wonder if I had one of his prints and placed it next to the same printed photo in the book would the difference be immediately apparent? I think 'Urban Landscapes' will become one of my favorite books and with Patterson II it's clear that George Tice has, over several decades, continued to take remarkable photos of American commonplace. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | American Byzantium: Photographs of Las Vegas (University of Arizona Southwest Center Book) | |
| "Saturated pop-culture" | 2008-03-23 |
| A disappointing book, least to me, because I found the photos too broad in the coverage. Having looked through it several times I thought it kept on verging on one of those picture books found in tourist shops with titles 'A book to remember her by'. It really is a mixed bag. The photos I liked best were those that showed the non-tourist parts of the city: the huge pole billboards along the highway, small retail units, decaying buildings and street scenes but turn a page and there's a spread of the interior of The Forum or maybe the characters in the Museum of Magic and Movies. This really should have been two books. One a photo survey of the exuberant (and vulgar) hotels and casinos, interior and exterior and book two the rest of Vegas. I would definitely go for the second and Hancock has shown with the photos in this book that he has an eye for interesting compositions and subject matter. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Housebuilding: A Do-It-Yourself Guide | |
| "Step-by-step" | 2008-02-21 |
| Put 'House Building' into Amazon Advance Search and you'll end up with over eight thousand titles, make it one word and you'll get a more manageable fifty plus. This book is one of the fifty and at the Amazon price for 702 pages I think this is an impressive buy. Luckily for the family I'm not going to attempt to build my own. I bought the book essentially for reference: I wanted something that explains (and reveals through Tom Webster's brilliant illustrations) how a home is constructed. The twenty-nine chapters cover it all in what appears to be the basics for each area. If I was to built it myself though I reckon I would have a look at books covering some specific tasks like: framing, drywalls, flooring, plumbing or electrics. The author wisely recommends that for plumbing and electrics professionals are hired. Other books I've seen about house building and DIY use photos to explain things. This book uses very attractive illustrations (nearly 800) which visually do a better job than photos and with the two column format all the information is very accessible. Perhaps it would have been better to include some sidebars about specific things: an illustration showing the range of nails and screws used, types of sandpaper and tapes etc. For my reference needs I'm very impressed with this book. I'll be keeping it next to Francis Ching's classic Building Construction Illustrated. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Americans in Kodachrome 1945-1965 | |
| "Snapping Art" | 2008-01-22 |
| Most families collection of photos, either black and white prints or transparencies can assume mythic status if they are the only visual record of past their history. Even beat up, creased and torn images rightly become treasured possessions to be passed from one generation to the next.
The usual criteria for judging photographs obviously don't apply in the family setting but remove images from that setting and I think it's reasonable to take a more critical look at what you see and it is here I think many recent snapshot books fail. They display too many out of focus, badly composed and dull photos and perhaps the greatest fault: too many images that show people or situations that are just too personal to those involved to mean anything to an outsider. Fortunately 'Americans in Kodachrome' avoid most of these pitfalls and presents some quite remarkable content rich photographs. The ones I thought worked best capture everyday events and pull you into the image. Photos forty-five and six show a 1964 street parade and a 1947 flag raising (both possibly July fourth?) or photos eighty-nine and ninety showing a family portrait from 1960 and another family sitting in the kitchen having a meal. The detail in these four photos is fascinating and most of the book's images have this amount of interest. There are some duds in my opinion: photo sixty-nine of at teenager eating a watermelon, taken at night is not worth a second look. Photo twenty-six of a baby boy's face with a huge bone in his mouth clearly means a lot to whoever took it but virtually nothing to outsiders who might see it. Another reason I like this book is because the photos are presented in a formal photobook setting with one large image per page (in 175dpi) generous margins and a one line caption. Other snapshot books I've seen go for picture book look implying that the contents really are no more than 'snaps'. Fifteen photos from the book appeared in the exhibition Close to Home at the Los Angeles Getty Museum and appeared in the book of the exhibition where they were presented with many black and white photos in a rather messy picture book format. They just didn't have the same appeal and stature as they did in `Americans in Kodachrome'. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Spiffy Kitchen Collectibles | |
| "My ma had one of those" | 2008-01-07 |
| What a delightful slice of Americana. I'm interested in mid-century America especially suburban living and this book captures a little bit of this so well. Look through the pages and it's clear that the author (and publisher) have taken some editorial effort to produce an interesting book. I was particularly pleased to see that this is not the usual dull looking, badly designed collectors book, full of amateur snaps of objects sitting on a table with several presented on the page as square photos. The thirty-eight chapters probably include every popular kitchen gadget available at the time (all nicely presented as cutouts though missing light grey shadow effect that really would have completed each image) but nicely there are included period magazine covers, ads, pages from manufactures brochures and other graphics. Another thing I liked about the book is the addition of the packaging the utensils came in showing the design and typography, predictably lacking in any graphic design but showing vibrant colors and in fact anything to catch the housewife's eye while on the store shelf. An ideal book for collectors and because of the way it has been editorially produced it will have instant nostalgia appeal and interest anyone who wants to know how folks lived a few decades ago. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Modern: The Modern Movement in Britain | |
| "Medieval Modernism" | 2007-10-11 |
| What really made this book sparkle for me were the wonderful contemporary photos of the houses by Morley von Sternberg. The (mostly) dazzling white of so many of these properties set against greenery and a blue sky makes them look quite remarkable.
Throughout the book the up-to-date photos seamlessly blend in with period images, floor plans and Alan Powers excellent text. His introduction is a concise overview of 1930 to 1940 Modernism in Britain and then the bulk of the book is a comprehensive listing of the architects who designed these fascinating buildings. The majority are homes with commercial and public buildings making up the total. Each architect, or practice, has some general text then long captions to each of their buildings. Nicely some one had the bright idea of putting all the historic reference notes about each house with the relevant architect so no flipping backwards and forwards to back pages. Not every existing Modern building in Britain is covered but surely the relevant ones are included here. Buildings no longer standing get a mention like Pleydell-Bouverie's wing shaped Ramsgate aerodrome or Emberton's Blackpool Fun House. Another book The Modern House Today has much photo duplication with Powers book but has some other homes displayed with the same dazzling photography. 'Modern' is well printed (175dpi) and beautifully designed by Karen Wilks and with Alan Powers fine text the short-lived Modern movement in Britain gets a reference book it deserves. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Color Is Power | |
| "Pass my sunglasses" | 2007-10-09 |
| You really get your money's worth with Robert Walker's photography. Throughout the book so many photos are packed with extra dimensions and depth as well possibly cropping them into several images and I haven't even got to the dazzling color. Fortunately he works on city streets where everything is going on at once and somehow he manages to capture this visual busyness (or chaos even). I think his best photos are the ones where utility workers and equipment or traffic provide plenty of odd angles and pictures within pictures. Of the six chapters only one: Redeem All (more or less in the middle of the book) slows the pace by using photos that are much simpler and in more subdued color. The other chapters, it seems to me, just blend into each other so that the chapter titles seem rather redundant. The color vibrancy of these photos might not be everybody's taste but that is his style and you could never say his work is dull. I consider him the LeRoy Neiman of photography. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | A Spirit of Progress: Art Deco Architecture in Australia | |
| "Delightful Deco dumbed-down" | 2007-09-09 |
| This will most likely be the regarded as the standard work on Deco architecture in Australia if only for Roy Lumby's superb essay in the first sixty-four pages. He manages to pull all the various Deco themes and personalities together so that the reader is left with an understanding of how this particular architectural style evolved across the country. The bulk of the book uses the excellent color photography (and frequent attractive hand tinting) of Patrick Van Daele. Fortunately as he took all the photos the book has an evenness of color and style which combined with captions make the images work so well. Incidentally the captions provide a lot more information than the name of the building and location. This is as far as my praise goes though owing to the book's production which is sadly lacking because of an excess of white space and some thoughtless editorial direction. The main problem is that so many of Van Daele's photos have been reduced in size because of some designer's whimsy, leaving empty page space in abundance. A pity because as I've said these are cracking photos. Not only are so many of them too small but where they occur several to a page the captions have the silly convention of directions: top, left, middle center, bottom right but made all the more useless because each caption has a plate number and this repeated under each photo would have been all that was needed to tie the photo to the caption. The book's typography uses the very appropriate period typeface Futura but again thoughtless design does the reader no favors. The caption text is in a very light weight, similarly the bibliography and index will have readers straining to read anything in a domestic lighting environment because of tiny type size and thinness. My tip: read this book only in daylight! I find it very frustrating when a book's first class text and images are devalued because of unprofessional design which contributes to a lack of editorial clarity. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Typographic Communications Today | |
| "Just your type" | 2007-08-26 |
| In the early eighties Aaron Burns, boss of the International Typeface Corporation suggested to Ed Gottschall the idea for this book. It was published in 1989 which will give you an idea of how long this monumental type study took to produce. To sum up twentieth century typography in one book would seem a project too far but I think Ed Gottschall has succeeded. He has managed to capture the typographic feel of Europe in the early years of the last century and then brought it up to date (least to the mid-eighties) with typography in America, Europe and the Far East. Incidentally the early years include the inputs of European fine arts and the Bauhaus. The book is actually in three parts, the history of typographic design to Seventies then there is a long section dealing with actual typefaces and the beginnings of computer setting followed by the final section on typographic design from 1970. It is basically a visual book, handsomely designed by Mo Lebowitz, with hundreds of color and black and white illustrations. I think it is worth saying that this is not a design problem solving book in the practical sense but a stimulating history of type and how designers used letterforms to communicate ideas. If you work in the creative design areas of print this book will certainly interest you. Incidentally it's worth searching around the web for some inexpensive copies of the book. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Mitch Epstein: Family Business | |
| "Trade off" | 2007-08-12 |
| I found Mitch Epstein's book a fascinating attempt to extend a book of his photos into a mixed-media experience. The material was readily available: the failure of the family furniture store and property rental business in declining Holyoke (just north of Springfield, Massachusetts) and closer to home the tensions between the Epstein family and others.
The potential for a great photobook almost comes off. Certainly there are some stunning photos, especially portraits of the Epstein family and professional folk in Holyoke and the location shots of the town show what a grim place it has turned into. Epstein's photos have a richness of color and detail that is impressive. Where the book fails for me is the mediocre attempt at mixing photos, graphics and text into a seamless whole. The main text is on fifteen pages in the front of the book and it looks very dull, no photos or graphics to backup the words. A few other equally dull looking text pages occur throughout the book. The few archive graphic images (a furniture flyer for the store, a letter, a scribbled note from a sales conference, an expenses sheet) are presented flat on the page rather than used in any creative way. Where the photos and text work well are a few pages of video images and captions showing Epstein's dad dealing with evicted tenants on a winter's night. The credits say that Mitch Epstein did the design and layout, I think he is he is a much better photographer than publication designer. Family Business is beautifully printed (175dpi) and it's a shame that these great photos lack the extra graphic material and presentation that would have made an intriguing and fresh statement about commerce and family relationships in America today. ***FOR A LOOK INSIDE click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
 | Just Above the Mantelpiece: Mass-Market Masterpieces | |
| "Wide-eyed kitsch" | 2007-07-31 |
| You'll be wide-eyed with amazement at the comprehensiveness of Wayne Hemingway's book. Page after page of real pop art. This stuff sold in the millions and some of it probably still is. Mainly seen from a British and Continental perspective, so no poker playing dogs by CM Coolidge, the book rightly kicks off in the fifties with the king of kitsch Vladimir Tretchikoff and his painted ladies and then meanders through crying boys, street urchins, doe-eyed pets and ends with what I thought was nice touch, the British poster company Athena in the late eighties. Despite the fact that these paintings were very popular with the working class as far as I can see very few of the artists are particularly good. Being popular does not equate with professionalism for this market segment. None of them seem to have the draughtsmanship of, for example, Norman Rockwell or Charles Wysocki. These pop art reproductions probably sold in their millions because they displayed the right sort of sentimental image and were pre-framed and cheap, obviously the perfect buy. The book is a pop art production itself I thought. Many of the pages use eighties wallpaper as a background for the text and paintings and someone had the bright idea of tipping in several of the paintings as removal prints (though I wonder how many book owners removed them?) so you'll be able to have your own gallery above the mantelpiece. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover. | ||
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