1 comments about Propaganda and Dreams: Photographing the 1930s in the USSR and the US.

1. A fascinating photo study of how two nations used photography to push their own political agenda. Author Bendavid-Val sums it up as...'The moral Russian individual was called upon to yeild unselfishly to his people. Americans on the other hand believed that the individual had a basic right to act aggressively on his own behalf, to make his own future...'.
   
   The book starts with a super twenty-four pages of photos, each spread has a Soviet photo facing an American one, both dealing with the same subject, children, street scenes, farm workers, power stations, in a bar, shop windows etc. They do look very similar, least at first glance!
   
   The essence of the book are two portfolios of black and white photos, first the Soviets with seventy-seven then the Americans with seventy-four, they are mostly one to a page and beautifully printed.
   
   The author explains in an illustrated essay the thinking behind taking pictures for propaganda, this could turn out to be a bit of a hazard in the old Soviet Union where creative folk could become non-people as happened to photo-editor Lazar Mezhericher, declared a saboteur in 1937 and photographer Yakov Khalip who had the misfortune to take portraits of NKVD boss Nikolai Yezhov who vanished one fine day, also in 1937. Khalip's work was suddenly tainted!
   Incidentally 'The Commissar Vanishes' by David King is an interesting book about the falsification of photos in Stalin's Russia
   
   What the author does not cover is why the American photos are technically so much better than the Soviet ones. I assume this has to do with Roy Stryker's very tight shooting scripts that he made his photographers follow. Also the output of the FSA had to compete with commercial images from ad agencies and the like. The Soviet photographers would hardly have had to worry about such competition and so their photos were much more subjective and creative. Strangely a lot of the American photos were taken in the early forties, despite the book title refering to photography in the 1930s.
   
   Unfortunately there is no index or bibliography, which I would have expected.
   
   Leah Bendavid-Val is to be congratulated on producing an excellent book about documentary photogrphy during the 1930s. These photographs are some of the greatest ever taken.
   
   ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

No comments about The Very Best of Children's Book Illustration.

No comments about Mummies & Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt.

2 comments about The Pearl.

1. This book is absolutely beautiful. If pearls have a place in your heart, look no further. The book, especially for its price, is absolutely sumptious, from cover to cover.
   The design: classic.
   The art: thought-provoking, varied, and delicious.
   The text: interesting, relevant.
   And last but not least...
   THE PEARLS: perfect.

   Pearls deserve the royal treatment, and this book delivers unlike any other.




2. A gorgeous volume with neat historial and social notes. While some selections were a little on the bizarre side, this book gives a good foundation for the role this gem played for so many centuries. It is clearly a coffee table book, but delightfully delves into more substance than other books on the subject. At worst, it is a little thin on giving a full spectrum of cultures. At best, it is eye candy for many years to come.

No comments about American Dream: Collecting Richard Prince For 27 Years.

No comments about After the Photo-Secession: American Pictorial Photography, 1910-1955.

No comments about Mood River.

1 comments about Ramsay's British Diecast Model Toys Catalogue (Catalouge).

1. As soon as I can justify the very high cost of this book (almost $40) I will buy it and send a proper review. PW

1 comments about John Divola: Three Acts.

1. David Campany's essay provides a historian/photographer's background and perspective while critic Jan Tumlir's interview adds more depth to compliment the photo gathering of John Divola's Three Acts. Divola created these bodies of work over the course of the 1970s, pulling together the themes of Vandalism, LAX NAZ and Zuma created in condemned neighborhoods, urban settings, and through interplays between artist and subject. Destruction and change are documented in vivid black and white photos.

No comments about Interpreting Objects and Collections (Leicester Readers in Museum Studies).