American Photography 19

Rating:
Summary: Photo Lover¿s Delight - If You Can Tolerate the Book Design
Review: Like the previous books in the American Photography series, this one presents the winners in an open juried competition. The photos had to have been published or taken in 2002. Only those "selected" photos with a majority vote of the six-person panel were reproduced in the book; those "chosen" with two votes are only on a Web site.

I am not fond of several aspects of this book. First, the designers have apparently decreed that there shall be no unused space on any of the pages. Therefore, you see on the right side of some pages a duplicate of the left side of the photograph on the next page, and you see on the left side of some pages a duplicate of the right side of the photograph on the preceding page. I find this distracting rather than artful. Second, many of the photos are turned sideways. This causes you to have to frequently rotate the 6-pound, 9"x12"x1" book 90 degrees to no good purpose. Third, the placement of the (sideways) captions in a section after the plates requires you to flip back and rotate to discover the significance of some scenes. A good example is the set of Sicilian mummies by Paolo Ventura which is confusing without the caption. I would have preferred captions next to the images. Fourth, two jury members (Harris, Ryan) were editors for some of the photos in the book, and one jury member (Crewdson) shot some of the photos in the book. It's not clear that they recused themselves from voting on their own work. Finally, I do not like the inclusion of obvious digital photo illustrations or of video captures (as in "key frame[] from the video... of people reacting to Ground Zero World Trade Center site" on the book's cover). To me these are not really still photography.

Nevertheless, this book has a number of extraordinary photographs, all reproduced in a large format. Besides the 9/11-related pictures, among the most remarkable are the following. In photo 63 by Henrik Knudsen ("Pool") we see the back of a man standing in the water with a woman's hands around his back (it's ambiguous whether he is loving or killing her). Hans Neleman in photo 110 (from a "Body Transformed" project that apparently has yet to be published) shows a nude woman who has burns on her shoulder and some markings on her back and who is lying in a chair; it's reminiscent of an oil painting. Photo 147 of Fredrik Broden depicts two chairs in a "suggestive pose." Rodney Smith's photo 232 has a woman doing a painting on a canvas of her own back ("even the blind people can draw"). Beach volleyball has a completely new look in photo 238 by Claudio Edinger. The portrait of the really strong young boy with a samurai sword by Danielle Levitt (which Amazon has chosen for the graphic on this page) is found large and sideways as photo 311, but is not on the cover.

You'll find a lot to like about the book. Buy it at Amazon.com!

BTW Number 1, here's a quick rundown of the previous four years of American Photography.

#18 (2002, cow saying "cheese" on the cover, but Amazon graphic is a painted portrait of a Taliban soldier with sunglasses): The best design of the bunch. Photos grouped into sections such as "sexxx," "2by2" (animals), and "911"; interesting juxtapositions of work by different photogs on facing pages. Don't have to rotate the book to read captions.

#17 (2001, ketchup packet on the cover, but Amazon graphic is a computer classroom): Notable for some photos whose meanings are quite obscure, sometimes due to inadequate captions (e.g., per a Web site #297 by Ron Haviv is a photo of a photo of a Muslim family that was methodically defaced presumably by Serbs, but this is not stated in the book). Captions are sideways.

#16 (2000, toy car on stove burner on the cover, but Amazon graphic is two children at a pool): Great photographs by Gilles Peress, Larry Sultan, and others, but I'm not sure why Ariko Inaoka got eight pages. Don't have to rotate the book to read captions.

#15 (1999, multi-colored vertical stripe on the cover, but Amazon graphic is a baseball player): Some attention-grabbing abstract, conceptual, and experimental shots. Captions are sideways.

BTW Number 2, some photogs get published in AP year after year. Here's my list of those who had "selected" photos in #17 of 2001, #18 of 2002, and #19 of 2003: Josef Astor, Nelson Bakerman, Chris Buck, Craig Cutler, Jim Erickson, Larry Fink, Katy Grannan, Lauren Greenfield, Kyoko Hamada, Mark Heithoff, Antonin Kratochvil, Hugh Kretschmer, Catherine Ledner, Robbie McClaran, Greg Miller, Frank W. Ockenfels 3, Platon, Martin Schoeller, Mark Seliger, Derek Shapton, Taryn Simon, Peggy Sirota, David Harry Stewart, David Strick, Michael Waring, and Dan Winters.