Radical Eye: The Photography of Miron Zownir

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing, Haunting, Overall a Brilliant Book
Review: Miron Zownir photographs those whose lives have already ended while their bodies continue to live. Lost souls desperately searching for love and meaning in the urban decay of Berlin, New York and Moskau are captured in the constant glow of the photographers twilight. Clearly not a book for the young, or the timid. Though never explicitly offensive, Miron Zownir photographs with an unblinking eye, where most of us turn our heads and wince. The picture of the stumbling fat man brings me near to tears. While the lost souls of life have been the medium in which many photographers wade, it seems as if only Zownir takes the viewer to a place where it is possible to actually drown. So startling are the images that after spending some time with them they visit me as nightmares, and when I awake from his images I do so with a sense of tremendous sadeness. From that point, I can only wish for happiness. No other book can claim such praise in my life. A very spiritual work. <<< Warning: should never be given as a gift to anyone not familiar with his work, and should be kept far out of the reaches of children, the child-like and innocent.>>>

Rating:
Summary: Radical pictures for radical eyes
Review: Miron Zownir's odyssé into the darker sides of humanity is extremely intrigueing. He shows us a world that we often prefer to believe does not exist. From New York and Berlin in the early eighties to the purgatory of post-communist Eastern Europe. Homeless people, drug abusers, handicapped people, transexuals, cruising homosexuals and prostitutes (and their activities) are his subject. In stark black and white photographs, with no info except date and location, he tells the story of the marginal people. The ones who don't fit in, the ones who never communicate with us normal, well fed, happy people. As the foreword claims, this is a modern Dante's inferno. But at the same time there is a compassion for Zownir's subjects, a compassion that has resulted in this great book. Radical Eye is so uncommercial, that one must believe that this is a labour of love on Zownir's part. It really makes you think.