Luca Zanier: Power Book

In this truly stunning book, photographer Luca Zanier, born 1966, offers us his view of the interior life of the power industry. We get to see pictures of the inside of nuclear power plants, gasworks, thermal power stations, an oil storage tank, an oil tanker etc.

The photos are aesthetically marvellous, the handling of angles and light captivating. Moreover, the format (27 x 37 cm) in which they are presented contributes considerably to the sense of wonder that the viewer will experience when looking at these pics.

To me, it felt like being in a science fiction movie. Without the captions (in the appendix) I would not have known that I was looking at parts of energy producing systems. What came to mind was Matthew B. Crawford's observation (in Shop Class as Soulcraft) that in our modern world we increasingly get less and less to see of the interior of complex machines.

Luca Zanier does show us such interiors. The effect his photographs had on me was however not so much educational but, strangely enough, rather made me feel like being on another planet.

There are two texts that accompany this impressive tome, one by André Küttel, the other by Bill Kouwenhoven. Küttel writes: "Abandoned worlds of concrete and steel reveal themselves to us, cathedrals of the modern age, temples of an energy devouring society that radiate a cold logic." I do not share his view. Cathedrals and temples are places of public worship and power plants are not. In addition, I not only hope but assume that these power facilities are manned and not abandoned.

In sum: an aesthetically exquisite achievement.

Luca Zanier
Power Book
Benteli Verlags AG, Bern 2012
www.benteli.ch

London, Portrait of a City

What I first noticed when opening this book was the mention "Captions written by Barry Miles" on the title-page. I thought this extraordinary and most appropriate (for it is often the captions that define our looking at photographs) and felt already determined to like this work - and I did and do!

The pics in this tome are not only by luminaries such as Eve Arnold, David Bailey, Cecil Beaton, Erwin Bischof, and Bill Brandt but mostly by anonymous photographers whose shots convinced me as much as the ones of their well-known colleagues, and sometimes more. 

Photographs by E.O. Hoppé

I learned, among lots of other things, that, in 1837, when Queen Victoria started her long reign, "London was the biggest city in the world by some distance, and the industrial city of the 19th century; it was described as a 'new system of living. Yet this was just the start ..."

London, Portrait of a City follows a chronological concept. The first chapter covers the time from 1837 to 1901 (The Monster City), the second 1902 to 1938 (Modern Times), the third 1939 to 1959 (The Consequences of War), the fourth 1960 to 1981 (The Party and the Morning After), and the fifth 1982 to the present, however not including the riots of August 2011.

In addition, you will find brief biographies of the photographers, a section called 'Recommended Viewing' that mentions movies from Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up to Richard Eyre's Notes of a Scandal, followed by 'Recommended Listening' (I'm happy to report that David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars made it on the list), and by 'Recommended Reading' that includes a tome by one of my favourite authors (J.G. Ballard) that I so far hadn't come across (The Drowned World).

London, Portrait of a City is not only a book with an amazing variety of photographs, it is also an intelligently composed book - just have a look at the double-page spread above (the sailors were photographed by Thurston Hopkins, the nude woman by Bill Brandt).

In sum: compelling photos abound that invite you to make fascinating discoveries, lots of them!

Reuel Golden

London, Portrait of a City

Taschen, Cologne 2012

In den Wüsten der Erde

 Michael Martin, Jahrgang 1963, hat sich als Fotograf und Autor auf Wüsten spezialisiert. Seit seinem 17. Lebensjahr hat er 150 Wüstenreisen unternommen und darüber mehr als zwanzig Bücher veröffentlicht, lese ich im Klappentext. Seine Weltanschauung offenbart er im Vorwort: "Als einen unwiederbringlichen Verlust empfinde ich es, wenn traditionelle Kleidung durch europäische Altkleider ersetzt wird, wenn Gedichte, Lieder und Geschichten vergessen werden, wenn handwerkliche Fähigkeiten und ein verantwortungsvoller Umgang mit der Natur für immer verloren gehen." Ich selber sehe das etwas weniger eng, mich stört es manchmal überhaupt nicht, wenn gewisse Gedichte, Lieder und Geschichten vergessen werden. Und was die Traditionen angeht: ich bin nachgerade froh, dass wir da einiges haben hinter uns lassen können. Trotzdem: Michael Martins Grundhaltung ist mir sympathisch.

Wer etwas über fremde Kulturen erfahren will, soll seinen Hintern bewegen und in die Welt rausgehen. Tut er das, wird er möglicherweise zu ähnlichen Schlüssen kommen wie Michael Martin: "In den Zelten und Jurten der Nomaden wurde ich herzlich, vorurteilsfrei und selbstlos aufgenommen. Die in den Medien immer wieder beschriebenen Gräben zwischen den Kulturen empfand ich bei diesen Begegnungen nie als unüberwindbar."

Die Bilder in diesem Band sind toll, die Legenden dazu (wenn vorhanden) von der üblichen Einfaltslosigkeit, die für Fotobücher so recht eigentlich charakteristisch ist. Als Beispiel möge die wunderbar gelungene Aufnahme eines Jungen und eines Mädchens, das eine Taube mit ihren Händen umfasst (Seiten 96 und 97), dienen. Die Legende dazu lautet: "Kinder mit Taube". Aha. Hilfreicher wäre gewesen, dem Leser zu sagen, wann und wo und unter welchen Umständen das Foto zustande gekommen ist.

Inspirierter zeigt sich Michael Martin bei den Geschichten, die er erzählt. Wie er etwa in Mali, 1985 war das, von einer Blinddarmentzündung heimgesucht wurde und es dann, nach Besichtigung von zwei örtlichen Kliniken, vorzog, in München operiert zu werden. Oder wie er, 1987, mit seinem Wagen auf Schienen durch die Wüste fuhr.

Ganz erstaunt war ich, in diesem Band auch von einer Reise nach Island zu lesen - dass es Eiswüsten gibt, war mir nicht bekannt. Auch von edaphischen Wüsten hatte ich noch nie gehört: "Neben Trockenheit und Kälte gibt es aber noch eine dritte Ursache für Wüsten, nämlich die Beschaffenheit des Bodens. Solche Wüsten nennt man edaphische Wüsten. Dazu gehören Salzseen, die Lavawüsten im Hochland Islands oder die baumlose Kalkebene des Nullarbor Plain in Australien."

Fazit: ein auf vielfältige Weise (selbst ein Kapitel über Martins Kameraausrüstung fehlt nicht) anregendes Buch, das Lust macht, selber auf Entdeckungsreise zu gehen.

Michael Martin

30 Jahre Abenteuer

Unterwegs in den Wüsten der Erde

Malik / National Geographic

Piper Verlag, München 2012

The Eyes of War

Frederick Lennart Bentley  (United Kingdom, 1924)

"This book is made up of inescapable stories and unforgettable faces, which are largely unforgettable because those faces can no longer see anything thermselves", writes Cees Noteboom in his introduction. 

In 2004, Martin Roemers attended the D-Day commemoration in Normandy, France; he wanted to make portrait photographs of World War II veterans, one of these portraits was of Frederick Bentley whose story (blinded by a German grenade, left behind by his comrades, worked for thirty-three years as a mechanical engineer, inspecting machines by touch: "I had work, I married, and I had four children. I had a good life after the war") stayed with him and subsequently inspired this remarkable book.

It is not only the eyes that capture our attention, it is also the faces, faces that ressemble sculptures.

These men and women were photographed outside, sitting on a stool, against a black background. "A black background", writes Cees Noteboom, " is the same as no background at all, no distraction ...". Right, and so you look into faces that are images of a life. Some of them reminded me of death masks.

"It's easier to really look at someone in a photograph than in real life - no discomfort at meeting the other person's eye, no fear of being caught staring", writes A.M. Homes in 'The Mistress's Daughter'. I've always been very fond of this observation for it seemed so accurate. However, when looking into the faces of people who are blind I do sense, sometimes, a certain discomfort, it feels as if it is not right to look into their eyes.

Rudolf Söder (Germany, 1924)

Some of the portrayed have their eyes closed, others do not have eyes anymore. And because of that I seemed to ask myself more often than usual what was going through their minds. The brief texts that accompany the black-and-white photographs of The Eyes of War gave me a good idea of what the stories behind the pictures were. From Rudolf Söder I learn that he "didn't even want to be a soldier ... was sent to Russia", where fragments of an artillery grenade got into his eyes and blinded him.

Sieglinde Bartelsen (Germany, 1930)

Sieglinde Bartelsen was fourteen when she for the last time saw herself in the mirror. In November 1944, she became victim of a British bomb raid."The ophthalmologist told me that there was a hole in my retina and that I had to lie absolutely still. I needed an operation. An English ambulance took me to the hospital in Göttingen. The road was full of impact craters, which meant that I couldn't lie still. In the hospital, they weren't able to operate on my eye because it had been too badly damaged by the bumpy road."

A truly extraordinary tome!

Martin Roemers

The Eyes of War

Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2012