What to get? WHAT TO GET?!! If you’re like us, you still haven’t done most of your holiday shopping. Baaaad consumer. Well, OK: here’s some help. We asked a bunch of Fotologgers, and other fine Fotolog friends, to weigh in with recommendations of their favorite things from 2006.
Books, movies, cameras, toys, whatever! The only criterion was that they be photography, art, or design-related. And boy did they step up to the plate. So now we’ve got twelve great ideas, and there are still twelve more days till Christmas! See you in the bookstores—or at the online checkout counter. —along
Burtynsky – China, by Edward Burtynsky (Steidl Publishing)
There’s nothing quite like seeing Edward Burtynsky’s large-scale photographs in person. A year ago, when the Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibited a selection of his photos, I wanted to explore every detail of his landscapes, losing myself in the scale of the otherworldly nickel tailings of his native Canada. Though I’d fallen in love with Burtynsky’s ravaged world in Manufactured Landscapes (National Gallery of Canada/Yale University Press), that book felt a bit like a memento. That’s what makes China such a delight: it somehow transcends the scale of Burtynsky’s original prints. Instead of lurking in all the intricacies—or wishing I could—I’m constantly struck by the patterns. It’s an extraordinary experience, since Burtynsky’s China photographs are not just feats of environmental documentation—of the Three Gorges Dam and massive recycling projects—like those that have marked his devotion to the quarries, ore tailings, and shipbreakings that we leave on the planet. Revisiting the book, I’m still discovering the echoes and essential humanity of the disappearing old towns (the single clay building in a modern cityscape), the waves and waves of people manufacturing identical goods. A poignant and powerful book, it’s made me hungry for a copy of Sze Tsung Leong’s complementary view, History Images, (also from Steidl). Ahem, Santa? —Robin Dennis; ribena
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| Posted By along on December 13, 2006 in Daily F'log Holiday List | Permalink Comments (11) |
