Century mini format. 0000

Starting like a salute to art photography (Atget, L?rtigue, Kert?sz) and ending like a gruesome history of photojournalism (with the full-color disasters in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Columbine), this enormous collection of 20th-century pictures has no triumphalist or revisionist point to make. In fact, British picture editor Bernard brings nothing but his rather random eye to this loose, arty representation of our inspiring and brutal century. The book's shallow captions range from the credulous ('Mistrustful Alabama patrolmen watching African-Americans intent on racial integration') to the ridiculous ('US Marines waiting to embark for Korea. The image could move us to wish themAand their enemiesAwell."What?). But the book does average an impressive ten photos per annum, many of them spectacular, grisly, or moving. The year 1934 matches the historical pairs of Riefenstahl and Hitler and Bonnie and Clyde. More sensationally, a murdered young Brazilian transvestite appears opposite a bare-breasted Italian porn star for 1987, and Nixon and Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican convention are paired with a picture of a Korean guerrilla's severed head. Why? Because they are allAlynching victims, shelled children, or movie starsAmerely contextless images with which Bernard plays visual games. Over the long haul, this handsome, scattered book's equality of violent and arty images reduces both to a numbing sameness. Recommended for larger libraries with the shelf space and the budget.ANathan Ward,"Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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