The Soth is blogging again at The Little Brown Mushroom Blog and has declared Riley & His Story by Monica Haller to be the book of the year. Here’s a video he made:
It’s great to have blogs dedicated to photography books, because I love to buy a few each year but my office is no longer near Photo Eye or the MOMA bookstore like they once were so it’s difficult to make a decision what to buy.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for posting. I think that the book looks very interesting.
Another photographer who is his own critic. Just to make sure the viewer won’t think it’s “just photos” he’s looking at. Roland Barthes turns in his grave.
I will invest some of my time and money into this book. There are droves of people that don’t see the world as it is because they only see it through a small portal. The portal may be the town they live in, their job, the news channel or news paper and magazines they read. They don’t know what it is like to see what reall war is like, what death is like, what life is like for so many people.
I lived in the south for several years and I had a rude awakening to the reality of life. I thought everyone lived in decent homes not matter where you were in the U.S. Not so, I saw homes with burlap sacks or flow sack as window coverings, walls and no insulation. no running water inside, toilet facilities of the 1800′s in the back yard.
The point is, to criticize someone elses work without having seen the whole of it is walking through life blind, not really experiencing the intention of the work. If it needs a small or large explanation so be it, especially of it gets you connected with the work.
If I hadn’t read this post and viewed the video, I would have never known about or had the intent to purchase the book. So self promotion and marketing is the way to go. I doubt anyone is rolling over in their grave.
Happy New Year everyone.
Image and art books are like cerebral dining experiences.
The footage of the reading of the cover and the Q&A looks really creepy, like one of those taliban videos….
I completely respect Soth and his work/opinions, and will probably seek out the book, but I found the text, especially read out loud, insufferable. While it’s interesting for an artist to edit Iraq war veteran’s photos into a book, why does it need such heavy-handed context? “Art can be a series of acts and challenges”?
If she doesn’t feel the photos themselves communicate enough, given the freedom to edit nearly 500 pages of them, maybe photography is the wrong medium for her message.
@wade, Thank you, you nailed it. I’m sorry but in this format it was the authors imotional view and in need of an objective edit.
Best Book Review!
sorry “emotional”
This book is indeed massively interesting!