Wavelengths to the Past

The Eternal Light of Egypt

by Sarite Sanders
Thames & Hudson (September 30, 2008)
220 pages/hardcover/126 duotone photographs/$50.00

Reviewed by Jain Lemos

Sarite Sanders issues the results of a thirty-year reconnaissance mission in her book, The Eternal Light of Egypt: A Photographic Journey. Conquering the sensitivity of infrared, Sanders’ impressions of Nile treasures are most welcoming. As the full gray spectrum is no longer hidden, gods and goddesses, mummies, rulers, colossi, temples and portals reveal a new likeness with prideful charm. Along with her timeless subjects, Sanders can rejoice with this mammoth personal and professional achievement.

Eternal Light is deeply rich in substance like the dark fertile soil of the region. There is an immediate admiration for Sanders’ understanding of the difficulties with the entire process surrounding infrared technique. In her excellent introduction, Dr. Dorothea Arnold, Curator for Egyptian Antiquities at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, compares and contrasts Sanders’ images with those of photographers Francis Frith, Werner Forman, Henri Stierlin and other artists obsessed with capturing the light of this ancient corridor. Arnold imparts her acute knowledge with tremendous care; her treatise provides a solution to the puzzles Sanders faced when selecting angles and points of focus.

There is much in the book to celebrate and discover. Discussing the images will be the first delight for readers. The photographs chosen for Eternal Light are not repetitive even when the same place is examined more than once. Quotations accompanying the images are inspiring rather than pretentious and create a perfect separate track. Instead of being filler they fittingly become the missing color channel. The back matter includes a lifetime study list of Egyptology within the sources of quotations, a picture index with edifying captions and Sanders’ adoring thanks as she reveals details of her own transformation.

Sanders waited—apparently without anxiety—to deliver Eternal Light. Her rewards deserve to be as massive as this undertaking. Likely, as she placed each piece together, she foresaw her work’s everlasting impact. Any trip to Egypt would be hollow without this special book as a primer. While there, don’t miss an exhibition of selections from The Eternal Light of Egypt hosted by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the American University in Cairo Press.

Magnificent Magnatismia

Animalia

by Henry Horenstein
Pond Press (June 30, 2008)
80 pages/hardcover/64 duotone photographs/$40.00

Reviewed by Jain Lemos

Professor Henry Horenstein remixes his acclaimed photographs of land and sea creatures, adding 35 unpublished images, into his latest book, Animalia. His parade of subjects in sepia marches with pride and precision though the lens and into the mind’s eye. As an artist, Horenstein connects humans to animals through emotional macro studies. As a scientist, he patiently waits to press the shutter on an unsuspecting world.

Photographed primarily from 1995 through 2001, Horenstein used captivity as his studio and laboratory, visiting zoos and aquariums rather than making solitary excursions into the wild. This environment provided him with a special auditory dimension as he worked. Comments from visitors such as, “Poor thing, she’s bored,” or “Doesn’t that monkey look like Uncle Ike?” spurred him on, proving that animals can be photographed to convey their own personalities.

The pacing of Animalia’s 64 duotones is steady yet relaxed. The animals appear in sharp focus, select focus, soft focus, then softer and back to crispy. Some of the pairings on spreads with left and right plates are clever. A dead mouse’s tail is within the grasp of a newt’s outstretched arm on the opposite page; a pig’s snout sniffs the smooth nose of a whale; the curled fingers of a monkey mimic the hooked claws of a bat. Assembled, the book has depth in every category of photography and design study.

Animalia is accompanying a traveling exhibition through the Harvard Museum of Natural History assuring large audiences and accolades for this master photographer and teacher. Don’t miss Horenstein’s extraordinary work in any accessible format.

A Corrosive Study

Time Passes

by Robert Adams
Thames & Hudson (April 2008)
100 pages/hardcover/32 tritone photographs/$40.00

Reviewed by Jain Lemos

Robert Adams, master of recording transforming topography, releases Time Passes this year in conjunction with his recent Paris exhibition, On the Edge. Most of the book’s 32 plates show extending seascapes conveying Adams’ meditation on what he terms transience. His endless hours watching the Northern Pacific tides, catching dancing light and rolling liquid, have produced straightforward and submersing stills.

At the first tossing of pages, many frames appear to be taken seconds apart and nearly identical. But returning and pausing—as though on a daily outing to the shore—each capture emerges as vastly unique. In one, there is a sense of drowning. In the next, a distant breaker brings promise. On another, an unexplainable yearning sets in, as though the ocean will deliver a long awaited answer. Maximizing the inadequate medium of a camera in his hands, he delivers a bystander view of the immeasurable.

Clearly the images in Time Passes are meant for museum and personal viewing in large format. Even then, matting and framing confine what we know Adams sees. And though the book is well crafted, in print form the restrictive knot is tied even tighter. Yet Adams once again proves his excellence. No matter the method provided for ingesting these impressions, their intimate impact and narrative significance about our changing landscape is engulfing.

No Style Left Behind

Mr Classic

by Jeremy Hackett, Photographs by Garda Tang
Thames & Hudson, May 2008
200 pages/hardcover/136 photographs/$40.00

Reviewed by Jain Lemos

Jeremy Hackett is Mr Classic. Having a clothing label for decades plus writing a column for the U.K.’s The Independent on Sunday are excellent platforms for influencing men’s fashion. But what decidedly earns Hackett this moniker is his talented facility for reviving the proper styles once worn by Britain’s aristocracy with modern practicality.

For his book, Mr Classic, London-based photographer Garda Tang shoots Hackett’s models with fitting technique. Every bow tie, every just-so lifted chin neatly accentuates Hackett’s vision of gentlemanly chic. The looks are respectable and refreshing, not stuffy or stagnant.

Mr Classic explains the nods and shakes over every outfit detail from shoe polish and floral prints to wearing “serious” cufflinks. Tang stages athletic, social, business, casual and seasonal occasions. He blends an original mix of old and new in his photographic coverage. A lad playing near a tire rubbish heap wears a navy blue newsboy cap, white button-down shirt and tan cuffed trousers that match both the Band-Aid on his hand and the tips of his slip-on sneakers. The shot is propped with a vintage model racing coupe in red, the color of his suspenders.

Among Tang’s black-and-white shots, a swimmer demonstrates how goggles pair nicely with belted shorts and no shirt; a pinstripe-suited businessman in a bus stop shelter wears his bowler smartly tipped while tapping on his laptop.

Tang’s flair for capturing the mood of each topic for Mr Classic is spot-on. When Hackett clarifies that a man’s pajamas are no giggling matter, Tang responds with an appealing interpretation. A yawning man with bedhead revealing a touch of his bare belly, appears perfectly fine in wrinkled PJs made of shirt linen fabric. Shown at his front door, he holds a metal basket with bottled milk and biscuits; opposite, a cat enjoys her morning meal from the window ledge. Cat-in-the-sill lace curtains crown the scene. The photo’s effect is a grin just short of a snigger.

With Mr Classic, Hackett’s amusing narrative and Tang’s spotless photographs seamlessly combine to create a rallying cry for the Sharp Dressed Man. The book eloquently hints that certain attire—such as those pilled, ankle-gathered sweatpants—will no longer do. Don’t be surprised if after undertaking this study, there is a compulsion to dust off the holiday tasseled loafers and go for a stroll. Maybe add a striped shirt for sport.

(Note: The author does not use punctuation when abbreviating Mr in the book. The publisher’s press release and other bookstore references do.)