In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Photographs

Amazon.com
Through the years, National Geographic magazine's staff photographers have often elevated stock depictions of "exotic" cultures into haunting glimpses of other lives. In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits presents a century of captivating images of ordinary people from around the world--280 photographs of pleasure, grief, stoicism, shyness and sheer endurance. In thoughtful essays, five photographers frankly assess changing notions of authenticity and discuss their own methods of capturing a stranger's personality on the run. In the beginning, the magazine showed people stiffly posed in their native costumes, viewed as anthropological specimens. Advances in camera technology created a greater degree of intimacy and spontaneity. Then came color film, which ushered in an era dominated by corny themes and perkily posed subjects in brightly hued clothing. The 1970s marked a new honesty in portraiture, a willingness to go beyond the superficial to investigate the small moments that make up daily life everywhere. In Focus draws upon the magazine's complete archives to raise intriguing questions about how editorial choices help define our understanding of the world. For example, in 1981, National Geographic published Sam Abell's elegiac portrait of Rosa--the last of the Yahgan Indians of Terra del Fuego--wreathed in atmospheric smoke against a dark background, in the stately tradition of Edward S. Curtis. We also see one of Abell's unpublished photos of Rosa in her modest home, grimacing as she stands in the blue light of her TV, next to a poster commemorating the restoration of Chile's constitution in 1980. The gallery of portraits in this splendid book includes many memorable faces, from the unnerving grin of the Wodaabe tribesman in Niger (who wears colorful makeup as part of a courtship ritual) to the sunny self-possession of a child in Murmansk who holds up four tiny fingers to indicate her age. Beautiful women abound--they have helped sell the magazine from its earliest days. As the decades go by, people everywhere seem more at ease being photographed. But they remain as fascinating as ever, perhaps because we'll never know what they were thinking when the shutter clicked. —Cathy Curtis

From Publishers Weekly
The prickly political implications of portrait photography are perhaps at their most evident in this hefty (seven pounds) and gorgeously glossy compilation of work by National Geographic photographers. As the frank essays by such photographers as Sam Abell, Jodie Jobb and William Albert Allard beginning each chapter reveal, behind the unthreatening National Geographic cameras lenses, often less-than-admirable mechanisms were at work. Stuart Franklin writes of the editorial pressure on photographers to provide "pictures of pretty girls" to the point where "hundreds of bare-breasted women, all from poorer countries, were published at a time of booming subscription rates." Editor Bendavid-Val writes of National Geographic's propensity for avoiding controversial issues at home in the United States; turmoil has been less thorny to document in faraway places. "The emotional distance was easy to maintain in an age when communication was cumbersome and long-distance travel was uncommon." Still, a photograph of thieves' severed heads on a billboard in China, or even the photograph "Afghan Girl," published in 1985 and arguably National Geographic's most well-known photograph, pierce through this self-imposed emotional shield. Beyond the isolationism and voyeurism is something oddly moving about this collection of 280-plus portraits: it forms a giant mosaic of American identity, a self-portrait composed of how we look at others. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
National Geographic Greatest Portraits tells the story of portrait photography through the eyes-and words-of five accomplished National Geographic photographers. The book showcases images never-before-seen alongside award-winning favorites. New and fascinating text reveals photographers' individual experiences photographing people and their evaluation of NG portraits produced during each decade-from the late-19th century until today. National Geographic Greatest Portraits opens with a beautiful and surprising look at National Geographic's contribution to the knowledge of the world's peoples through photography. Five chapters follow, each spanning approximately two decades and covering an era in world history and photographic style. The chapters are: Before 1930 (Exploring the power of photography), 1930s-1940s (The Great Depression and World War II), 1950s-1960s (Bright colors and perky smiles), 1970s-1980s (Back to realism), 1990s-Present (Everything is relative). Each of these chapters is a portrait of the world.


Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices

The prickly political implications of portrait photography are perhaps at their most evident in this hefty (seven pounds) and gorgeously glossy compilation of work by National Geographic photographers. As the frank essays by such photographers as Sam Abell, Jodie Jobb and William Albert Allard beginning each chapter reveal, behind the unthreatening National Geographic cameras lenses, often less-than-admirable mechanisms were at work. Stuart Franklin writes of the editorial pressure on photographers to provide "pictures of pretty girls" to the point where "hundreds of bare-breasted women, all from poorer countries, were published at a time of booming subscription rates." Editor Bendavid-Val writes of National Geographic's propensity for avoiding controversial issues at home in the United States; turmoil has been less thorny to document in faraway places. "The emotional distance was easy to maintain in an age when communication was cumbersome and long-distance travel was uncommon." Still, a photograph of thieves' severed heads on a billboard in China, or even the photograph "Afghan Girl," published in 1985 and arguably National Geographic's most well-known photograph, pierce through this self-imposed emotional shield. Beyond the isolationism and voyeurism is something oddly moving about this collection of 280-plus portraits: it forms a giant mosaic of American identity, a self-portrait composed of how we look at others. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices