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Buitengewoon mooie portretten, vol empathie. RIP Céline.

When it comes to colonialism, I’ve come to a point where I’m pretty much only interested in hearing from the colonized people’s perspective. This book is about the Indonesian Banda islands and their tragic and bloody downfall over nutmeg. Two Indonesian journalists travel to the islands and wander around, visiting sites, taking pictures and listening to locals. The combination of text and photography marries the past with the present in a lovely effective way. It’s a format that reminds me a bit of the great W.G. Sebald. There’s a refreshing lack of agenda here, just empathy for the islands and their story.

Not a reissue of Paris mortel, but rather a book about it. It contains photographs of the published book’s spreads, of the final dummy version and previously unpublished photos. For what it is, it is beautifully done. But as a newcomer to this work, I would have preferred seeing a reissue of Paris mortel (currently prohibitive to get) in order to fully appreciate the photos.

A magnificent travelogue from Van der Elsken. The book’s massive size and the gritty, deep black printing give the photos a monumental quality, but the vivid, empathetic commentary keeps it highly personal.

A gorgeous photobook that manages to thoughtfully capture the duality and brutality of LA. The sequencing in particular is incredibly well done.

Impressive adaptation of an iconic story. A few things I liked less about Golding’s novel were the repetitive dialogue and the action was at times tricky to follow. The dialogue is now kept to a minimum and replaced with efficient (and beautiful) visual storytelling. The one downside to this is that the narrative tempo is high and because of that the story ultimately doesn’t hit quite as hard as the original. But it’s a very complimentary read and a great accomplishment from De Jongh.