è infinito ...

Over the past months I have regularly added new items to my collection of photobooks. Here are some of the more interesting books:

• Boris Mikhailov - Unfinished Dissertation: this was a recommendation by Lorenzo Castore. I had come across Mikhailov earlier this year when visiting the Twilight exhibition in the V&A, London. I was very impressed by his series "At Dusk". "Unfinished Dissertation" is a slightly earlier work, started in 1984 when the Soviet Union was still a reality. It's a strange book, unlike any other I have seen. A hefty tome, it comes in a fairly large format, printed on a very vulgar stock of paper. On the right hand side we have what looks like facsimile pages torn from a family album, almost invariably with two pictures glued in and supplemented with handwritten comments (in cyrillic). On the left hand side there is an english translation of these comments. The pictures are ostensibly mundane. The book is shot in the vernacular. But who has read Dostojevski and Bulgakov will recognise that typically Russian/Soviet penchant for the burlesque. The comments are startlingly interesting. Haiku-like, they seem to plumb philosophical depths: "When I photograph I often, as if by chance, glimpse back", or "The quantity of things not done per square kilometer still remains the main characteristic of Russia in time." There are many more of these gems. It's a book that warrants repeated study. But that is not a burden. 

• Boris Mikhailov - At Dusk/By the Ground: this is a diptych that comes in simple cardboard slipcase. The books are hard to find. Emma, the shop assistant at Koenig Books on Charing Cross Road was so kind to look up a set in the remaining stock at Walter Koenig's. I was very happy to be able to lay hands on them. Both volumes were shot in the years following upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most pictures are from Mikhailov's home town Kharkov. All were taken with an Horizon swing lens panorama camera (" ... the main advantage of this camera is that it does not moralise, but lists everything seen horizontally and to a certain extent scans the area.") In "Dusk" all pictures have been very crudely toned in cyano-blue (the blue of search lights against a dark blue sky). It's social documentary photography at its most confrontational: stark images of a collapsing society. People are lying about, vomiting, boozing, scavenging, dying. But there are images of a supreme, almost painful lyricism too. "By the Ground" is somewhat more easier to stomach. Here the toning is unabashedly sepia. Pictures were shot during the fourth year of the transformation of Russian society. Still, here too Mikhailov doesn't put on the gloves when he wields his Horizon on the streets of Kharkov. A superb collection. 

• Michael Ackerman - End Time City: I had never heard of Ackerman before my photo workshop in Tuscany. But people spoke so glowingly about him that he has to be a remarkable person. I picked up this phenomenal book of his in a second-hand bookshop for a mere 10 euro. It's largely dedicated to the city of Benares, where many Indians come to die. A mixture of formats: square, panoramic (also Horizon), and the usual 2:3 format. The style is hard-hitting and visceral, very much in the vein of Lorenzo Castore and also of Mikhailov. Stark contrasts, exploding grain, blurriness, vignetting, extreme close-ups: it's all part of Ackerman's game. You sense he has deeply burrowed in the city's skin. Ackerman: "Classic reportage photography, with its beginning - middle - end narrative is completely boring to me. It lacks something so essential. Yet work done by certain photographers who have that restlessness, that feeling of not belonging, like Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, Leon Levinstein, Josef Koudelka, for example, I find fascinating. It is open ended. The more I look, the more I see. For me it is important to show what life feels like, not what it looks like ..."

• Masao Yamamoto - é: this is Japanese aestheticism at its most precious, worlds apart, it seems to me, from the no holds barred ethos espoused by Ackerman and Mikhailov. I was drawn to Yamamoto by Marko Hehl, who is deep into japanese photography. No doubt this is an interesting photographer. Every one of his books is conceived as a collector's item: an idiosyncratic concept (a book as a scroll, the pillow book, a book in a box, etc), top notch workmanship, a limited edition. As a an approach I find it immensely attractive. To date, I have only one book from Yamamoto: "é" has been published by Nazraeli Press in 2005. A mere 42 pages, it comes in an oversized format, printed on a superb stock of Japanese paper. The layout of the book is striking: most of the pages are largely white, with small vignettes strewn almost haphazardly around. The pictures are a mixture of all kinds of things: scenes of nature, still life, nudes, ... Photographically I remain a little bit unsatisfied by this book. There are wonderful things - striking the right balance between a sense of wonder and delicacy - but also pictures which seem a just a trifle facile. All in all I find that the packaging promises more than what is inside. It's a little bit like the Bilbao Guggenheim: the building is so stupendous that it dwarfs whatever art is on display inside.

• David Jimenez - Infinito: strange little book that I picked up in a second-hand bookshop. There is no text at all. It starts in medias res. Only on the back cover the name of the photographer appears, in tiny letters. Wonderful. The concept is striking. Pictures are double pages, but the spreads are sewn on top of one another so that every photo is in two parts. You have to puzzle them back together. Interestingly, each half works also on its own, however cryptic it may seem. The style is not "artistic". There's the restlessness we also find in Castore and Ackerman. The edges are rough, but not as painfully so as with the latter two photographers. I don't know where the unity in this book is. Pictures seem to come from all over the place. Not sure where the title refers to either. I guess I will have to find out myself. 

I have a few more books but will keep them for another time.