The Latin American Photobook [Hardcover]

If you are a fan of Fotografía Pública: Photography in Print 1919-1939 (2000), Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century (2001), The Photobook: A History, Vol. 1 (2004), The Photobook: A History - Volume 2 (2006), Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 70s (2009), and Swiss Photobooks from 1927 to the Present (2011), you'll like this informative and beautifully-printed book.

It focuses on 150 photography books that were created by photographers, designers, and writers who reside in Latin America and that were published between 1921 and 2009. The chapter titles are "Introduction," "A Book for the Twentieth Century," "Word and Image," "The City and the Book," "The Forgotten Ones" (on oppressed people, psychiatric hospitals, etc.), "Artists' Photobooks," "The Image as Text," "Turbulent Times," "Color," "and Contemporary Photobooks." There's a nice Appendix on six book designers (important for photobooks, but not discussed much in books on photobooks), as well as a bibliography listing other major books by the photographers mentioned.

Among the rare (i.e., expensive and nearly-impossible-to-find) books discussed are: Buenos Aires: Visión Fotográfica by Horacio Coppola (1937); Fotografías by Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1945); Molino Verde by Agustin Jiménez (1932); El Rectangulo en la Mano by Sergio Larrain (1963); Paranóia by Roberto Piva (1963); Viagem Pelo Fantástico by Boris Kossoy (1971); Sistema Nervioso by Barbara Brändli (1975); Amazônia by Claudia Andujar and George Love (1978); Fotografías by Fernell Franco (1983); Retromundo by Paolo Gasparini (1986); and Silent Book by Miguel Rio Branco (1997).

Fortunately, some of the books discussed are readily available for purchase at a reasonable price, either in original or reprint form. These include América: un Viaje a Través de la Injusticia by Enrique Bostelmann (1970) and Para Verte Mejor, América Latina by Paolo Gasparini (1972), both in The Protest Box: Protest on Paper, and the latter in other reprint editions; Daniela Rossell: Ricas y Famosas: Mexico 1994-2001 (2002); the English translation of Lucha Libre by Lourdes Grobet (2005); and Lima Perú edited by Mario Testino (2007).

For almost all the books, several page spreads are reproduced at a large enough size for the reader to get a good appreciation of the book. My only minor criticisms, not enough to warrant losing a star over, are: (1) the page numbers are in the "gutter" (near the spine) which make them difficult to find, (2) the Introduction rambles a bit, and (3) the index does not include book names, so if (for example) you know that the title of a book is "Pasos por Buenos Aires" but didn't know its author (Laura Quilici), you might have to flip through the entire book to find it. Buy this from Amazon.com!

As the editors admit, this book has been made following the successes of Martin Parr`s The Photobook 1 + 2 . Out came a necessary and well done volume describing 150 books by native or resident latin american photographers.
It demonstrates an astonishing similarity of photographic approaches to social, artistic and political questions in Europe or in South America. What is chique and a la mode seems to be pandemic.
To the lover and collector of photographic books it gives lovely ideas for further search and hunting.

Must have for people interested in Latin American photography. Although the book is incomplete in some areas it covers the most important photo books to come out in the region.

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