Photo Book Reviews

Helen Levitt's book A Way of Seeing is, in my opinion, a must see when it comes to photography books. It reveals a diverse cast of human subjects all united by a common stage: the streets of New York. In this series, Levitt photographed in the bustling neighborhoods of Spanish Harlem, capturing the action of the youthful, the elderly, and nearly everyone in between.

Levitt seems to have understood the function of a book simply as a vehicle for exhibiting her photographs. The structure of her book is rather traditional. There are eighty six photographs in total. One black and white image appears on almost every page, ranging in size from 4x6 inches to 8x10 inches and all surrounded by the page's thick, white frame. What proves most interesting about the book's construction is the connection between photographs on opposite pages. Some appear obvious, such as the presence of a cat in the periphery. Other relationships only surface after an intense investigation of the pictures. A great pairing occurs in pictures 32 and 33, unusually featured on the same page. In the top photo, a young masked boy points a gun toward someone outside the frame. In the bottom photo, three younger girls are running away, one in mid flight from towering, cement blocks. When pushed together, these two photos develop a small plot of the girls fleeing from danger depicted in the photo above.

Though Levitt's photographs gain another layer of complexity by setting them in relation to one another, each photo stands brilliantly on its own. In composing her frame, she includes not only interesting main characters, but also fascinating supporting details (such as a face in the window, a reflection, chalk writings, and pieces of architectural facades). Many of her photographs simultaneously convey a sense of natural, uninhibited interaction. I think that at least part of this "fly on the wall" perspective was made possible by a device she often attached to her Leica camera, which allowed her to look one way and shoot the other. Thus, some of her subjects truly did not realize that they were being documented. I sometimes wonder how some of these photographs might have looked if Levitt pointed her camera directly at the subject.

The Sweet Flypaper of Life by Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes is another photography book worth considering. In ninety six pages of black and white photographs, DeCarava's images in conjunction with Hughes' writing form a sequential narrative. Most of the images appeared quite small as anywhere from one to four pictures lay on a page. Many of them probably would have been better suited to larger reproductions. Every short piece of text is accompanied by a photograph to illustrate it, loosely and literally. Having introduced all the other characters in words and photographs, the fictional narrator of the story unveils herself in the very last picture. Overall, I appreciate the fact that not many books like this exist, and that only a few have really attempted to blend storytelling or literature with photography. It seems to be a daunting challenge to make the two media work together without one overpowering the other. Unfortunately, I think that the book did not succeed in this regard. I felt that the text and the photograph competed for the viewer's attention. Most of the time, I subconsciously privileged the caption by reading it first. The narrative's control over the interpretation of the pictures lessened my engagement with them. I found myself looking a little less closely at them because their meaning was pre-determined and spelled out for the audience.

Although Chris Marker's film La Jete also used photographs to reveal a narrative, he created a more successful balance between his photography and the story. Marker placed narration in the film sparingly, which left many periods of silence to look at the photographs and make one's own connections. The voiceover and other ambient sound, in place of subtitled text, helped the viewer to reconcile the imagery with the story and also consider them separately.

A third photo book of note is Eugene Atget's Unknown Paris, published by The New Press. TR647. A8. H35, 213 photographs