| Abstract: | Abstract The coffee-table is where Faces looks as if it belongs. A weighty package of 540 expensively produced pages, with 380 duo-tone reproductions, the book exudes a familiar slickness. But, as often with photographs themselves, the surface impression misleads. Ben Maddow's text is no mere accompaniment to the pictures. Winding among the landmarks of photographic history, the text vies in interest with the images; the text too is an artful performance. This alone gives this otherwise overproduced book high marks. Intelligent and interesting (let alone artful) writing about photographs, especially in the presence of images powerful enough to threaten speech with the charge of impertinence, is rare indeed. Novelist, poet, film maker, Maddow here undertakes ‘a narrative history’ of faces in photography, and while the history itself holds no surprises, the sheer facility and alertness of the writing keeps the text always slightly ahead of the pictures The writing dominates the book, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, and that is a welcome change in photography publications. |
