CRITICAL MASS 2005 BOOK AWARD WINNERS
 |
Findings Order |
Hiroshi Watanabe’s gorgeous monograph “Findings” shows, in a subtle and elegant way, small stories of daily life in far-flung corners of the world such as Ecuador, Japan, Burma, Iceland, and Tahiti. In these images, seemingly simple, Watanabe’s wisdom emerges without visual complications.
“These are honest and direct pictures; they bear a heavy silence, and are uncomplicated, singular ideas. These words invite a closer look uncompromised by time. They suggest a meditation that can bring to the surface what could otherwise have remained hidden — that opening in the sky beyond the child and his maze, and what it can mean.”
- Anthony Bannon, George Eastman House Director
Hardbound, 64 pages, 57 photographs
 |
Cage Call: Life in the Hard Rock Mining Belt Order |
“Cage Call: Life in the Hard Rock Mining Belt,” documents the people, land, and work in the mining region of Northern Canada. From quiet landscapes of the surrounding areas, to haunting portraits of the miners, to dramatic, shadowy images inside the shaft, Palu’s images simultaneously tell the humanistic stories of miners, their wives, and communities, as well as those of the industry, history, and tension between labor and enterprise. Identity, community, life, death, all swept together in the folds of light and shadow within Palu’s photographs.
“These images relate to a photographic tradition pioneered by Leslie Sheddon in Nova Scotia, Russell Lee in West Virginia, Bill Brandt in Wales, and Sebastiao Salgado in his more recent images of South American miners. Palu’s mining project also has strong links with Steve McQueen’s video Western Deep, shot in a South African gold mine.”
- Bill Jefferies, Director Simon Fraser University Art Gallery
Softbound, 64 pages, 48 photographs, text by Charles Anguss
 |
Perfectible Worlds Order |
“Perfectible Worlds” is about people’s private passions and obsessions. Begun soon after 9/11/01, the series portrays people transported into worlds and activities over which they have near-total control. The photographs range from portraits of some who make extravagant miniature worlds, to others who have extraordinary collections or who immerse themselves in unusual pursuits. Each photograph is the discovery of a particular world an individual has found or created for himself — a private world that few are privileged to see.
“Sohier’s encounter with the marvelous takes us deep into private terrain, into a world of near-obsessive collections, hobbies, adornments, achievements, and attentions to detail. Her images register a desire for perfection and control in a world that — more often than not of late — seems to have slipped into chaos, destined for political and environmental ruin.”
- John Beardsley, Harvard University
Softbound, 64 pages, 58 photographs
CRITICAL MASS 2006 BOOKS
Nick Cave once sang, “All things move toward their end.” Icebergs give the impression of doing just that, in their individual way much as humans do; they have been created of unique conditions and shaped by their environments to live a brief life in a manner solely their own....The Last Iceberg chronicles just a handful of the many thousands of icebergs that are currently headed to their end. I approach the images of icebergs as portraits of individuals, much like family photos of my ancestors. I seek a moment in their life in which they convey their unique personality, some connection to our own experience and a glimpse of their soul which endures. These images were made in both the Arctic regions of Svalbard, Greenland, Iceland and Antarctica. - Camille Seaman It is difficult to interpret the poignancy of Sesaman’s images. This is where the ice leaves off and some mysterious craft begins. There is a numinous and extraordinary presence in this work, the difference between nature and photography and art...we see through Camille’s eyes entities in the gloaming light. - Paul Hawken Hardbound, 64 pages, 29 photographs |
||
| | ||
Amy Stein crafts photographic allegories set simultaneously in a number of different liminal spaces. Her sure and realistic color works manifest the place where the human-built meets the wild, but in addition they show us where the factual descriptive image meets fiction. Despite their apparent realism, her images are posed and constructed, sometimes using models and taxidermy props, sometimes using the bodies of dead or living animals to re-create, record and perform actual events that occurred in the small Pennsylvania town of Matamoras. What at first appears to be a series of photojournalistic decisive moments is revealed, at a second look, to be a powerfully imagined vision that establishes its strength through its very artificiality. (Stein’s images) are used as a means to manifest and examine the human condition and the state of the planet, while never abandoning the essential groundedness of her informants, and the realities of their specific tales. - Alison Nordström, George Eastman House Curator Softbound, 64 pages, 25 photographs |
||
| | ||
These photographs were taken over three years, in the region of Chernobyl, Ukraine – some 20 years after the nuclear reactor incident of April 26, 1986. That first morning, as the plume of radioactive debris fell across the land and into the rest of Europe, the authorities evacuated the city of Pripyat and created a 40-kilometer Exclusion Zone around it. The 50,000 residents had fifteen minutes to leave, and never returned. Today a ring of silent fire surrounds these pine woods and abandoned apartment buildings. People are not supposed to live here; wild boars, rabbits and deer thrive in the lush greenery. Even the steppe wolves have returned. Don Weber began visiting this region, because he wanted to see what was there. He had little interest in theories of history, or root causes. His question was simple: What was daily life actually like, in a post-nuclear world? - Larry Frolick Softbound, 64 pages, 60 photographs |
||
| |
CRITICAL MASS 2007 BOOKS
Sternbach makes her photographs in tintype, a labor-intensive technique little changed since it’s invention in the 1850s. Spontaneous and unpredictable, the streaks and tonal variations in the finished photographs reflect their hand-made character, the corners rubbed where they were held in the camera. Posing on rocky outcrops, in front of uprooted trees, or on thick mats of woody flotsam, Sternbach’s surfers inhabit strange landscapes. The best of Sternbach’s photographs convey insistent longing. They are about relationships – the relationship between surfer and board, between human and landscape, between photographer and subject, and between the surfers themselves...she has discovered a new sort of home – a place without walls, defined only by belonging and the physicality of existence. - Philip Prodger, Curator of Photography, Peabody Essex Museum Hardbound, 80 pages, 52 photographs, cloth/embossed image on cover |
||
| | ||
|
CRITICAL MASS 2008 BOOKS (in development)
, GUARDIANS
, MÁZE
, COLOR FALLS DOWN
photolucida.org