Customer Reviews

Amazon: From the Floodplains to the Clouds

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

These photographs aren't illustrations of "life along the Amazon" -- they're powerful, intricate images from a photographer with an incredible eye. Webb shows you the strange landscapes that lurk under the surface of normal life -- magical, disturbing, beautiful, elusive -- and as he takes you up the river there are new mysteries on every page. The further upriver you go, the more bleak and frightening those mysteries become. A fascinating book from a very unusual photographer.

Mr. Webb's images reflect a sensitive photographer, a thinking photographer with a great eye. His graphic approach to documentary photography adds a wonderful artistic quality to the images.

The images bring me to the Amazon, the real Amazon with its beauty, danger, ugliness, etc.-- not the romanticized Amazon of just beautiful sceneries.

I showed this book to one of my photography instructors at the college I attend and we discussed how wonderful the use of color and composition is in Alex Webb's photography. He is an extremely insightful photographer. Many of the photos are so skillfully composed that they are almost like two or three photographs in one. This book is filled with "decisive moments" - similiar to Cartier-Bresson's approach to photography - but in beautiful color.

I'll never look at color photography in the same way after having seen Mr. Webb's work. I learned things from this book. And I am proud to own it.

Mr. Webb's powerful images take you to that place. I felt theheat and humidity, the lushness, the danger, the wonder and beauty,and the vastness of the Amazon--the same feelings and impressionsMarlow must have felt as he journeyed up the Congo river to find Mr. Kurtz.

Alex's book succeeds in creating a sense of place that goes beyond the 'eye candy' which most books on such themes are limited to. The first reviewer's comment about more river less people completely misses the point of a book like this. Anyone that wants eye candy should look elsewhere; Alex is a thoughtful and perceptive photography who makes the Amazon feel more like a fascinating place than a ride at disneyland.

This book has some beautiful images of the great river that capture its vastness, heat, humidity and atmosphere. A good addition to the Brazilian bookshelf, along with books like "The Brazilians" and "The Brazilian Sound."

see title

SERIOUSLY, FOR ALL THAT TIME AND ALL THAT FILM I THINK IT ISN'T THIS PHOTOGRAPHER'S BEST, ALTHOUGH IT'S PRETTY DAMN GOOD

this work is about light, color, composition, and one of the most interesting and mysterious places left on the planet. webb has winded his way through his now familiar terrain in central and south america, and produced one of the finest books of our time.

Pollution, poverty and a plague of people and animals are all richly illustrated. The river is mainly a backdrop.

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This is not a nature book!

Please note that for all intents and purposes there is not a single nature photograph in this entire collection!
There are only two and with little photographic value.
One on the first page and one on the last page.

There is not one picture of either animal, insect or plant.

As a photographer myself, I consider the pictures ok but not great(the people who live along the Amazon). Not worth the effort and expense of a journey along the great Amazon for such meagre photography.

And as I recall there are no photgraphs of any indeginous peoples
along the Amazon either(very dissapointing).

This is also an old book and the photographic print quality is not comparable to what might be published today.