Customer Reviews

The Art of Seeing : The Best of Reuters Photography

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Let me start this review by saying that I am *not* a photojournalist. I am an art photographer, and unlike these people at Reuter, I take weeks or months to perfect a print when they need only hours (although I am limited my darkroom availability at my school). So, I was judging this book not as a photojournalist book, but as a serious art photography book, since that is what I know.

That being said, this is an EXCELLENT art phorography book. I picked up this book to look at in Borders after being fascinated by the cover photography, which is more of an art photograph than anything. It was absolutely beautiful, with human faces blocked by simle white masks, and only black in the abckround. I didn't know this was a photojournalist book, I thought it was art photography. So, being so in love with the cover, I sat down and looked through every single photograph. About 1/5 of the book is sports photography, and I am not at all into sports, so I didn't much like those sections, but the rest more than makes up for it.

All of these photographs are greatly crafted and precise technically. There are beautiful ones like the one on the front, hillarious ones, ones that look unbelievable (I'm thinking of one with a skelton model about 50 feet high raised out of the water in a lake looking at a huge "book of life" that's actually an opera stage. I thought it was a digital piece of art at first!). The best, and most moving photographs in this book however are the war photographs. These are very, very hard to look at, but they show you what war is really like, the things you don't see in the regular news media. You see bodies burned so taht the yellow fat and muscles show. You see a body hunched over a railing with almost all of his back blown off and scattered about him, where you can see straight into the empty cavity of his back. You see a man shotting another man in a gutter. These are not fun to look at, but tehy are important, give such impact that the breath is knocked out of you several times.

This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is one of the best photography books I have seen. And to pay $[money]for a 200 page hardback is a real deal. Buy this book, if you can stomach teh ahrsh war photographs you won't regret it! And even if you can't, there's plenty of other, easy to view, excellent photographs.

i am not an art student i was looking for a book as a coffee table conversation piece. everyone who has ever see this book can not believe how they never seen or heard of it before. if you are looking for a book of photographs that speak a thousand words, then this is for you. it is nice to have in your office or home a true hidden treasure.

an excellent photojournalist book with a very good edit