Century [Hardcover]

Bruce Bernard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 23, 1999

A visual history of the 20th century, the photographs in this volume cover events which range from the hard history of politics to new inventions, the arts, society and fashion. The images have been drawn from international agencies such as Life, Magnum, Picture Post and Stern. The book is divided into six chronological sections corresponding to significant historical moments. Each section opens with a short historical overview which introduces the main concerns during the period covered. There is also a selection of quotations which capture the flavour of the period covered. There are extended captions at the end of each section providing historical information about each photograph.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The impact of photography, with its permutations and manipulations, has created incredible images of human hope and suffering throughout the 20th century. Inured as readers may be to the sights of our age, anyone who leafs through the astonishing chronicle that is Bruce Bernard's Century cannot fail to be impressed and moved by this vast visual document of the past 100 years. Weighing in at around 10 pounds and containing more than 1,000 photographs, this significant document of 100 years of human history displays Bernard's 30 years of experience as a picture editor with the Sunday Times Magazine.

Divided into six sections--1899-1914, High Hopes and Recklessness; 1914-33, Self-Inflicted Wounds Remain Infected; 1933-45, Rise and Fall of the Unspeakable; 1945-65, Atomic Truce Walks a Tightrope; 1965-85, Vietnam to the Moon to Soviet Collapse; and 1985-99, Chaos and Hope on a Burdened Planet--with accompanying text and quotations, Century presents an average of 10 images for each year, from the banal to the brilliant. In 1921 readers witness Claude Monet overseeing his glorious water-lily gardens. Next to that is an image of starving children in the Russian famine that followed the end of World War I. The young Princess Elizabeth walks her corgi in London's Hyde Park in 1934, while the facing page shows the moment of King Alexander I's assassination in Marseilles. American GIs laugh with girls on a German beach in 1946--a couple of pages on from the then recently revealed horrors of the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Three decades later, sees the Sex Pistols inaugurating the era of punk rock, while anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko lies murdered by police in his South African jail cell. By turns harrowing and humorous, Century is a magnificent photographic testament to 100 years of human advancement, futility, acts of heroism, and episodes of unspeakable cruelty. The book ends on a note of hope with a still from a 1999 German production of Beethoven's opera Fidelio, a triumph of goodness over evil. It is nonetheless difficult to erase the preceding image of refugees fleeing Kosovo in the same month and the same year--history's hour of darkness come round once more. --Catherine Taylor, Amazon.co.uk

From Library Journal

Starting like a salute to art photography (Atget, L?rtigue, Kert?sz) and ending like a gruesome history of photojournalism (with the full-color disasters in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Columbine), this enormous collection of 20th-century pictures has no triumphalist or revisionist point to make. In fact, British picture editor Bernard brings nothing but his rather random eye to this loose, arty representation of our inspiring and brutal century. The book's shallow captions range from the credulous ("Mistrustful Alabama patrolmen watching African-Americans intent on racial integration") to the ridiculous ("US Marines waiting to embark for Korea. The image could move us to wish themAand their enemiesAwell." What?). But the book does average an impressive ten photos per annum, many of them spectacular, grisly, or moving. The year 1934 matches the historical pairs of Riefenstahl and Hitler and Bonnie and Clyde. More sensationally, a murdered young Brazilian transvestite appears opposite a bare-breasted Italian porn star for 1987, and Nixon and Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican convention are paired with a picture of a Korean guerrilla's severed head. Why? Because they are allAlynching victims, shelled children, or movie starsAmerely contextless images with which Bernard plays visual games. Over the long haul, this handsome, scattered book's equality of violent and arty images reduces both to a numbing sameness. Recommended for larger libraries with the shelf space and the budget.ANathan Ward, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1120 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press; First Edition edition (September 23, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714838489
• ISBN-13: 978-0714838489
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 10.7 x 4.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #635,457 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book for Teachers and Students alike, December 7, 1999

By 

Paul Jolly (Sebastopol, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Century (Hardcover)

This is an immense photo-retrospective of the last 100 years. I am continually impressed by the choice of pictures; most are new to my eyes, rather than mere reprints of old LIFE pics and such. The commentary, while brief, is poignant and humble. I use many of the photos in my U.S. and World History classes and the students (high school) are captivated by them. One note to bear in mind: this book focuses primarily on European influence around the world and war and its effects. People looking for a cultural/historical study of non-Western people will probably find more useful information elsewhere. That aside, this is a spectacular and intelligently collected volume of photographs, more deserving of a place on the shelf than the coffee table.

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful surprise, December 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Century (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful book. I was very pleasently surprised at the quality and scope of the photographs. I have only browsed through it but I'm looking forward to many repeat trips through its pages.

A couple of small problems do not detract from the work as a whole. First, the captions for the pictures are printed in a light gray. This may make it difficult for some people to read. On the other hand, it keeps your attention on the photograph.

Second, some captions are not accurate. For example, a Hubble telescope photo of gas clouds in space claims that our universe (sic) could fit in them 50 times. The writer probably meant "solar system" or "galaxy", but not universe.

Finally, please note that there are many disturbing images in this book. If you have pre-high school age children you may want to supervise their perusal of the book or, at a minimum, be on hand to answer the hard questions that come up.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget the banalities of other picture books, this is it., October 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Century (Hardcover)

For a unique historical perspective, never have I viewed a finer book. "Century" prints the pictures we haven't seen 100 times before. And it does so in context. Difficult to put down. Excellent.