Customer Reviews

Crafts of Mexico

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It's a big, heavy, impressive-looking book: nice cover, and the photography is generally quite good, but exasperatingly self-conscious. I have not yet read the book, I got it out of the library for visual inspiration, so this review is purely on its visual aspects. The Crafts of Mexico is filled with coquettish teases: beautiful full-page spreads of sections and close-ups of a piece of art, with no picture of its whole being. So you never know what it really looks like. I don't know where this style of 'artsy' photography came from, it's certainly not unique to this book, but it has no place in a chronicle of craft objects. The photography has no sense of its own craft and function, but instead competes against the crafts it presumes to present. Still, there are also many wonderful pictures of well-depicted crafts which make it a valuable contribution to the archives of Mexican crafts.
It's a book I wouldn't mind owning, but if I did I would be grumbling at the ego of the photographer every time I opened it.

Although this is not exactly what I expected, I am learning a lot, especially about textiles and the history of them. Well written and easy to understand.

Willie Bodrak