Customer Reviews

The Enchanted Landscape: Photographs 1940-1975

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4 star:		(1)
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This is a wonderful visual history of china in the late Qing dynasty. It represents a wonderful era that few western eyes have really ever seen. The text is informative, and the beautiful sepia toned photos are truly stunning. If your even vaguely interested in this era of China's history, snap up this book now.

If you want to track down pricey Bullock 1st editions, you can probably end up with some quality books.

However, there is a lot to recommend this savvy, lovely book from Aperture. A quality piece of work: over-sized trade paperback, 199 pp, b&w images throughout, all images full page. Since this is a book from the 1990's, the level of reproduction here is quite good. There is an "Aperture Masters of Photography" Bullock book which I'd avoid. The format is too small for this photographer's work.

At any rate, here you get a wondrous accumulation of photos selected from 35 years of Bullock's work. All the important "child in the forest" images are here including the cover image which is elemental and strange and worthy of contemplation. However, this isn't just the landscapes. There are portraits, some character studies, and an image of puppeteers at work (!?!???) which is probably my favorite.

Aperture includes an Ursula Le Guin poem and some selections from Bullock's prose. Since Bullock was an unusually thoughtful and philosophical fellow, the prose bits of this book feel essential rather than obligatory. There's biographical information about the artist, a terrific five page essay about the artist, and a bibliography with list of exhibitions.

Really nice book, it has all the ingredients to make it a good book to have on your bookshelf.I highly recomend it to anyone interested in the subject, old china photographs are captivating and story telling plus the glosy paper and good quality printing make it a lovely coffetable book.