Customer Reviews

Kittens in the Sun

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

 

 

If you love cats, you will love this book. This photo essay is a beautiful collection of kittens. Not only is it cute, but the photography is truly a work of art.

I recommend all of Hans Silvester's books of cat photography. You get lots of photos and relatively little text, so they are perfect for those of us who just want to look at interesting, artistic photos of cats. Plus you get a glimpse of life in the Greek islands, so you can pretend you are enriching your mind while you ooh and aah at the images of furry felines. And if you read the text, you actually will learn about the cats and the people who share the islands with them.

Picked it up in the bookstore & couldn't put it down! What great pictures, I rushed home & ordered it from Amazon! : )

The book arrived in very good condition despite being poorly packaged, and having been folded in half by the postman to fit in my mailbox. It barely made it to me by the end of the month. I'll beware of this dealer in the future.

All of Hans Silvester's photography books of cats, dogs & kittens in the Greek Cyclades Islands are lovely examples of fine photography. As a fine art photographer myself, I respect Mr. Silvester's level of skill and artistry, and I find his other books very beautiful.

However, when I first became aware of his book about the cats and dogs, I was thoroughly dismayed by his choice of subject matter and the way he has chosen to portray the lives of these creatures as idyllic and carefree.

Having been to these Greek islands, I have learned firsthand that the large majority of these poor animals are ignored, injured, or mistreated by people there-anything but "respected." The photographer has omitted portraits of the true conditions for most of the stray dogs and cats in Greece-crippled, starving, dying of thirst, hurt or maimed, with the humans around them barely taking notice.

The full horror of the story was revealed to me by locals on the islands. Each year, the cats & dogs are allowed to breed uncontrolled, because tourists are fond of seeing the cute animals around town and on the beaches. At the end of each tourist season, as many of them as possible are rounded up and killed (I couldn't bear to learn how), until the following year when the ones that survived begin the cycle all over again. I found this same story on all the islands I visited, including Mykonos, and I was so appalled that I shortened my stay and left Greece altogether.

The situation is a tragedy, and my feeling, as a photographer and animal lover, is that Mr. Silvester should not be misrepresenting the conditions of the cats and dogs on these Greek islands, especially when it is for monetary gain. I hope animal lovers around the world will agree, and send a message to anyone who profits in any way from the suffering of these dogs and cats in the sun.

A better title for this book would be "Many nice images of felines in a picturesque european coastal town created by exposing thin sheets of chemical-covered paper to light".

Mostly cats, not that many true kittens in here, but still well-worth your thin, rectangular, monochromatic paper-cloth images of our past leaders.