Amazon.com Review
Although the cover proclaims "award-winning images from the world's leading professional photo-journalists," the laurels in 2001 Nikon Press Awards all went to pictures snapped by men working for British media. Much of the material has a parochial flavor: local sports teams wreaking vengeance on the field, bland images of the royal family. It seems particularly bizarre for the world's most famous camera manufacturer to pursue such a limited segment of global picture-making. Still, there is some good work here. The standout is Tom Stoddart, who has a terrific eye for incongruity and heartbreak in everyday life--the heart of photo-journalism--and a fine sense of lighting and composition. His portfolio is strikingly diverse. Subjects range from a fat, slobbering British football fan gazing at the huge exposed breasts of an American porn star to the sticklike silhouette of a young Zambian AIDS victim being helped into a bathtub. Jon Levy's photo-essay on fox hunting, a hotly contested sport in the UK, offers multiple perspectives that allow the viewer to make the judgment call. In one image, a plaintive row of hunting dogs' heads hang out of the vehicle that will transport them to the hunt as two "huntsmen" in traditional white trousers and black jackets plod away to the meet. In another photo, steam rising off the horses creates a mysterious pocket of mist in the woods. Other noteworthy work includes a wry fashion shot by Peter MacDiarmid, capturing the quizzical expressions of two models wearing bizarre headgear in supersaturated colors. --Cathy Curtis
