Customer Reviews

Phlogs: Journey to the Heart of the Human Predicament

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As an artist, I appreciate both the tangible details of this book, as well as it's visual aesthetic appeal and excellent photography. As a lover of the written word, I also give it props for written beauty.

This is on my coffee table and is unlike any of my other books filled with paintings or photographs...and I have several. The pages are a high-quality, high-gloss with black and white photographs that showcase high contrast images that pop of the large pages in the telling of this story. Even when removing the book jacket, the book is covered in black velvet and embossed with the book's name. It's aesthetically and tangibly beautiful.

The book offers short stories and poems that tell of a pilgrimage studying "a journey to the heart of the human predicament."

While the short tales adjacent to each photograph are enticing and entertaining, it is the photographs that made me love the book. As an art major in college many years ago, I had to choose two areas of emphasis. One was pottery and the other was photography. I can appreciate a good eye for a shot and a well-developed scene. They are. But I have also always loved texture. Textures pop off the page, graphic elements such as linear pipes adjacent to a square open darkened window on an old brick and stucco building that play with shadows and light...Bravo.

I am a lover of galleries and this allows me to have one sitting out at all times. While I have always had coffee table books closed in the past, I leave this open.

Every story relates, somehow, to the scene in the photograph adjacent to it, as does every poem.

Conclusion: While some may want the book for the good writing of short stories and poetry, I gotta say I breeze past them when I open these pages. The black and white photos are of excellent quality...and that, for me, is the true artistry of the book. And this book is nothing short of a piece of art.

i hope more people have the pleasure of being exposed to this beautiful work of art. nicole is a gifted storyteller - her words and his photography play off one another and give the reader a rare glimpse at the extraordinary life of george stranahan.