Customer Reviews

Signs and Relics

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A friend sent me this book as soon as it was published, so impressed was she by the honesty of its photographic vocabulary. She was right. I am now buying more copies as gifts to spread the word. As a writer and photographer interested in the philosophy of photography, I have been aware of Planchy's work for some time but nothing of hers I had seen before quite prepared me for this. There is really nothing to compare it with. It is what everyone interested in photography needs to know. Gone is any traditional hankering after "good" photography. I have often thought that photography has more in common with theatre than painting and Planchy shows it. In place of the artistic image is a celebration of people and things. She loves her subjects and she loves photography and this comes through in every image. She teaches us, in a joyous voice tinged with sadness and relieved by humour, that there are different ways of perceiving things. After this, a road will never seem the same again, nor something as simple as a chair. In sharing her vision Planchy takes us unwittingly back to the ancients and their first tentative attempts to answer questions about being and knowing. Photography has a pertinent role here which Planchy's work illustrates and, in doing so, provides proof that photography - drawing or dancing with light? - indeed has a place in the fast-forward future.

Photography books are expensive enough as it is, and the hardback makes 'Signs & Relics' an over-priced waste of money. It is grossly misleading for amazon, as well as the official Wenders website, to advertise this book as a Plachy and Wenders production. Wenders' only contribution is the foreword which consists about 200 words, a foreword in which he even admits that he only bought the book because he liked the title.