by Herb Ritts
Edition: Hardcover
Price: $57.80
Reviewed by ChicagoLarry
Read the reviews trashing this book and you will see they are not based on how well this book accomplishes what it purports to do, but on a distaste for stereotyping all of Africa with the tribal images presented. But unless this book claims to depict all of Africa--which it doesn't--that complaint is entirely another subject. I suppose a title of, say, "Tribal Africa" might be more descriptive than just "Africa," but surely we are all smarter than that. The book is obviously about the one slice of Africa it depicts.
Those who for some reason are embarrassed by tribal Africa (apparently it's the nudity) don't seem to want anybody else to see any pictures of it, no matter how well done the presentation. It is as if they feel some kind of personal shame. But why?
Even one of the editorial reviews takes a jab, in an otherwise glowing review, saying: "...despite the fact that it is a wildly ahistorical album that revives troubling old National Geographic stereotypes." In other words, presumably, even though it depicts nudity. But how is that "wildly ahistorical"? What is "troubling" about the old N.G. photos? In spite of modernity's fast encroachment, vast areas of tribal life do still exist in Africa (I go there, I see it); so one has to ask those who get so embarrassed, is it okay to photograph with style anything else in the world, or any other people in the world, except Africans?
Beautiful books exist on American Indian culture today, and there are "glamorous" books on cowboys of the past; but no one would suggest these stereotype all Americans as Indians or cowboys. So why do people do it with books on Africa, even to the point of saying they are “a lie”? It's crazy!
As a photographer and a collector of coffee-table books on Africa, I value--not denigrate--this book by the late, great Herb Ritts for the very fact that it is different. And it is the best I've seen in the style Ritts chose. The pictures are not only extra large, but in high resolution with great clarity--some are just plain breathtaking. Personally, I'd have preferred the book to stick with either people or animals (people!), but the land is shared by both, and maybe that was a point Ritts intended to make. I'm shorting the book one star because I thought the composition and subject matter of the animal pictures didn't always match the high quality and wonderful composition of the people pictures—one of which now hangs on my wall after I purchased a second copy of the book for that purpose. (“Suitable for framing!”) No doubt the animal subjects were more difficult to manage!