In Focus: National Geographic greatest portraits

I has always wanted to buy this book from Amazon, but it is so heavy that even a semi-giant like Quốc Anh didn’t want to bring it back. Finally bought it last December when Borders sold it off at only sixteen bucks (Kino is still selling it at a high and mighty price of sixty bucks). Read it today, and glad that i didn’t pay more.

The book illustrates a history of National Geographic portrait style: from posing exotic girls to spontaneous humans. So most photographs in early ages (3/4 of the book) are boring. Probably they’re better in the context of their articles and their time. Things get better in the last 100 pages, but not many interesting images (just a matter of taste). But when they’re, they’re really striking. One example is this photo of a Afghan woman in red veil, carrying a bird cage (page 278).

Or this famous photo of a Afghan girl in refugee camp in Pakistan (page 354):

This is a face that is in your face. What manner of question or emotion is behind the look of those eyes? She may be looking at the photographer, but she seems to be looking at all of us, and knows who we are… My God, her eyes! They are green, and for some reason you don’t expect them to be so green; they are so intense they seem to be almost looking through you, not at you…” (William Albert Allard, p.317)

The only 2 reasons to buy the book are that these photos look much better in bigger size, and the accompanied writing is good.

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