What Matters: The World's Preeminent Photojournalists and Thinkers Depict Essential Issues of Our...

What Matters: The World's Preeminent Photojournalists and Thinkers Depict Essential Issues of Our Time | David Elliot Cohen | Chicago Tribune Book Review 9/6/08

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What Matters: The ...

	What Matters: The World's Preeminent Photojournalists and Thinkers Depict Essential Issues of Our Time David Elliot Cohen Sterling, 2008 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

For more than a century, photography has revealed truths, exposed lies, advanced the public discourse, and inspired people to demand change. Socially conscious pioneers with cameras transformed the world?and that legacy lives on in this eye-opening, thought-provoking, and (we hope) action-inducing book. Like Jacob Riis?s How the Other Half Lives, Rachel Carson?s Silent Spring, and Jonathan Schell?s The Fate of the Earth before it, we believe that What Matters will fundamentally alter the way we see and understand the human race and our planet.
What Matters asks: What are the essential issues of our time? What are the pictures that will spark public outrage and spur reform? The answer appears in 18 powerful, page-turning stories by the foremost photojournalists of our age, edited by The New York Times best-selling author/editor David Elliot Cohen (A Day in the Life and America 24/7 series), and featuring trenchant commentary from well-recognized experts and thinkers in appropriate fields. Photographer Gary Braasch and climate-change guru Bill McKibben provide ?A Global Warming Travelogue? that takes us from ice caves in Antarctica to smoke-spewing coal plants in Beijing. Brent Stirton and Peter A. Glick examine a ?Thirsty World,? chronicling the daily search for clean water in non-developed countries. James Nachtwey and bestselling poverty expert Jeffrey D. Sachs look at the causes of, and cures for, global poverty in ?The Bottom Billion.? Stephanie Sinclair and Judith Bruce present the preteen brides of Afghanistan, Nepal, and Ethiopia.
Sometimes the juxtaposition of photographs can be startling: ?Shop ?til We Drop,? Lauren Greenfield?s images of upscale consumer culture, starkly contrast with Shehzad Noorani?s ?Children of the Black Dust??child laborers in Bangladesh, their faces blackened with carbon dust from recycled batteries.
The combination of compelling photographs and insightful writing make this a highly relevant, widely discussed book bound to appeal to anyone concerned about the crucial issues shaping our world. What Matters is, in effect, a 336-page illustrated letter to the next American president about the issues that count. It will inspire readers to do their part?however small?to make a difference: to help, the volume includes extensive ?What You Can Do? sections with a menu of web links and effective actions readers can take now. This year give What Matters.

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The Still Image Still Matters

This book is a testament to a simple truth: the still photograph still matters. The stories here are carefully chosen to give the reader an intimate and truthful look at the most pressing issues of our time. The accompanying writing both complements and extends the story-telling ability of these images and the essays are excellent across the board, from Pulitzer-Prize winning author Samantha Power's passionate and vivid description of the genocide in Darfur to Jeffrey Sachs' story about a village in Malawi that accompanies James Nachtwey's images of poverty.

From a technical standpoint, the photographs are brilliantly reproduced and sequenced well, in a way that most poignantly and directly tells the story. This book is highly recommended both as a great read and a visual document of our times.

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Chicago Tribune Book Review 9/6/08

Hard to see, impossible to turn away
Issues and images combine in 'What Matters,' a powerful and passionate new book

By Michael Zajakowski
Chicago Tribune Book Review
September 6, 2008

Great documentary photojournalism, squeezed out of mainstream newspapers and magazines in an age of shrinking column inches, has had a hard time gaining traction in other venues. Although it has found new life on web sites and in books, the age of the topical visual long form is in remission.

But nobody has told the 18 photographers in "What Matters: The World's Preeminent Photojournalists and Thinkers Depict Essential Issues of Our Time."

These are photo essays by some of today's best photojournalists following the great tradition begun over a hundred years ago with the exposés of New York tenement life by Jacob Riis. Through the doggedness of these photographers--who are clearly committed to stirring us out of complacency--all the power and passion of the medium is evident in this book.

David Elliot Cohen, who co-created the famous "Day in the Life" series of photojournalism books, had a keen eye in selecting the photo essays and coupling each with cogent commentary from writers such as Samantha Power, professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government; Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and Columbia University professor; and Elizabeth C. Economy, director for Asian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The book is an engrossing journey from pristine wilderness to glittering Rodeo Drive boutiques with stops along the way focusing on genocide, global jidad, child labor and AIDS victims in Africa, to name a few.

In a provocative bit of editing, James Nachtwey's searing photo essay about global poverty, "The Bottom Billion," is jarringly followed by Lauren Greenfield's "Shop til We Drop," a vivid but embarrassing look at another extreme, which is only slightly less shameful than the first.

Some of the pieces will break your heart, some will anger you. All will make you think. To channel your thoughts and feelings into action, the book ends with an appendix "What You Can Do," offering hundreds of ways to be a part of the solution to these problems.

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The Globally-Aware Citizen: A Primer

The stories in this book could serve as a primer for being a globally-aware citizen in an evolving world. Despite the grim nature of some of these photos, the book's message is not one of despair, but of hope, as evidenced by the thorough "What You Can Do" section in the back.

Some of the most interesting work in the book is from photographers under most people's radar. Shehzad Noorani's Children of the Black Dust and Stephen Voss's Economic Miracle, Environmental Disaster both examine underreported issues with excellent photos and strong writing. The book's impact comes not just from the photographs, but the excellent writing that accompanies them. I highly recommend What Matters as a hard-hittng and opinionated book that is both journalistically-sound and passionate.

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Great Photos

A picture tells a story better than a thousand words. The author presents socially conscious photographs. i.e.

o 5 cent rental rooms in 1889
o a 1968 Saigon street execution
o inside an ice cave up North
o the dwindling Penguin population
o glacial changes in Athabasca and Pasterze
o windmill farms

Each photo is presented in breath-taking color. The volume is worth the price of admission.

Photos that make you think

I really have only glanced through the pictures so can't give an accurate review at this time.

reviews: page 1, 2

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