Really, really Big.

‘Really, really Big’. Thus starts the introduction to this book of photographs by Lynn Davis, authored by Witold Rybczynski. Rybczynski’s 4 page introduction is alone worth the price of admission to this book, which features pictures of American Monuments – be they gas stations or the Lincoln Memorial – all in gently printed monochrome. The whole production reeks of class and presents the viewer with subtle images which let you do the thinking. Not that common in photo books where the images frequently scream for attention.

If your interests include architecture and fine photography then there is every reason to own this beautifully made book.

A fine collection by a master photographer.

Few artificial creations can equal the joy of a beautiful garden. And while Americans, as a whole, care little for lovely gardens – witness the bare minimum handkerchief of grass and a few tired drought resistant plants so common here – Sam Abell shows that beauty is to be found if you look, and Abell has been doing that with an expert’s eye for decades. And you don’t get published regularly in National Geographic for nothing.

I find the Japanese approach, which sees the garden as a thing of spiritual beauty, much preferable to the America minimum cost/dress-it-for-sale version. Or, for that matter, brown lawns decorated with beer cans in all those tract homes and subdivisions bought and lost by fraudsters, whom we will all be bailing out these next few years.

At last count my garden of some two acres had four lawns, three olive trees and some fifty other trees, both fruit bearing and decorative, and while I work mightily to keep it looking just so, it cannot compare to even the worst picture in this fine book.

If you like lovely gardens and landscapes beautifully rendered, with a serious hint of Eliot Porter thrown in, you will like this book. At $5.95 mine is a Depression Era special, rivaling the cost of a Big Mac and fries with none of the health implications. (Disclosure: I am long MacDonald’s stock – they may serve poisonous garbage but health and morality have nothing to do with stock selection).

Funny and in color!

So many photography books take themselves so seriously that it’s always a pleasure to come across one that is not only very funny, but is also in glorious, over-processed, high contrast color. All of which works well in this droll piece of work by Jeff Mermelstein.

Many of the candid pictures in ‘No Title Here’ are taken at places where people gather – shopping malls, beach parties, receptions – and Mermelstein’s eye is both incredibly fast and ever sardonic, with nary a hint of nastiness (the sort of thing that is constantly ‘in your face’ in the work of Robert Frank, for example).

$10 from your usual remaindered books place or even less from eBay’s Half.com – thanks to a reader for the tip. Much as I detest eBay’s questionable sales and business practices, a book is a book is a book, and a cheap book is always better.

Pure joy.

The undistilled, unalloyed pleasure of a new book is one that remains a perennial source of excitement. But until now I confess I have never opened a book with such an immense grin on my face as this one.

You see, the whole thing looks like a giant carton of cigarettes and you have to find the peel strip on the cellophane to get into the book – just like opening a pack. Then when you finally get the wrapper off, the book emerges from the box in much the same way a cigarette would. Brilliant!

Let’s get the moralizing out of the way, first. In no way is this piece remotely adulatory of one of the more dangerous drugs around. However, it’s a free country and if you want to smoke go ahead. I own cigarette stocks now and then so have at it. Your lungs are my dividend. Just don’t blow the smoke in my direction or exhale in my home.

This book is all about how cigarettes were the glamor accessory over much of the twentieth century in Western culture, especially in the movies. It also shows pictures of how tobacco became increasingly demonized as that century drew to a close and how inept the advertising to curb consumption of the addiction that is nicotine really was.

The photographs span the century as do the many graphic illustrations and there’s something for everyone her – great photography, skilled drawings, exceptional advertising. Too bad that the frisson one gets from peeling the cellophane wrapper can be enjoyed but once!

And when you have had enough, rush out and get Thank you for Smoking with the wonderful Aaron Eckhart as the tobacco industry lobbyist who could sell cigarettes to a terminal lung cancer victim. Wonderfully acted and very on topic for our image obsessed and sound bite fixated society with its negligible attention span.

Smoke away. Just don’t make me pay for your cancer and coronary.