Carroll And Cannabis

Recently, I began to take apart my list of in-waiting books. My intention was to clear up some of the photography and art books (since I don’t usually do too much actual reading outside of the school term). I’m now currently on Africa [via Amazon], which is a book that I’m quite enamoured with right now, but there were two other books before that, books that I really enjoyed too, so I thought it would be a good idea to write this bit about them. Since I’m not a prolific review writer by any stretch of the imagination, I’ll try to keep this short. And I put in the links to the books to vendors merely for convenience; you might find them at better prices elsewhere.

The first of them is a book called Lewis Carroll, with text by Anne Higonnet. [via Amazon] Carroll, as you know, wrote Alice, but he was also one of the most prominent photographers of the Victorian era. This pretty volume collects his photography work with some handy descriptive captions for each plate by Higonnet. For me, it was initially quite surprising to see the complexity that Carroll worked into these photographs (I would surely have missed some of the visual metaphors had it not been for the text), but Carroll was after all a brilliant, brilliant man. There are striking portraits, celebrity faces and dashes of humour scattered throughout this quite unique book, and to top it off, it’s nicely bound and competently edited. In other words, it’s a book I found very pleasant to read and I think it’s a quite a pretty and special book to have on your shelves if photography and/or Lewis Carroll are among your likes.

The other book is a collection of art by anime artist (err, animeteur?) Tatsuyaki Tanaka called Cannabis Works. [via Play-Asia] If the name doesn’t ring a bell, then he’s been involved in things such as Akira (where I believe he animated the mutating arm) and the Genius Party Beyond (in which he did Tojin Kit). A quick Google search will yield some samples of his work. The book itself offers an excellent selection of some starkly beautiful images, full of cyberpunk dystopias and strange beasts. There’s a nice balance of full-colour portraits, sketches, storyboards, poster designs and the like. Overall, it resembles a pretty complete portfolio that ably represents Tanaka’s best design work. I haven’t quite liked a book of this nature since I fell in love with the Okami art book [temporarily out of stock via Amazon], actually. (Speaking of which, the Okami book is just one of those that I absolutely adore.) I was left wishing for some larger reproductions, actually, because the book is kind of small, but darn, the pictures are pretty enough as it is.

So, there you have it, two really pretty books that you can might want to consider. I think they’re probably a bit niche in their appeal (say, if you don’t like Lewis Carroll and Victorian photography, or if you don’t have the slightest interest in anime design), but if any of those things appeal to you, and you’re looking for something a little different to add to your shelves, then I humbly submit these two suggestions, fine books that I’m very happy to own.

Now back to the Salgado…

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