Book Reviews

26 November 2011 - 19:42 By Nancy Richards & Paul Ash
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Coffee-Table Treasure & Pocket Treasures

COFFEE-TABLE TREASURE

. ORIGINS Song of Nooitgedacht, a remote valley in the Karoo, by Jennifer Gough-Cooper

Publisher: Wild Almond Press

Price: R499

"IT'S mind blowing to think that 250 million years ago an animal walked here and left prints, the whole valley is so very ancient. My idea was to use details of the landscape to evoke that sense of beginning, of light emerging."

It's taken photographer and art researcher Jennifer Gough-Cooper nine years to gather the material for Origins, a picture essay of a remote valley in the Karoo that she felt was way beyond imagination. Based in the UK, Gough-Cooper came back at least a dozen times to stay in and wander this spot, clambering over rocks and mountain sides in every season with her trusty 35mm Nikon to be sure to get the full spectrum of its moods.

She got to know the terrain intimately, each etched, pitted, lichen-patterned stone surface, rippled, pebbled riverbed - until the pictures clustered together in her mind like a melody.

In the book they're grouped using the colour themes of fire, air, rock and water and interspersed with sparse words, leaving the visuals to do the talking, though there are fuller reference notes at the back. Reflecting the enigma of the Karoo, in some cases it's hard to "read" the scale of the images - is it distance or detail? And does it matter?

So, what's an English art researcher doing shooting a South African desert? Since her first visit as a child of six, Gough-Cooper has never got this country out of her system. At one point, between doing extensive work on two major exhibitions on French artist Marcel Duchamp, she allowed herself a gap year here to work on a project for herself - the result was a series of black-and-white portraits of Kirstenbosch.

But once she was introduced to this "timeless" Karoo valley, she knew she'd found what she was really looking for. Why old-fashioned film?

"I love digital, it's very useful, but 35mm has an unmatchable quality - with just a zoom and a macro lens, it can say everything." The word fracking rears its head. She bristles. "I can see how people could look at the Karoo on a map and want to take advantage of its seeming barrenness - but it would be better to put energy into exploring it scientifically than to just go digging it up."  Nancy Richards

POCKET TREASURES 

. WALLPAPER CITY GUIDES: HONG KONG, PARIS, LONDON Publisher: Phaedon

Price: R80

WALLPAPER'S guides are billed as a discreet hot list, aimed at "the design-conscious traveller", a market which - judging by the ongoing success of these slim, pocket-sized books - seems to be quite large.

The guides are a spin-off of the magazine, which has long been a torchbearer for reporting on the world's best design in architecture, hotels, restaurants, clothes and urban living. So, this is not backpacker fodder - nothing as vulgar as, say, suggesting you avoid shelling out for the Louvre and visit free museums instead. No, these are guides for connoisseurs, boutique travel for boutique travellers. Expect beautiful pictures of beautiful buildings, hotels, shops, restaurants, clubs, museums and people.

All the guides have a fold-out skyline at the front, a fairly usable fold-out map and blank pages for notes at the back, and photographs - lots and lots of lovely pictures of each city's design icons. - Paul Ash

AND THEN THE FLIP SIDE

. ISTANBUL, ATHENS & THE GREEK ISLANDS: THE STUDENT TRAVEL GUIDE by Michal Labik and Elyssa Spitzer

Publisher: Let's Go

Price: R170

LET'S Go are the original travel guides for the cash-strapped, footloose American student adventurer. Printed on cheap paper and stuffed with facts, addresses, prices and travel information, they have been luring students out of the US (which is a good thing) and other countries for half a century. Apparently, they are all written by Harvard undergraduates, although it's not obvious why that is necessarily a recommendation.

Athens and Istanbul stays true to the established format. It takes you by the hand and leads you into the cities. There are plenty of maps and street plans, detailed and comprehensive listings on where to eat, what to see and where to lay your head, along with useful advice such as not to be like William Hayes (of Midnight Express fame) by trying to make a bit of extra travel dosh by smuggling a couple of keys of hashish out of Turkey.

There are phrase-books, advice on how to be more than just a tourist and a couple of suggested itineraries, which are useful to work out how best to use your two-week holiday in, say, the Greek islands.

And keep an eye out for the Let's Go thumbs-up symbol, their stamp of approval. - Paul Ash

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