Hot Light/half-Made Worlds

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Seventy-six surrealistic postcards stun the viewer with crisp beauty: a fierce contrast between inner and outer worlds. People of this tropical vision are frozen in decisive moments, barely animating textured architectural still-lifes and sunset webbed shadows. Echoes of human forms create a pictorial time warp similar to that in Egyptian friezes. Color is intense, composition is tight, and imagery is a multi-leveled hyperbole for human desperation. Superbly printed on heavy matte stock, with a short quote from Carlos Fuentes's Hydra Head serving as the only introduction. Webb is a freelance photojournalist who has published in Geo, Time and other magazines. (May 12)

Library Journal

These photographs by a young Magnum photojournalist were taken in various countries of the Third WorldGrenada, Mexico, Zaire, the Dominican Republic, Egyptbut all seem to be of one and the same place. Full of marvelous color, both muted and brilliant, bright and pastel, they are anything but romantic. Webb's use of color and his compositional style, with its sharp lines and divisive planes, combine to create tension within the frame. He presents a view of the Third World as a fragmented place where people are disconnected, cut off from each other. His harsh, painful pictures capture both the natural beauty and the human desperation that coexist in much of the world. Recommended for serious photography collections. Frank Schroth, Technology Training Associates, Cambridge, Mass.