The Magnum & World Press Photo Square Print Sale: Written by Light October 16–22
107 Square Prints priced at $110/£110/€120, available for one week only. Shop the collection now.
The Perfect Man
In India, industrial revolunever really started and never really ended, but western standards, which defined this new perfect working man, were imposed and accepted in a society that already had a very elitist cultural structure. The results were confusing.
De Middel tells the story of Doctor Ashok Aswani, who decided one day to go to the cinema instead of going to work. He saw a Chaplin movie four times, lost his job and started what would become the biggest festival homage to Chaplin in the world. Doctor Aswani would never be the perfect man because the perfect man works for his country’s greatness. The perfect man wakes up early to go to work and waves at his wife from the car as he heads towards the daily traffic-jam that would take him to his office. Charlot would never be the perfect man either.
Signed by Cristina de Middel
Violet Isle – 2nd Edition
The long awaited second edition of the sold out 2009 original, this multi-layered portrait of “the violet isle”—a little-known name for Cuba inspired by the richof the soil there—presents an engaging, at times unsettling document of a vibrant and vulnerable land. It combines two separate photographic visions: Alex Webb’s exploration of street life, with his attuned and complex attention to detail, and Rebecca Norris Webb’s fascination with the unique, quixotic collections of animals she discovered there, from tiny zoos and pigeon societies to hand-painted natural history displays and quirky personal menageries. The result is an insightful and intriguing blend of two different aesthetics inspired by Cuba’s existence over the last fifty years in an economic, political, cultural and ecological bubble virtually untouched by the rest of the world, and unlikely to remain that way for much longer.
Signed by Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb