African Image / Sam Haskins

Cowboy Kate and Five Girls have established Sam Haskins as one of the world’s greatest photographers. Photography magazine described the publication of Cowboy Kate as ‘an event in photography of paramount importance’. The same magazine, reviewing Fire Girls, said ‘Sam Haskins has become a legend among photographers’.
African Image, like his earlier books, is designed for the joy of it, with verve and exuberance. This time Haskins has made a personal and visual statement about the Africa which trained his eye and in which he grew up. Here are the outlines and patterns, the textures and movements, the whole detailed and sensual alphabet and anatomy of the Africa that has drummed and danced its way into all his looking and feeling. African Image has not only an immense impact but a kinetic quality that will have a strong appeal for everyone in any way interested in the visual arts. It depends not only on the sheer excellence of the photography but on cunning juxtapositions, on returning motifs, on symbols and on a kind of deft and astute cutting. African Image is an essential part of the Haskins ethos.
This is no travel book, no ethnographical study, but a very personal photographic essay. The photographs of the land and its inhabitants were all taken in what Haskins considers the neglected areas – the east coast and south of the Congo. There are certainly more extraordinary and rare artefacts than many shown here; Haskins chose to include only those which are still resident in Africa and which have not been photographed for publication before.
African Image is a work of love-the love of a great photographer for the land which nurtured and inspired him.

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The Bodley Head, 1967. Com 120 p. : prof. ilust.; 32 cm; E.
[Sobrecapa com pequenos rasgos nos limites; encadernação e miolo bem conservados]