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| Hans Eijkelboom: Paris-New York-Shanghai | 
| Author: Martin Parr
Creators: Tony Godfrey, Hans Eijkelboom
Publisher: Aperture
Category: Book
Buy New: $49.95
New (4) from $49.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 735805
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 3
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.6
Dimensions (in): 10.6 x 8.3 x 1.5
ISBN: 1597110442
Dewey Decimal Number: 770
EAN: 9781597110440
ASIN: 1597110442
Publication Date: November 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Legendary independent bookstore online since 1994. Reliable customer service and no-hassle return policy.
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Product Description
Dutch conceptual artist Hans Eijkelboom's work is very much in line with the deadpan, seemingly mechanistic note-taking of Ed Ruscha and Hans-Peter Feldman. In Paris-New York-Shanghai, Eijkelboom creates a witty comparative study of three major contemporary metropolises, each selected for having been the cultural capital of its time--Paris during the nineteenth century; New York, the twentieth; and Shanghai, the twenty-first.This uniquely bound three-volume accordion-folded set opens up to allow the reader not only to view each city individually, but also to compare simultaneously the three photographic studies of each metropolis and its citizens. The large-format cityscapes with the identifying quirks of each city and the snapshot-style grids of their inhabitants soon reveal how similar one city is to another today. For example, Eijkelboom's grids of mothers carrying their infants in Baby Bjorns, or men wearing striped polo shirts highlight the ubiquity of many of our most intimate possessions. As Eijkelboom writes, "Globalization, combined with the desire of cities for visually spectacular elements, is leading to the appearance everywhere of city centers that look the same and where identical products are sold." With an introduction by Martin Parr.
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| Customer Reviews:
Hype, style and fashion: We are all the same! March 5, 2008
Here is even more proof that the differences in exotic cultures have already been conquered and eliminated by globalization -- at least in three large cities on three different continents. Dutch photographer Hans Eijkelboom has documented the sameness of fashion and trends and every-day urban living in 21st century Paris, New York, and Shanghai. This superb photo book is more about cool book design, and obsessive anthropological-sociological typologies, than it is about great photography. But it is a gem.
The brilliant design of the book folds out to reveal three connected books with identical sequences of near-identical subject-matter: opened and stretched out on your reading desk you have three books side-by-side. It then becomes natural to turn the pages of all three books simultaneously as you proceed. With delight, we are presented with, for instance, photographs of French, American, and Chinese men all wearing camouflage clothes as fashion statements in all three cities -- lots of men, lots of camouflage, in cities!
This pattern continues to an amazing degree with all sorts of typologies to compare and contrast: huge public sculptures, people wheeling luggage and boxes through city streets, traffic jams, urban places to relax, and even an hilarious triple spread of women sporting Louis Vuitton look-alike handbags.
Tony Godfrey writes this in his introductory essay:
"For a book of art photographs, there is an extraordinary array of images. Having opened it, I turn the pages of each volume simultaneously: I can see sixty photographs of men in striped shirts; turn again, and I see an army of seventy-two men in suits marching to work; turn again, and a panorama of empty civic spaces. What are we being told? That this is a small world after all? Is this a Family of Man on a minimal grid?"
This book forces those questions, and more. And though no single image is a stellar, stand-alone photograph, there is generous volume of photographs here -- 1,256 color images to be exact.
-- Jim Casper
Great critique of globalization November 16, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
One personal caveat, I don't normally purchase books of photography but this book was recomended. As someone who is a fan of big cities after I excaped my small town chilhood, this book sounded worth getting. This book does, with its repetitions of similar events in the three cities show in vivid display that we are all the same across the world in ways that are posigive and negative. On the postitive side Eijkelboom shows us parents holding babies, boyfriends and girlfriends in such a powerful way that that brought tears to my eyes. There is an almost impressionistic look to his photos of nature that take your breath away.
On the negative side in all cities are the homeless. Here he uses realistic style that breaks your heart. But globalization is the main evil in the potographers sight. We all own the same types of product and there is no real individuality across the word. From camoflage clothing to omnipresent advertising and the presece of mainly American products.
There is a great indroduction and an essay by a scholar that helped me appreciate thi s book to the fulest. Highly recommended.
Please excuse typos I have a neurologic disease.
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