From the Bargain Bin

Here's a book for those who like their photography as Art with a capital A: Flor Garduno's Inner Light, a collection of still lifes and nudes. Both Edward R. Hamilton and Amazon are now offering remainders at $14.95. You can get a taste of the content here, though the small images on screen don't adequately convey the impact of the pictures as they appear in the book, printed bigger and bolder in a decent tritone. The foreword is new-age gibberish, but fortunately the pictures themselves are presented without distraction. Many of the nudes, with their mysterious props and adornments and compositional fuss, strike me as reaching a bit too earnestly for Deeper Meaning; no doubt someone more familiar with Mexican culture or with Ms Garduno's thinking will grasp some metaphor that I'm missing. But the still lifes are more straightforward, and some of them are quite lovely. In all, worth the price of admission.

Posted by: OREN GRAD