Plant Kingdoms: The Photographs of Charles Jones

Rating:
Summary: Perfect still-lifes
Review: A marvellous and inspiring book, whether you're a gardener or a photographer, or both. Jones' work, found in a trunk in the Bermondesy Market, is quite the most remarkable body of still-life work produced by an English photographer. Reminiscent of the photos of Josef Sudek, Irving Penn or Karl Blossfeldt, it's everything good still-life work should be -- simple, dramatic, evocative and perfectly composed. Since Jones left no negatives -- later in life, he used his glass plates to make cloches to protect his seedlings -- this book is the only public record of his work you're likely to see unless you chance upon an exhibition organized by the author, dealer and collector Sean Sexton. I can't recommend this book enough.

Rating:
Summary: A Hypnotically Beautiful Book!
Review: All photographs are reproduced in a warm duotone, which brings out the amazing range of light and shadow in the original works. A learned introduction by Robert Flynn Johnson puts Jones in the context of other close-up still-life photographers. The book's only defect is Alice Waters's inane, hippy-dippy Preface: "A bunch of radishes. A bunch of grapes. [. . .] Charles Jones reminds us that horticulture is sacred. There is no other word for it." She drivels off after two pages, but still, that's two fewer of Jones's photographs that we might have enjoyed.