Bruce Bernard (1) (1928–2000)

This book was originally issued in 1999 in an extremely large and bulky format; 6 kilos in weight and a genuine coffee-table book (in that if you attached four legs to it, you'd have a coffee table). In light of the events of 9th September 2001, the publishers decided to add a postscript chapter of photographs from the years 1999-2001, and to reissue the book in a different, more portable format. That is the edition I possess and am reviewing.

The photographs in this book were all selected for their value as images reflecting the Twentieth Century in all its glory and horror. In this, it succeeds. Indeed, with the growth of photojournalism over the century, readers might be excused for seeing it as a century of horror; images of war and violence abound. But this is a warts and all image of humanity, and that cannot be helped.

Each ten years is covered by a set of images, with a caption and an associated piece of background text. I found at least two captions that were completely wrong; and quite often an intriguing image would have background text that referred to the general situation the picture was taken within rather than telling the reader more about the image itself.

Of course, the book is now twenty years old, and hindsight is a wonderful thing. The first twenty years of the Twenty-First Century have been little better; we have nothing to be complacent about. Perhaps my biggest raise of the eyebrows was on page 1188, a picture showing a jubilant and victorious Lance Armstrong, the American cyclist who beat cancer and then went on to win the prestigious Tour de France. Except, of course, in the subsequent years his reliance on performance-enhancing drugs and his role in pushing those drugs out to his team-mates was exposed, and he was stripped of his titles.

This second edition is in a handier, square format; but its thickness still makes it a little unwieldy to handle and the text, especially in the additional notes, is quite small. Still, this was never going to be an easy exercise in packaging.

But this is a minor quibble. Here in one place is a visual history of the Twentieth Century. Leaf through its pages and see who we, who were born and lived in those times, were and are.… (altro)