Back in print, this multilayered portrait of “the violet isle”—a little-known name for Cuba inspired by the rich color of the soil there—presents an engaging, at times unsettling document of a vibrant and vulnerable land. It combines two separate photographic visions: Alex Webb’s exploration of street life, with his attuned and complex attention to detail, and Rebecca Norris Webb’s fascination with the unique, quixotic collections of animals she discovered there, from tiny zoos and pigeon societies to hand-painted natural history displays and quirky personal menageries.
The result is an insightful and intriguing blend of two different aesthetics inspired by Cuba’s existence over the last 50 years in an economic, political, cultural and ecological bubble virtually untouched by the rest of the world, and unlikely to remain that way for much longer. Award-winning writer Pico Iyer provides an accompanying essay for this English/Spanish bilingual edition.
Published by Radius Books. Edited by Alex Webb. Text by Rebecca Norris Webb.
In 2005, photographer and poet Rebecca Norris Webb (born 1956) set out to photograph her home state of South Dakota, a sparsely populated frontier state on the Great Plains with more buffalo, pronghorn, mule deer and prairie dogs than people. It’s a land of powwows and rodeos, buffalo roundups and the world’s only “corn palace.” Dominated by space and silence, South Dakota’s harsh and beautiful landscape can be tough and unforgiving, prey to brutal wind and extreme weather. This was the South Dakota Norris Webb set out to photograph. The next year, however, everything changed for Norris Webb, when one of her brothers died unexpectedly of heart failure. “For months,” she writes in the afterword to this volume, “one of the few things that eased my unsettled heart was the landscape of South Dakota … I began to wonder—does loss have its own geography?” An instant classic of the genre, Norris Webb’s beautiful photobook is now back in print in a second edition. Rebecca Norris Webb: My Dakota—which interweaves the photographer’s lyrical images and spare text, reproduced in her own scrawling penmanship—is a small, intimate book about the West and its weathers, and an elegy for a lost brother.
Published by Radius Books. Edited by Alex Webb. Text by Rebecca Norris Webb.
In 2005, Rebecca Norris Webb set out to photograph her home state of South Dakota, a sparsely populated frontier state on the Great Plains with more buffalo, pronghorn, mule deer and prairie dogs than people. South Dakota is a land of powwows and rodeos, corn palaces and buffalo roundups; a harsh and beautiful landscape dominated by space, silence, brutal wind and extreme weather. The next year, however, everything changed for Norris Webb, when her brother died unexpectedly of heart failure. “For months,” she writes in the introduction to this volume, “one of the few things that eased my unsettled heart was the landscape of South Dakota. For each of us, does loss have its own geography?” My Dakota is a small intimate book about the west and its weathers, and an elegy for a lost brother.
The Violet Isle is a little-known nickname for Cuba, inspired by its richly colored soil--one of the many qualities that make the country so seductive to photographers. This handsomely designed, slipcased edition offers an engaging, at times unsettling document of a country that, for the past 50 years, has remained in an economic, political, cultural and ecological bubble, isolated from the rest of the world (though it is unlikely to stay that way for much longer). The 70 images collected here are a collaboration between Magnum photographer Alex Webb, who captures Cuba's street life with his trademark attention to detail and color, and Rebecca Norris Webb, who focuses on the unique, quixotic collection of animals she found there. This volume is an insightful blend of two different photographic aesthetics. The famous travel writer Pico Iyer provides an accompanying essay.
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Rebecca Norris Webb: My Dakota
Rebecca Norris Webb: My Dakota
Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb: Violet Isle
