Roloff Beny (1924–1984)

The New York Times reviewer wrote about an exhibition of Roloff Beny's photographs...."original photographs from six of the most beautiful books ever published...and that includes this book. I must agree. Not only are the photographs stunning and clever but the layout of the book and the juxtapositioning of the pictures with text and maps etc., plus the sepia high contrast photos and even the fonts ....are outstanding. Occasionally I might have wished for a bit more white space or for an show more individual photograph to be viewed in isolation but then th3re is a compromise between the number of photos and presentation. And the text! Anthony Thwaite has done an outstanding job. I'd never heard of him before this and went to do some research and found he was a poet and a literary editor critic of considerable experience ....plus he's played in the ruins of Leptis Major in Libya ...so has considerable background in Roman/Mediterranean history . He's done an outstanding job...weaving together quotations from ancient writers (apparently mainly translated by himself) ...together with his own slightly poetic descriptive prose. It's a great match between the photos and the text. I first came across Roloff Beny's work in "The Pleasure of Ruins"....then made the mistake of buying it in a cut down book version and it just doesn't have the majesty of the Tames Hudson publication. I love it. A great book. Happy to give it five stars. show less

I really love Roloff Beny's photography. I think I was first introduced to it via the book "The Pleasure of Ruins". But I subsequently realised when I bought a smaller format of this book, that much of the success is in the large-format presentation which allows him to make the most of the space and juxtaposition to show his photos to advantage. This particular book is supposed to follow the journey of Homer's Odysseus. But, as Beny admits..... I leave to scholars of Homeric lore, who will show more be the first to remark that my itinerary could not claim to be a counterpart to the historical mythological Odyssey. The selection of plates is rather a collage of my many voyages, later put in order in my Rome studio, to evoke vividly rather than accurately the personal vision inspired by Chapman's Homer and the many later translations. Ruins which may pre date or postdate the epoch of the tale are given the same importance as actual Homeric sites, since they often strike the photographer's cye as imaginatively the more appropriate scene. Where the actual site had been established by the skill of the archacologist and the discovery was photogenic enough, as in Mycenae and Tiryns, I naturally used that image. On the other hand, Ithome and its truly splendid fourth century fortifications on the fringe of Arcadia in every way suggested the grandeur of Menelaus domain, though quite distant from his home in Sparta.
Passages from Homer are inserted throughout with the attempt made to marry the text as captions to the photos. For me, the photos...the angles he uses, the effect of contrast and tone......really stands on its own. I've been recommending to my son that he studies the book to get some inspiration about taking his own photos...especially seeking out special angles.... (Though I suspect that Beny has made use of large format cameras with perspective adjustment).
The subject of the Iliad and the Odyssey-the Trojan War—is dated at about 1200 B.c. while, it is generally agreed, the Epic poems as we know them date from 750 to 6g0 B.C., and Homer appears on the stage of Western European history as the first poet to record these Greek myths. The myths employed in his poems were often pre Greek and were sung or recited, Greek as a language having been spoken only after 2000 B.C. and not written until the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet about 1400 B.C. The special contribution of this first and most poetical among the tragic poets', as Plato calls him, is his ordering of the known world of his time, which extended beyond modern Hellas to the shores of the Black Sea and present/day Turkey, southern Italy, eastern Sicily, to the littoral of southern France and the crescent of North Africa.
I have a number of books by Roloff Beny, and each one is a masterpiece...and this one is no exception. He reaoly is a masterful photographer. Love his woek and loved this book. Five stars from me. show less

A fascinating book wih the text by a much-travelled author knowledgeable about the background of the ruins she describes and appreciates. Unfortunately it seems to have been published at a bad time for illustrated books. The type is too small for comfortable reading and the photographs, though by a distinguished photographer, are not well reproduced.

Rare Book