Review of Stephen Hughes Book: Photographs

 

The Front Cover of Stephen Hughes: Photographs



I found Stephen Hughes book to be quite interesting, I would categorise Stephen Hughes book as colour landscapes. The purpose of the book is to ‘Suggest a particular notion of the social landscape in today’s Europe’. I would class his work as documentary work as the photographer is traveling throughout Europe photographing changes in some landscapes due to the social environment. I liked the introduction to the book, I found it very successful and useful it gave me plenty of information as to what the book is truly about and it also tells you a story that relates to the images that are shown in the book. The book is laid out in a smart organised way. It starts off with one off Stephen Hughes’ images and then goes into the introduction. In the first few pages he has decided to have the title pages in a pastel colour with bold white text. After the introduction the images are laid out only on the right hand side of the book only and there is only one image per page and all of his images are in colour. At the last page of the book there is one page with small versions of each image printed on it and with each picture there is the name of the image and a date from when the picture was taken. Stephen Hughes images show different things. In some country’s you see a struggle in the environment but in others he shows the wealth. All of his images seem de-saturated and remote, he is quite distant from his subjects. His earlier images is where he shows the more worn down areas and the struggle but as you go through you see the wealth where there is much more colour involved in them.

Beachy Head, England 1996

Port Talbot, Wales 1998