powerHouse puts out some of the best photo books. We just got two new ones from them: Hamburger Eyes, a book of black and white photos from the always interesting journal of the same name, and Helen Levitt, which collects some of this legendary New York street photographer’s best work from over seven decades. (She’s 95 years old!) Interestingly, both these books have lots of pictures of people with their pets in them. And neither have any photos of dead animals—please take note, all you young photographers who think a dead rat in the street=instant photo gold.Anyway, yes, both books are chock full of fascinating photos that you can stare at for almost as long as it would take for you to read a similarly-sized page of text. But more importantly, how will they look on your bookshelf?
Hamburger Eyes will fare well, as its spine is a good ¬æ inches wide and the name is spelled out HUGE in a cool, sorta "retro" font in bold white-on-black. It’ll be legible even on a high shelf, and its curious name (which is the term for when a cartoon character gets so hungry that he hallucinates his friend turning into food) is sure to hamburger the eye of the casual observer. But for photos.
Helen Levitt’s book is classier—with a simple dark green fabric cover and gold embossed lettering, but it is very tall, almost 13 inches, which might not fit in standard sized shelves, and it is also very wide, about 12 inches. Either way, it’s gonna stick out of your shelf. Your best bet would be putting this one on the bottom of a horizontal pile of oversized books but this makes it less likely to be pulled off the shelf and read by guests. And if you leave it on your coffee table for too long, it’s going to attract dust.
So, in conclusion, Hamburger Eyes wins for eye-catchingness, but Helen is more famous and classy, so we say, get them both! Ta da.MEG SNEED