Season's Readings: Journalist's work is must-see

Everything changed Sept. 11. The storm of rage sweeping through the Muslim world broke upon our long secure nation. We are, to use our secretary of defense's cynical formulation, clearly a "target rich environment."

Photojournalists already have died rushing toward the action in Lower Manhattan and Kabul.

Those looking for historical context for the 24/7 flow of news in words and images will be well-served by two of our selections this year. "Allah Oh Akbar: A Journey Through Militant Islam" originally was published in 1994. After Sept. 11, its publisher rushed copies to the United States, and perhaps now the book will receive the attention it deserves.

With violence proclaimed as both cause and effect by both sides of our present conflict, we would do well to consider the life of the last century's greatest proponent of non-violence in "Gandhi: A Photo-Biography."

Readers more interested in diversion from our present trials will enjoy our other selections, featuring starkly beautiful landscapes of sacred sites or Havana facades, gorgeous still lifes made in a New York studio or the Arizona desert, and volumes celebrating the greatest hits of some of the medium's acknowledged masters.

ALLAH OH AKBAR

By Abbas (Phaidon, 319 pages, $69.95)

Paris-based Iranian photojournalist Abbas watched the Islamic revolution that threw the U.S.-installed shah from power in 1978. He watched extreme fundamentalist mullahs whip their masses into anti-American frenzy and force their harsh interpretation of Islamic law onto a westernizing nation. He watched with growing concern for the future of Islam as frustration with dictatorial regimes was manipulated from mosques throughout the Muslim world.

He was prescient in his concern. During the next decade and a half, Abbas journeyed inside militant Islam as it metastasized through the teeming, desperately poor neighborhoods of 29 countries on four continents. Modernity has left the bulk of the Muslim world hopelessly far behind and America has come to symbolize the extent of that failure. "Allah Oh Akbar" is a personal account of the answer to our naively shocked, post-Sept. 11 question, "Why do they hate us?"

SMALL DEATHS

By Kate Breakey (University of Texas, 168 pages, $65)

Images of violent death are ubiquitous in our popular culture. Long before we're able to drive or vote, we've all seen uncounted numbers of heroes and villains meet their end. But we keep the real thing at a comfortable remove.

The thought of photographs of dead creatures, birds, lizards and insects, is somewhat nightmarish, but Kate Breakey's startling work collected in "Small Deaths" is instead dreamy and transcendent. An Australian living near Tuscon, Breakey makes black-and-white photographs and then hand colors them using transparent oils and colored pencils, producing hyper-vivid, exquisitely detailed portraits that arrest the process of time and decay.

GANDHI: A PHOTO-BIOGRAPHY

By Peter Ruhe (Phaidon, 352 pages, $39.95)

The title martyr is widely sought and inappropriately used to honor misguided fanatics willing to detonate bombs strapped to their torsos or fly airplanes into skyscrapers. A martyr is one who by his death bears witness to the truth.

Mohandas K. Gandhi neither sought martrydom nor celebrity. The life of this quiet, frail Indian attorney, which ended with his assassination in 1948, is movingly documented in this edition. Gandhi's history-changing strength flowed from his central conviction that "God is Truth. The way to Truth is non-violence." Gandhi's life, one of the singular lives of the 20th century, stands as testament to the unsubtle distinction between the true martyr and the fanatic. His message of love and non-violence inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and changed our nation. Today Gandhi's message is an absolute antidote to the cult of false martyrdom subsisting within modern Islam.

SACRED PLACES

By Kenro Izu (Arena, 187 pages, $65)

In a glorious marriage of form and content, New York-based Japanese photographer Kenro Izu uses antique methods to make sumptuous black-and-white prints of sacred sites of antiquity. Inspired by 19th-century photographs of Egypt, Izu began a journey that led him to photograph standing stones in Scotland and England, temples in Laos, Indonesia, Tibet and Burma, and ancient dwellings in Canyon de Chelly, Ariz.

While the subjects and sites are vaguely familiar, these photographs are exciting and revelatory; the ancient sites radiate energy.

Izu has used the proceeds from the sales of his photographs of the network of temples at Angkor to found the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

HAVANA

By Robert Policori (Steidl, 123 pages, $75)

Havana is rich territory for metaphors of decay. In Robert Policori's unsentimental documentation of the city, its apartments, theaters and grand public buildings, built in Cuba's brief belle epoch of colonial affluence, crumble side by side with the bleak architectural heritage of Soviet-style communism. Caribbean heat and moisture rot darkened interiors while elegant facades bleach in the unrelenting light.

STILL LIFE

By Irving Penn (Bulfinch, 144 pages, $85)

While most masters of photography typically define themselves in one genre, Irving Penn's extraordinary, six-decade career includes groundbreaking work in fashion, portrait and still-life photography.

An enormously influential stylist, Penn has received critical acclaim in both the commercial and fine-art realms. He challenged conventional notions of beauty, wormy apples and trash. Penn's first assignment for Vogue was a still life cover in 1943, the first of many to follow. He continues to work for the magazine today, razor sharp at 84.

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: CITY AND LANDSCAPE

(Bulfinch, 105 pages, $75)

While a scenic self-portrait shot in 1999 opens this new collection, Henri Cartier-Bresson hasn't taken many photographs for decades. "City and Landscape" is the most recent volume defined by a thematic editing of Cartier-Bresson's distinctively lucid photographic reportage.

Undertaken in the 1950s and '60s as either open-ended editorial assignments or self-assigned photographic wanderings, Cartier-Bresson's archives apparently are still rich and deep. Most successful are the photographs that feature Homo sapiens, oblivious or careless of the photographer's presence, framed in city or landscape, in wry, elegant compositions.

OTHER NOTEWORTHY RELEASES

Phaidon Press continues to astonish with "55," its beautiful series of small, inexpensive monographs dedicated to master photographers from the origins of the medium through today's most acclaimed. Each pocket-size volume (there are now 30) is 128 pages and features 55 of the photographer's key works for just $7.95. Great stocking stuffers.

MARIO GIACOMELLI by Alistair Crawford (Phaidon, 448 pages, $75).

INCOGNITO by Antonin Kratochvil (Arena, $60).

IN RESPONSE TO PLACE (Bulfinch, 160 pages, $50).

EDWARD CURTIS: THE MASTER PRINTS (Arena, 192 pages, $60).

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