old books

Why's it so hard to find classic analogue 'documentary-style' portraits of the Masai online?! For crying in a plastic spoon...

I was visiting my aunt and uncles place this last week with my mom (before she leaves to join my dad in Uganda). My uncle is an artist and he has these incredible old coffee-table books stashed up in his studio....you know, the types where you want to hold your face really close to the pages and breath in deep while turning them ever so slowly so as to best make use of the exquisite smell. Its the smell of wisdom and experience, trapped timelessly on sheets of semi gloss paper (a smell up there with leather, roast chicken and afternoon summer rain on hot dry sand). Silent journeys that only rarely brave their way back into the world to be revisited by an appreciating eye. Mm...that smell brings back sweet memories of lying on a wool carpet as a little scruffy-haired kiddie with my brother, paging through piles of old encyclopedias - he'd tell me stories about Sweden and Greenland and World War 2 and 'spontaneous combustion'. He was my hero...there was nothing he didn't know *lol*

Most of my uncles books document life in the 40's (both pre and post war). Stunning! But amongst these books, is a very large one on Kenya (probably photographed in the early 60's and printed sometime in the late 70’s maybe). Its full of huge fine-art 'documentary-style' black&white portraits. Images still alive they've been so well photographed! Why don't they make photographers like that anymore?

I could have actually just sat for hours with the book pressed up against my face, eyes closed, just taking in the delicate smell of the experience...but I couldn't...the photos were just too breathtaking to ignore. Moving. Almost spell bounding. The kind of quality you just don't find nowadays.

The digital age I tell you. Anyone can snap mindlessly away with a digital camera to flood the airwaves with crappy photos until they get their ‘one in a million’ shot...like literally. That's why I hate digital! It trains people into becoming visually lazy and self-indulgent. Did I mention that I desperately need a digital camera? Aargh...the irony of it all!

There’s a Maasai warrior I sometimes see walking around the area I live. He must be about 7 feet tall, rich almost red brown in colour and robed in traditional red Masai fabric. He stops me dead in my tracks every time. Such presence and beauty.