Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 10, 1994 TAG: 9406260150
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By Pedro E. Guerrero. Pomegranate Artbooks. $29.95.
Pedro Guerrero was Frank Lloyd Wright's photographer for the last 20 years of the architect's life, 1939-59. This book is a collection of black and white photographs and text describing their relationship. Anyone looking for scandalous personal revelations will be disappointed. Dish-up-the-dirt celebrity biographies may get all the attention, but Guerrero was Wright's friend and this is a loving reminiscence.
As Guerrero tells it, Wright gave a young, inexperienced photographer his first real job after the world's shortest interview. Guerrero's first work included the creation of Wright's Taliesin West community in Phoenix, Arizona. In the following years, he documented virtually all of Wright's important designs and buildings. He also did portraits of Wright, his family and associates. Though the photographs in the book are weighted toward the architectural work, the personal pictures give it a human side.
The pictures themselves are simple, displaying their subjects - houses, working rooms, experiments, models, churches - clearly and without any obvious lighting tricks. They capture the sweeping sense of movement in Wright's buildings. The photographs of the man himself mostly focus on Wright in the "grand old man" phase of his career. His place in history was established by then and it's obvious from this book that he knew it. For anyone interested in this complex, colorful figure, "Picturing Wright" is a treat.
- MIKE MAYO, Book page editor
The Lost Ships of Guadalcanal: Exploring the Ghost Fleet of the South Pacific.
By Robert D. Ballard and Rick Archbold. Warner/Madison Press. $39.95.
Robert Ballard, one of the world's leading oceanographers, took us below the seas to visit the Titanic ("The Discovery of the Titanic") and the Bismarck ("The Discovery of the Bismarck"). Now, he turns his attention to the South Pacific and the ship graveyard at Guadalcanal.
The photography in the book is truly eerie. We see the HMAS Canberra in an almost intact state at the bottom of the ocean. The ship was crippled during the early minutes of the battle of Savo Island. The heavy cruiser stayed alive until Allied guns deliberately sunk her. Ballard uses archival photos of the Canberra to compare it with its present state. Attention is also given to the USS Quincy, that lost its life after a fierce torpedo attack. One whole section is devoted to the "Graveyard of the Destroyers." In this section, the author illustrates his discovery of four of the six destroyers sunk during or shortly after the first phase of the naval battle of Guadalcanal in what became known as Iron Bottom Sound. Three of the wrecks were American; one, Japanese.
The vivid photography brings a new dimension to the naval battles of World War II. For most of us, we can see the effect of air and land warfare in the twisted steel, demolished concrete, bullet-riddled walls. But, "The Lost Ships of Guadalcanal" shows us the effect on the ships and the men who perished with them. Ballard says it best: "I learned there is no substitute for seeing the literal evidence of war - shell holes blasted in metal, guns and torpedo tubes still trained as if to fire or pointing crazily askew, the wrecked bridge where a captain or an admiral breathed his last."
Ballard wanted "to bring back images that would fill out the story in history books, to mark and memorialize this great submarine battlefield, to make dead ships live again." He accomplishes this and much, much more.
- ROBERT I. ALOTTA
Robert I. Alotta is a Harrisonburg writer.
by CNB