Dark Odyssey

Dark Odyssey by Griffiths, Phillip Jones. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780893816452.

Dark Odyssey Photographs and commentary by Philip Jones Griffiths Biographical profile by Murray Sayle Philip Jones Griffiths, one of this centurys master photographers, is unparalleled at creating relentlessly perceptive images that encompass the beauty, the atrocities, the ceremonies, the moments of brutality and compassion that coalesce as history. Griffiths eagerly anticipated retrospective Dark Odyssey traces his forty-year journey through this chaotic world, from the wide horizon of his native Wales to the ravaged villages of war-torn Vietnam, in more than one hundred astounding black-and-white photographs. In each of his pictures, Griffiths creates a complex diagram of meaning and emotion. The collision of culture and ideology is often the basis of the work--sometimes in a simple pairing of figures, sometimes in a dizzying throng of life: the arresting, straightforward gazes of a Vietnamese child and her war-disfigured mother; the dazed face of a woman lost among the multitude of graves at a cemetery in Hiroshima; the wicked glee of a boy about to hurl a boulder into a grand piano, outside under an ominously dark sky. Griffithss photogarphs tackle love, death, frivolity, politics, violence . . . they comment--ironically and profoundly--on virtually every aspect of human life, offering a gripping and unforgettable view of both the devastations and the beauties of our era. With an in-depth critical profile by renowned New Yorker writer Murry Sayle--who has known Griffiths for more than thirty years--Dark Odyssey also includes poignant narrative notes by the photographer himself. "I have traveled to over one hundred and forty countries trying to make sense of it all," Griffiths writes. "I have discovered that almost every belief we hold collapses under scrutiny--the truth is often simply a tool that serves someone elses purpose." This skepticism and this sense of awe are palpable in every one of Griffithss masterful photographs.