Jennifer Erwitt

A beautiful coffee table book. In a country as large as Italy, with so many varied regions, it was considerate of whoever was in charge of layout to include a tiny map of Italy on each page indicating the location where the photographs were taken. The photographs are a good size. Not too small in an attempt to cram more onto each page, yet not (as far as I recall) so big that they take up two pages and details get lost in the middle gutter. And they are bright, clear, and tell the story they are meant to.

Ours is/was oversized even for a coffee table book, yet it's softcover: so it got a bit tattered round the edges. Everyone enjoyed looking through it, but after that, it didn't prove to be the kind of book you go back to again and again. Still we might have kept it, except it was so big it wouldn't fit on our bookshelf and the kids needed the space on the coffee table to build their Lego creations. We passed it on with appreciation.… (meer)

This book features thematically grouped photographs taken across the world on February 8, 1996, showing how "cyberspace" was affecting people's lives. 11 years later, it's endearing to look back on this day as representative of an early party of our era. What's most interesting about the content is how obvious it all seems now. We take it for granted that people research illnesses, connect with similar individuals, share their thoughts, and collaborate on-line, but each of these was notable enough in 1996 to merit inclusion in this book. The terminology wasn't all there yet (they have a few pages devoted to "online diarists" and a man whose "wireless webcam records his life as it happens", the proto-bloggers and vloggers) but the ideas were.

The photography itself ranges from mundane to sublime, as is to be expected given such a wide range of collaborators. Particular favorites of mine are the American monk converting a document on a clunky laptop, a musician checking his e-mail on the toilet, and a Coptic monk squinting at a laptop screen in the desert.

It explicitly calls itself a time capsule, and I think that sums it up well. It makes me want to go to Flickr and search for all photos taken worldwide today.

(Q)… (meer)