Underexposed: Pictures of the 20th Century They Didn't Want You to See - Hardcover

Jacobson, Colin; Phillips, Adam; Evans, Harold; Griffiths, Philip Jones

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1903399211 ISBN 13: 9781903399217

Publisher: Vision On Publishing Ltd, 2002

Synopsis

The victor’s account of history may be the one that gets written down, but photojournalism still has the power to undermine the official version. Such is the corrective testimony of this startling collection of banned, suppressed or conveniently forgotten potential news images depicting moments from the last century where the propaganda needs of politicians, despots and stars clashed with sometimes awkward, sometimes horrifying truths.

Incorporating images and text from the Index On Censorship and the Hulton Getty Picture Collection, the images represent a reality check on alleged events from the last hundred years, documenting the struggle of the powerful to contend with rival cultural forces of media and information.

In 1900, the British campaign against the Boers in South Africa was being written up as heoric, yet in Underexposed we're confronted with the world's first concentration camps, set up by the British to deal mostly with Boer woman and children. Reclaimed from the trash cans of the Second World War, Hitler's preening speech rehearsals come back to argue with his self-made myth.

From the cruelty of Stalin's Russia to fundamentalist chaos in Iran, via disgruntled starlets, ecological destruction and US nuclear tests, Underexposed gathers some of the most ideologically dangerous photographs ever taken and releases them to haunt the increasingly manipulated, retouched present. With an incisive forward by Colin Jacobson, the book is a seminal work for all those curious about what lies beneath the last century's layers of spin.

About this title

Review

Jacobson has collected together an extraordinary set of images that shows precisely how the camera can lie, or be made to lie. -- The Observer, July 21 2002 - Peter Beaumont

This is a thrilling, harrowing book. Each picture is worth lingering over. -- The Wall Street Journal - reviewed by Tunku Varadarajan, July 2002

Synopsis

This is a hidden history of the 20th century, it is a collection of banned, manipulated or distorted images that explore the extreme influence of photography on modern society. Subjects include: Hitler gesticulating in front of a mirror, British concentration camps in South Africa, the exposed body of the Ayatollah Khomeini at his funeral, bodies of journalists killed during the battle for control of the Duma in Moscow and an Irish fascist salute at a group meeting in County Cork.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vision On Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1903399211
• ISBN 13: 9781903399217
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240