Pictures of You
Rory MacLean
Archive of Modern Conflict and Bone Idle
English
Edited by Ed Jones
Softcover
200 pages
130 x 198 mm
2017
ISBN 9780995185517
Ten real lives, ten photographs, ten journeys in time: the first killing of the Cold War, the dying hopes of a doomed aviator, the ghosts of Native America at Alcatraz, Chairman Mao’s most timid lover, Nature’s final battle with Man. One photograph – or group of photographs – comes from each decade of the 20th century. All belong to the Archive of Modern Conflict. Over the past 25 years, the archive’s small collection of amateur photographs has grown into one of the world’s most moving image treasuries, its shelves now holding pictures of some four-million lost lives.
In the 20th century, amateur photography took history – and collective memory – out of the hands of historians and gave it to individuals. In Pictures of You, bestselling author Rory MacLean narrates a journey across the globe and into the lives of ordinary men and women who lived through extraordinary times. He travels along the archive’s shelves, venturing from Siberia to Rangoon, China to Shepperton Studios, hearing forgotten voices that echo from the depths of time, picturing lives that mirror our own and saving the stories behind these pictures of you.
(Source: https://rorymaclean.com/books/pictures-of-you/)
About the Author
Rory MacLean is the author of more than a dozen books including the UK top tens Stalin’s Nose and Under the Dragon as well as Berlin: Imagine a City, a book of the year and ‘the most extraordinary work of history I’ve ever read’ according to the Washington Post. He has won awards from the Canada Council and the Arts Council of England as well as a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship, and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary prize. He has written about the missing civilians of the Yugoslav Wars for the ICRC, on divided Cyprus for the UN’s Committee on Missing Persons and on North Korea for the British Council. His works – which have been translated into a dozen languages – are among those that ‘marvellously explain why literature still lives’ wrote the late John Fowles. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the curator of the annual Sherborne Travel Writing Festival, he divides his time between the UK, Sicily, Toronto and Berlin.
https://rorymaclean.com/
(Source: https://rorymaclean.com/knowing-me/)
About the Publisher
Established in 2016, Bone Idle is the publishing arm of one of the world’s most important private art collections, publishing uniquely conceived, beautifully produced and rigorous art, photography and creative non-fiction titles on a wide range of subjects. Bone Idle books draw on original research, making each one a definitive contribution to scholarship.
(Source: https://boneidlebooks.com/about-bone-idle)
The Archive of Modern Conflict is an organisation dedicated to the collection and preservation of vernacular photographs, objects, artefacts, curiosities, and ephemera. Founded in 1991, the archive began as a collection of photographs relating to war and conflict but has since expanded its remit to become the vast and thematically diverse repository it is today. They have produced and published over thirty books, often collaborating with photographers and artists such as Stephen Gill, Cristina de Middel, Thomas Mailaender, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, and Don McCullin.
https://archiveofmodernconflict.com/
(Source: https://archiveofmodernconflict.com/about-us/)
