Monographs & Art Books / Z

714British photographer Tariq Zaidi presents a fashion subculture of Kinshasa & Brazzaville: La Sape, Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes ("Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People"). Its followers are known as 'Sapeurs' ('Sapeuses' for women). Most have ordinary day jobs as taxi-drivers, tailors and gardeners, but as soon as they clock off they transform themselves into debonair dandies. Sashaying through the streets they are treated like rock stars - turning heads, bringing 'joie de vivre' to their communities and defying their circumstances. Traditionally passed down through the male line, many Congolese women and their children have recently begun donning designer suits. As Papa Wemba (1949-2016, Congolese singer and fashion icon who popularized Sape) once said: 'White people invented the clothes, but we make an art of it.'

160A journey through the darker reaches of humankind, Apocalypsis is a record of loss, grief, injustice, violence and death through war in Iraq, the Congo, Darfur, Colombia, Afghanistan and Burma. Photographer Alvaro Ybarra Zavala aims to bring the realities of these regions into our daily lives, and to confront us with what he describes as "the orgy of desperation, blood and despair which human beings are capable of inflicting upon their fellows"; he undertakes to record these darker episodes in our recent history to show that they are omnipresent realities. "People are moved by what they see," writes Zavala. "They respond emotionally, intellectually and morally. All we have is each other. We create our own problems, and it is up to us to solve them. I want this project to become a part of our visual history, to enter our collective memory and our collective conscience. I hope it will serve to remind us that history's deepest tragedies concern not the great leaders who set events in motion but the countless ordinary people who are caught up in those events and torn apart by their remorseless fury."

198Liu Zheng (born 1969) is one of the few Chinese photographers whose work has reached the West. The exhibition of his extensive series The Chinese at ICP in New York in 2004 and the accompanying publication indicated he was working on the borders between the documentary tradition and the extended portrait school of August Sander. His background on the Workers’ Daily suggests his grounding as a photojournalist. Yet Liu Zheng’s vision does not echo the common view of China, characterized by anonymity in the sheer mass of the population, or by the momentum of industry. Frequently the subjects of his portraits are those on the fringes of Chinese society. Dream Shock brings us to another space that exists in the mind itself. Some of the characters, such as a Peking Opera singer, may be half-familiar, but the historical references to occupation and the sexual explicitness take us into unprecedented territory.

198In 1994, Chinese artist Liu Zheng conceived of an ambitious photographic project called The Chinese, which occupied him for seven years and carried him throughout China. Inspired by the examples of August Sander and Diane Arbus, he has captured a people and country in a unique time of great flux, providing a startling vision of the deep-rooted historical forces and cultural attitudes that continue to shape China and its people. Liu seeks out moments in which archetypal Chinese characters are encountered in extreme and unexpected situations. His photographs are divided among a number of topics which betray a dark vision, albeit one that is laced with mordant humor. His main subjects to date have included street eccentrics, homeless children, transvestite performers, provincial drug traffickers, coal miners, Buddhist monks, prison inmates, Taoist priests, waxwork figures in historical museums, and the dead and dying. This is the first monograph of his work to appear outside of China and accompanies Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, a major exhibition at the International Center of Photography, New York.

516One Voice weaves a compelling narrative of man's resolve and spirit when confronted with the loss of nation, family, and identity. Are people defined by their territory or by the culture they construct in their new lives? Photographed in refugee settlements and nomadic regions of India, the large-format portraits of One Voice represent a cross-section of Tibetan exile society; nomads, tradesman, writers, and revolutionaries. Intertwined with the photographic narrative are insights by Tibetan and Western writers, whose poetry and essays convey the exile experience. Ultimately, the Tibetan story is a universal one.