REVOLUTIONS

The photographs collected in this unique book provide a startling visual documentation of seminal revolutionary events, from the Paris Commune of 1871 through to a series of "Unfinished Revolutions", from May 1968 in France to the Zapatista uprising in the mid 1990s. They include the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and revolutions in Hungary, Germany, Mexico, China, the Spanish Civil War and the Cuban Revolution. The immediacy of the images tells the story of these struggles in a way that texts rarely can, with shocking contemporary photographs such as the barricade showing the scene after a battle, teeming with people, soldiers, shock troops and bystanders, the barricades riddled with holes seen in a daguerreotype taken from a window on June 20th and 26, 1948 and as described by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables. Commentary on the images is provided by leading historians Gilbert Achcar, Enzo Traverso, Janette Habel, and Pierre Rousset, and Michael Löwy. The relatively new media of photography provided a method which abstracts the subjective responsibility arising from personality culture and political choices on the part of the photographer. Chunky 540 pages, fully illus with hundreds of rare mono images.