Synopses & Reviews
Photographer Michael Katakis has spent the last twenty-five years traveling around the world with a camera and a journal. While collaborating with his wife, social anthropologist Kris Hardin, Katakis’s perceptive work has spanned continents and cultures. The brilliant result of that partnership is captured here in Photographs and Words. Among their projects presented here is their initial collaboration at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, where they photographed and interviewed both veterans and civilians, creating a moving portrait of America’s strengths, sacrifices, and errors during a profoundly divisive time in the nation’s history. A different and disturbing vision of America country emerges in “Troubled Land: Twelve Days across America,” in which Michael Katakis sought to have a dialogue with ordinary people immediately after September 11. Bookended by these two American projects were periods of fieldwork in Sierra Leone documenting a village and its inhabitants just before a bloody civil war began. The unintended significance created by the awful events that followed provides a disconcerting context for the images. Both a very personal project and a universal portrait of a troubled humanity, Photographs and Words presents the very best work from one of America’s most distinguished photographers.
Synopsis
Michael Katakis has spent his life traveling with a camera and writing a journal. This is the resulting book. For the past 25 years he has collaborated with the social anthropologist Kris Hardin in work spanning continents and cultures. Their initial project was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, photographing and interviewing veterans and civilians alike, the result of which was a moving portrait of America's strengths, sacrifices, and errors during a profoundly divisive time in the nation s history. A different and disturbing portrait of the country emerges in Troubled Land: Twelve Days Across America, where Michael Katakis sought to have a dialog with ordinary people right after September 11, 2001. In between these projects were two periods of fieldwork in Sierra Leone documenting the people of a village before their bloody civil war began. His fine photographs were given an added, unintended significance by the awful events that followed. From Michael Palin's Introduction: Michael Katakis is an indefatigable traveler. Driven by a restless curiosity and a belief in the importance of the individual against the system he puts his humane and enquiring ear to the ground and picks up signals that are salutary, precise, and stimulating. His thoughtful words and pictures confer dignity and provoke indignation in equal measure. He guides our eye and our conscience without ever having to resort to hustle or harangue. There is a peacefulness at the heart of his work which gives us time to think.
About the Author
Michael Katakis has authored a number of books, including Traveller: Observations from an American in Exile; The Vietnam Veterans Memorial; and, as editor, Excavating Voices: Listening to Photographs of Native Americans. His work has been translated into multiple languages and his writing and photography have been collected by a wide range of institutions, including the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; the Victoria and Albert Museum; and Stanford University’s Special Collections Department. He lives in France and the United States with his wife, anthropologist Kris Hardin.
Kris L. Hardin is a cultural anthropologist. Her research expertise is in Africa, aesthetics, field methods, and cultural change. Hardin was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 1982 for her fieldwork and research in Sierra Leone, West Africa. In 1987 she was awarded a Smithsonian Fellowship for completion of her doctoral thesis. Hardin has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Beloit College, and Montana State University, and is the author and editor of three books, including The Aesthetics of Action, published by the Smithsonian Press. She currently lives with her husband, writer and photographer Michael Katakis, in France and the United States.
Table of Contents
Foreword by John Falconer
Introduction by Michael Palin
A Time and Place Before War
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Artifacts
Troubled Land: 12 Days Across America
My True North
Acknowledgments