Catch My Eye

A book of 57 images taken from the daily photo blog of Gabrielle McKone.

Critical reviews so far received:

This from Gregory O'Brien, recipient of 2012 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement

"I love the pairing of the images--the black-trousered gents on Lambton Quay peering across the page to where wetsuited legs protrude from a stationwagon... the roundness of an ice-cream across from a triangular sandcastle/tower... I approve of the lightness and whimsy (which are very different things, I hasten to add, from being lightweight and flippant). The figure in black watering the back wheel of his Morris 1100 strikes me as a classic NZ 'gardening' photo...The lurching gorilla...Favourite images: well, the bird taking off in the final photograph strikes me as a truly great, inexplicable image... The pavlova going down the road...the hand above the hamster...

There's a joyfulness in the taking of the photos and this surfaces in the pictures themselves, even when they're a little melancholy and dour (as life tends to be). Most street photos I come across (and it's a genre I love, needless to say) tend to be a little existentially under the weather...narratives of entrapment. While some of your pictures are troubling (the plastic child across from the resuscitation dummy),  there always seems to be more than enough oxygen to go around. Effervescence, even, aplenty. Look, the boat floats!

Here is a review on  Bookman Beattie (Beattie's Book Blog is the unofficial homepage of the New Zealand book community).