Simon Roberts: Motherland
Friday, December 7, 2007
A man eats lunch in a roadside café. Western Siberia, June 2005 (from “Motherland”)
© Simon Roberts
I’m not sure why I neglected to mention Simon Roberts‘ series Motherland up until now, but I think the project (also a book) is really among the most beautiful of the year.
Lens Culture has a nice 24-minute audio interview with Simon (might be worth a listen if you’re interested in his work). The site also has a self-running sideshow, which is kind of nice to let play while listening to the conversation.
More images from Motherland along with a number of other projects can be found on Simon’s website.
December 7th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I really like the work, but don’t you think that the book does some disservice to it? I’m not sure whether the reason is that Motherland begs for larger images (and a larger book) or that the text included gets (visually) in the way most of the time, and therefore it is a layout problem… What is your opinion? I’m certainly not against small books. Incidentally, I’ve just bought “Paul Strand at work” by Steidl + Aperture and I find it beautiful…
December 7th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Frederico,
I don’t mind the size so much but I do generally prefer books that are a little larger (with images a little larger) and, in this case, it might actually help the work. And I agree about the design. I think the images would benefit from the extra breathing room and surrounding white space.
It’s really too bad… but I still love the work.
December 8th, 2007 at 9:21 am
[...] SHANE LAVALETTE / JOURNAL » Blog Archive » Simon Roberts: Motherland I’m not sure why I neglected to mention Simon Roberts’ project Motherland up until now, but I think the book is really among the most beautiful of the year. (tags: photography photojournalism) [...]
December 20th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
he is also super cute! i met him the other day and boy, what a charmer!!
December 20th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Hah.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
[...] Roberts shot over 5,000 frames of 4×5 while traveling across Russia working on his Motherland project. Over on his blog, We English, he writes about his process of editing down to the final [...]