Matt McAvoy Book Review

Not a work of literature in any real sense, but it is still difficult to imagine that this beautiful and sometimes stunning collection won’t appeal to most people on some level.  The elegant foreword and introduction aside, this book is in fact almost entirely a showcase of photography curated by a talented and shrewd-eyed life observers.  The 100 or so photographs range from the stylish to the sombre, the exciting to the calm, and the most simple of setpiece to the cleverest of visual effect.  Yet all are, to some degree, mundane.  Normal.  Everyday.  And therein lies their beauty.  The good people of Shanghai are shown going about their business in all walks of life, in all demographics.  The pictures, not spectacular in their sensationalism, are exquisite in their normalcy.  The quality, of course, is without question.  These photographers, however many there are contributing to this collection, are all quite simply true professionals and true artists.  This the images all have in common. 

But it is not the only thing.  Most of all, what each and every one of these photographs has in common is love.  Love for the country, culture and people of Shanghai.  This book forms part of a series of such photographic showcases each paying tribute to a specific context, in this case this glamorous and populous city, and as such it is in its nature to be something of a love letter to the place.  And that indeed it is.  These photos are about the faces, the lives and the stories within them.  They are not holiday snaps, or everyday tourist journal; these are poignant moments capturing the everyday business of the locals, in high definition, the moments picked sublimely to raise a question in the viewer – that being: what is this person’s story?  Like a photographer in any natural habitat, the moment is awaited, patiently, then stolen and frozen in time.  It asks that question with style, the only hint of any leading of the viewer’s imagination being the captions, the quotes and the proverbs which pepper the gallery.  But there is no unhappiness here, just pure, unapologetic affection.  Perhaps sad, in some ways, that the latter photographs are characterized by reminders of the Covid pandemic, but in some ways that also tells a story of its own; an overall underlying context reminding us that although the times change, the people don’t.

This book will most appeal to photographers, both professional and amateur, and those who yearn for Shanghai, either as an aspiration or from nostalgia.  Most of all, though, it is a quality curated collection and a genuine showcase for its contributors.  A quite lovely book, and a bit of an oxymoron, in that it offers us genuine escapism by sharing real life.