Munich:Frederking & Thaler,1st edition,2002,In German,Hardcover with dust jacket.
Condition:Good,Shelfwear,Rubbed edges,A couple of clicks on back cover. One faint bumped edge.
Jackie Nickerson's work is refreshing and substantial for a variety of reasons. For one, her color prints vacillate between rich hues and a bleached tonality. All of the work is printed in color but some images have been printed almost monochromatically, allowing this or that single muted color to barely present itself. The intentional austere effect is akin to the washed-out appearance things acquire under the burning midday sun of the African farmlands where she photographs. Machinery is virtually non-existent in these agricultural communities and Nickerson's work focuses on the people, clothing and inventiveness that is cultivated through poverty. Her work gracefully straddles the line between document and testament--think sharecroppers by Walker Evans--and for that reason alone her work is worthy of attention.
After a career as a successful magazine photographer with a great eye for fashion, style and detail, Jackie Nickerson quit the commercial world, bought a truck and spent two and a half years travelling through Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. She photographed in the small towns and on the corporate plantations making astonishing portraits of workers in their workplace. The result is the forging of a new visual language that creates a great sense of elegance, dignity and compassion in the face of daily toil. Farm has become a document for an agrarian culture in tatters and, in some places, on the brink of collapse. It is a view of Africa outside the language of photojournalism and the previous depictions of the glories of tribal culture.