Another superb photo book put together by Willem van Zoetendaal from the archives of photographer and film and documentary maker Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001). This time it is a collection of street and landscape photos taken between 1956 and 1982 in the Netherlands, France, Greece, Italy and Spain, with a few from America. The images have been printed in their full glory, bled off, and most of them in landscape format requiring the book to be turned through ninety degrees to the left. Facing pages carry location and date in very restrained typography. The photos are arranged in geographical ‘chapters’, each of which has a chapter heading page with an overview of the photographs as negatives, printed in negative format. The cover has the same negatives: the table of contents turned inside out.

Not only is the visual quality of the photos impressively beautiful, the lithography and tritone printing are also outstanding; there was much praise for van Zoetendaal’s ability to create such beautiful image sequences in such magnificent books, the moving diptych on Patmos (antepenultimate and penultimate photo) being a case in point. Then there was extra applause for the man who as a headstrong publisher, picture editor, designer, former gallery owner and teacher has for so long been a propagandist for photography in all its facets.