Near East
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
A wartime odyssey captured through the lens of one of the twentieth century's most celebrated visual artists, Near East presents Cecil Beaton's extraordinary photographic and written record of his travels through Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine during the Second World War. Commissioned by the British Ministry of Information, Beaton chronicles the landscapes, peoples, and military operations of the region with the same razor-sharp aesthetic sensibility that had made him the defining portraitist of his era — producing images that are at once journalistic documents and works of art. Beaton's genius lay in his ability to dissolve the boundary between documentary record and artistic vision, and Near East stands as a masterclass in that rare skill. His prose is vivid and atmospheric, transporting the reader into sun-scorched bazaars and tented desert encampments with equal authority. Beyond its historical value as a first-hand wartime account, the work illuminates the cultural richness of a region then at the centre of global conflict, raising questions about empire, identity, and the ethics of the Western gaze that remain as resonant today as they were when first published.
Author: Cecil Beaton
Format: Hardback
Published: 1943, B.T. Batsford
Genre: Photography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
A wartime odyssey captured through the lens of one of the twentieth century's most celebrated visual artists, Near East presents Cecil Beaton's extraordinary photographic and written record of his travels through Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine during the Second World War. Commissioned by the British Ministry of Information, Beaton chronicles the landscapes, peoples, and military operations of the region with the same razor-sharp aesthetic sensibility that had made him the defining portraitist of his era — producing images that are at once journalistic documents and works of art. Beaton's genius lay in his ability to dissolve the boundary between documentary record and artistic vision, and Near East stands as a masterclass in that rare skill. His prose is vivid and atmospheric, transporting the reader into sun-scorched bazaars and tented desert encampments with equal authority. Beyond its historical value as a first-hand wartime account, the work illuminates the cultural richness of a region then at the centre of global conflict, raising questions about empire, identity, and the ethics of the Western gaze that remain as resonant today as they were when first published.