this book is great. Wim Wender's opening prose about the art of photography is worth the price alone. delve into the book further, and you are gifted with some really great travel documentary photographs with short prose describing the images. i like this, as a photographer, i am often very interested to hear the story behind the photographs. the art of the slide show presentation is a lost art in america yet this book somehow evokes that type of discovery and storytelling.

featuring both color and black and white photographs, and many of them done as a series, the book's paper texture and image reproduction is top notch.

the physical size of the book is perfect-it's easy to pick up and read or carry with you, and the images are easy to view.

in many ways, this book seems very cinematic. being a film director, Wender's sees each still image as the first frame of a movie and it shows.

i enjoyed this book a lot. the texts (more like poems)gracefully compliment the images. wim wenders is not only a master in telling stories but also a great photographer . the prelude about the act of taking pictures is very insightful too.

this is a wonderful and profoundly moving little book which will get you interested in starting your own road trip and photo journal!

This volume will be a delight to cineastes as it features run-ins with mythmakers like Kurosawa, Scorsese, and Coppola. The pictures inside capture scenes of casual beauty. It seems Wenders has been all over the world and never forgets his camera. Wenders' spare prose requires no concentration and is as easy to read as his photos are easy to look at. Fans of Cartier-Bresson and other photophiles who savor "the moment" a photograph is taken will find many examples of just that: an unusual or special moment embalmed by Wenders' lens and preserved forever in this book. Charming.

I enjoyed reading WW diary primarily for the insights to the personal struggles of the director working with somebody who is his master. Book is full of slight and not-so-slight overtones on the relationship between two men; sadness at the realization that "Beyond the Clouds" in all probability will be Antonioni's last movie; impossibility of filling in the personal artistic content for the other artist. I was amazed on the technique which Antonioni is unfortunately left with after his paralysis - finger gestures and a few disconnected utterances. I would recommend this book to a student of cinema; and also to the lover of biography genre.

A masterpeice of a movie, becomes a woderful account of the making of it. Diaries of the famous and creative, are the publics guilty pleasure of removed voyouerism. This book is just great.

'The Act of Seeing' is absolutely essential for any Wenders fan. His philosophies about film, art, life, and more are all explored in this, his third book of essays. One of my favorite film books.

This superb study is a fascinating read which clearly analyzes the films of the remarkable German filmmaker. It would behoove any fan of Wenders films to read this exceptional and engrossing book.

A fine volume of essays and interviews on Wenders. The first book to successfully compile a broad collection of interpretive essays on the different themes in his cinematic output. Equally fascinating for a reader are the essays written by Wenders himself, who comes across as insightful, articulate and intelligent. This book is an excellent introductory text to his work, but simultaneously provides plenty of material for those already familiar with Wenders oeuvre. This title comes highly recommended.

Up to date, philosophically profound and provocative, and championing Wenders work where recent critics have turned off and tuned out,this is simply the best work we have on Wenders. Do not be put off by the austere, academic hardcover appearance: this is a stylish, and engaged encounter with Wenders work which, though the writer claims he is no film expert per se, has an intimate understanding of the spatial dimension of the medium as well as the thematic and ideological turn in Wenders work. With the renewed interested in Wenders since Buena Vista, this very informative book deserves a wide public. Let's hope the publishers issue this in paperback.

I am fairly new to the Wenders world, his school of life and wings. The movie and the book are beautiful. Cinematoraphy/photography tightened into the form of a man's luminescent imagination.

I am a fan of Wim Wenders' work, and I loved the BVSC CD and the movie, but in all honesty, except for the intro by Wenders and the closing interview with Ry Cooder, the entire book basically consists of shots from the movie along with the dialogs by the BVSC stars and the lyrics to the songs they interpret, i.e. material that the movie and the CD already provide. Yes: I admit I had higher expectations with it. In any case, I have to say Ibrahim Ferrer's monologue toward the end, when they visit NYC for their performance at Carnegie Hall, is a very touching moment.

I recently saw the movie Buena Vista Social Club for the first time and I liked it so much that I wanted to learn more about it. That's why I ordered this book.

At first, I was a little disappointed when I received the book and found out that some of the images were low-resolution digital scans. However, after reviewing the book as a whole, I really got to like it. There are quite a few large high-resolution images that more than compensate for their low-res counterparts.

The book is mainly a photo-album which includes the transcriptions of some of the dialogs and interviews from the movie, as well as the lyrics of some of the songs (all of them translated into English).

One of the only pieces of material in this book that are not an integral part of the movie is the foreword by Wim Wenders, where he describes his whole experience of going to Cuba to make the movie. Very, very interesting to read! The other two are an interview of Ry Cooder with Peter Kemper and the biographies of the musicians.

This book is good to have around when you are having a conversation about the movie with your friends. You'll find the photos and dialogs from all the key moments in the movie.

Buena Vista Social Club is more a coffee table addition than a serious in-depth study, but will prove a 'must' for any prior fan of the Buena Vista Social Club and Cuban music in particular. Photos, film stills and text accompany first-person capsule sketches by the participants of the BVSC group in this companion book to the film.

If I had to choose only one Wim Wenders photography book, it would be "Once". That said, "Written in the West" is an awesome companion to "Once". It has a great interview in the front of the book but the 60+ photos are featured without further commentary other than titles and locations.

"Once" has more commentary on each photo or series of photos and has more photos altogether. This is why I prefer that book. However "Once" is a smaller book whereas "Written in the West" is more of a coffe table sized book.

The presentation is great and the color photos offer a unique perspective on the American west. Wenders even tells us what camera and lens he used and why.

I suppose it was only to be expected that filmmaker Wim Wenders would have an eye for composing a good photo. This book of sixty-two, originally published in 1987, is thankfully still in print. They were taken in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas while Wenders was looking for locations for his movie 'Paris, Texas'. Predictably they show a European notion of America so most of them capture what could be considered a rather negative image, abandoned gas stations in the desert, deserted movie theatres and shops, neon signs, everyday commercial activity and more. But they are taken with a sympathetic eye and great feeling.

There are six really great images of street corners, this kind of shot always works, shop-fronts and parked cars stretch into the distance while the immediate foreground provides close-up detail. As with all Wenders photos the color is very controlled and he takes advantage of the very strong dark shadows created by the sunlight in this part of the country. There are four interior photos which I don't think are too successful, very dark and rather lacking in composition.

I don't think this will be a photo book to everybody's taste, because of the subject matter but if you like the grittiness of the American street scene it is well worth owning. A book that captures the same area in great color photos is 'Southwest USA' by another German, Gerd Kittel. More broader in scope than 'Written in the West', it includes many interior and landscape photos as well as the small town street scenes.

The book is a catalogue for the important exhibition of Cuban photography, "Shifting Tides: Cuban Photography After the Revolution," which was organized by Tim B. Wride of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Focusing on just three generations of photographers, starting just after the triumph of the 1959 Revolution, it highlights the important work of photographers in and out of Cuba such as Jose A. Figueroa, Maria Eugenia Haya (Marucha), Rogelio Lopez Marin (Gory) and Marta Maria Perez Bravo.
The essay by Cristina Vives, an independent curator in Havana and an art historian, offers a brief history and indeed a very personal close-up of Cuban photography and its importance not as a tool of a socialist state or society but as fine art. As an "insider", (she is married to the photographer Jose A. Figueroa), she has been both privileged and burdened with writing an elegant essay that although brief, is both concise and informative. The reader emerges with a clearer understanding of how the present "state of affairs" in Cuban contemporary photography came to be. The press was a close ally of the medium because of political and social reasons in the early stages of the Revolution but, nevertheless provided both work and a showcase for the talents of many. In addition, Ms. Vives examines the state of photography before this historical reality of that continues to be, the Cuban Revolution.
Curator Wride, in a brief telephone conversation to this writer, said the idea of an exhibition as this was four years in the making. The exhibition and book that accompanies it, have been worth waiting for.

Margarita Aguilar
Assistant Curator
El Museo del Barrio, New York

A definite addition to any coffee table worth its cafe con leche

As an American photographer who photographs in Cuba I found this book to be both visually exciting and intellectually stimulating. The more recent photographs are complex and sophisticated. The preface by Wim Wenders was especially moving. Wenders summed up my personal feelings about this tiny neighbor in a poetic and passionate way. This book has convinced me to travel to see the exhibition in person.