EQUUS
Tim Flach
Hachette Livre, hbk, $120
Review by Jane Davidson
Occasionally - very occasionally - comes a book that makes me swoon. Equus, by English photographer Tim Flach, makes me do just that.
It combines distinctive photographs of that most noble of beasts, the horse, in all manner of situations, familiar and unusual.
Flach, who says he grew up with horses, took seven years to produce the work, his first book.
It is the horse as most of us have never seen it, from the minute detail of its chin to its skeleton outline, and in utero.
Some are in their natural surroundings, others at work, in different places around the world.
Flach turns around conventional images and gives them a twist. For example, a mare is white-grey and her foal chocolate-brown.
His photographs are often stark - black on white, white on black, grey on cream, brown on black.
A few are macabre. All are works of art.
There is an intelligent and insightful introduction explaining how the book came into being, and its very deliberate structure.
At $120, this sumptuous, coffee-table book is not cheap, but it's my book of the year - by lengths.
Jane Davidson is a subeditor and a hobby breeder of thoroughbred racehorses.
