Byways by Roger Deakins

My friend Ned picked up this book after we went to an exhibit of Deakins’ photography at the Atheneum Center and watched a screening of a film on which he was Director of Photography: No Country for Old Men.

The photography from Deakins in the book ebbs and flows. In the beginning, at the start of his career, I can see him figuring out how to frame, figuring out whether he wants to be near or far from his subjects. He eventually figured out that he wanted to frame his subjects against a wide landscape. That was my favorite transition in tone: from beside the subject to calm study from afar. That’s how I remember my favorite films of his: as a steady and sweeping shot of humans moving in a landscape.

There’s another transition later in the book, to more of a “feeling of place”; there are no/few subjects in the frame. I think these are mostly reference shots for films, landscapes and structures alone. I feel like it kind of trails off at the end in this way; I wanted more.

The photos are mostly chronological in the book? Definitely the beginning is ordered by time, but I would love to know how he chose the layout and ordering of the latter half of the book. I couldn’t quite grasp it. I’m a big fan of the caption index in the final pages (rather than captioning each photo on the page).