A Book Review… !

"Godfrey DiGiorgi's Ways Together is, appropriately enough, the kind of photo book you'd want to peruse while quietly sipping a cappuccino at your favorite coffee shop. The coffee shop has become one of the common gathering places of our time and it’s fascinating to observe how people use it for solitude as much as for socializing. In fact, the digital interconnectedness of our society now makes it difficult to tell by looking which is the intent of the people in these photographs — which is of course part of the point. The theme of isolation versus contact is nicely played out throughout the book, which progresses through sections titled “Apart”, “Alone”, “In Private” and “Together”. The images progress from one theme to the other and yet maintain a common look and feel that makes this a unified work rather than a jumbled collection of works with a theme applied post hoc.

Though coffee shops are often jam packed with people, crowded and noisy, the photos on display here were obviously taken during relatively quiet hours. And the resulting photographs, too, are “quiet”. They speak clearly but they don’t shout. We need more of that these days, I think.

- Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia
  www.robertstech.com