The photographs featured in this book are beautifully and skillfully captured and edited and complimented by top notch book design that lets the images take center stage.
I’m an award winning portrait photographer who has always loved architectural photography, but never been any good at it. The photographs in this book are captured with extraordinary skill. I imagine there were a lot of wide-angle lenses in use, but lens warping (an inevitable artifact caused by the construction of wide-angle lenses) has been expertly edited out. Special attention has also been paid to making sure the images appear on the page in a way that showcases the absolute symmetry of the architecture. This is a deceptively difficult thing to achieve. I suspect someone spent a lot of time with the perspective crop tool in PhotoShop to achieve this feat.
The elimination of lens warping in the images is so consistent, that when it does appear, it’s distracting. I found myself googling the Palazzo Faranese and looking at the overhead satellite view of the structure to see if it was indeed barrel shaped, or if the image on pages 188-189 didn’t get the same editing treatment as others in this book.
It’s also worth noting the lighting in these photographs. Ceilings that feature a mix of warm incandescent lighting and “cool” sunlight coming in from windows pose a unique challenge for photographers shooting on digital cameras due to the relative “temperatures” of the lighting mix. It’s very difficult to balance these extremes, and yet all of the photos in this collection are well exposed. The brightest areas aren’t washed out, and the darkest areas don’t suffer any loss of discernible detail.
The photo on page 22-23 of the mosaics of the Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in Russia is an absolute triumph.
The collection is divided into four sections: Religion, Culture, Power, and Politics. Each section is fairly Western European-centric, but there is at least one treasure from the East and the Americas in each section. The conspicuous lack of works from non European countries could be a function of there not being a cultural tradition of decorative ceilings or it could be difficulty in traveling to those locations to photograph them due to political instability, but the reasons why the book focuses on European artworks is never addressed in the text.
The introductions to the individual artworks provide a good overview of the history of each, its context in overall art history, and its continued cultural significance. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the materials used in the construction and decoration of the works and the detailing of how the works have changed and evolved over time with restoration and alterations. I also appreciate the mix of close detail shots and wider shots that give a strong sense of place to the artworks being featured.
One final note: The lack of female artists represented in the collection is addressed in the introduction, but briefly and, in my opinion, inadequately. It simply states that the lack of women in the art form of ceiling decoration “raises interesting questions”. These questions are not actually expressed, let alone answered. This is hardly “honoring” them as the introduction states.