Magnum Degrees

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I had considered adding a sidebar on the right of this site with a list of books I'm currently reading or reviews of books I've recently read. Instead, I think I might occassionally write full posts about books that I'd like to recommend. If you know me and if I own the book (as I do today's recommendation), feel free to come and borrow it if you'd like.

Magnum Degrees

Magnum Degrees
by Michael Ignatieff

I purchased this book at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art just over a month ago on the recommendation of my twin brother who is currently studying the history of art at university. Until recently I hadn't been aware of the Magnum group of photographers at all, but at a quick glance the book looked enticing. As Library Journal explains "Magnum is an agency of elected photojournalists who independently photograph what they choose rather than what they are assigned."

The collection of photographs in Magnum Degrees covers an incredibly diverse range of subjects, most of which are politically orientated, from a number of photographers. Photos are ocassionaly intersperced with brief descriptions of the photographer's intentions. There are some truly striking and shocking (I don't say that lightly) images. Many of the photographs are from war-torn regions and the images are incredibly raw.

There are few books I've read recently that truly altered my world perspective the way this collection of photos has. A photo of a ragtag soldier sitting on a bunkbed at the side of a dusty road in Afganistan with an AK-47 assualt rifle in his hands, certainly makes you consider how difficult it is to understand the persepctive of someone so different from yourself. A superb collection.

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Nick Burka -

http://gallery.whitelands.com

All of the photos from the book are online on the Magnum website. One of my favorites is this photo, not so much for the actual photo but for the amazing photomontage posters of La Pen's head melded to Hitler's.

Daniel Burka -

Thanks bro, I hadn't realized all of the images were there. This is the image in Afganistan I was referring to.

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Daniel Burka

My name is Daniel Burka. I'm a web designer living in San Francisco. Currently, I'm one of the founders of Milk Inc.. For several years I was the creative director at Digg and previous to Milk, I was the director of design at Tiny Speck. I grew up in PEI, Canada, where I was one of the founders of silverorange. Aside from obsessing about interface design and css selectors, I'm a frequently-falling rock climber, a lazy cyclist, and an often out-of-bounds disc golfer.

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I'm a web designer living in San Francisco, California. I sometimes get the chance to present lectures and workshops at conferences around the world, where I speak about iterative design strategies, designing for large online communities, and more broadly about interface design for web applications. I've posted many of the slides from past presentations I've done on Slideshare.

Currently, I'm the director of design at a small gaming startup called Tiny Speck. Until October 2009, I was the creative director at Digg. I was also one of the co-founders of the social content-sharing site Pownce, which is now a part (heh heh) of Six Apart. Back in 1999, I helped found silverorange, a stellar web development and design firm based in Prince Edward Island, Canada. I continue to work with silverorange, but as an inactive partner.

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