When I first flipped through East/West, I was convinced something had gone wrong with the printing. Everything looked much more saturated and contrasty than the 2015 Harry Gruyaert monograph, and I felt disgusted and ripped off, and I shoved East/West onto the shelf, determined to wait a few years (until it went out of print) and then sell it.
Imagine my surprise, when I went back to it for this review, compared duplicate shots from East/West and Harry Gruyaert directly, and found that they’re very close, if not identical, and that the two books (East, shot in Moscow a couple of months before the Berlin Wall fell, and West, shot in 1981 in Las Vegas) present more complete and unified projects/collections than does the monograph. I’m not sure if it was the overcast window light I viewed the books in for the unboxing, or if maybe the year or so on the shelf caused some mellowing, but I’m much more impressed by East/West now than I was then.
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