Len Paterson

The photographs in this picture book contains a lot of details, often both that of several ships, the cranes to serve them, and the sailors, dockers, and shipyard workers to handle it all. The photographer was a great one, the one responsible for the layout a complete idiot. For hundreds of years the pagination in books have been unobtrusely put in the lower outer corner, and the chapter headings have appeared only once for every chapter, as everyone involved in the printing of books viewed their work as presenting clearly the work of the author and the illustrator. Now everone is a "creator". And chapter headings may, as they are here, be printed on absolutely every page in large gray letters on top of a black line crossing the whole page, and the pagination done with the page numbers inside large grey ovals halfway in on the page, and well up as well. And the book may even with this contain an unnecessary amount of white paper around its tiny pictures (often framed "artistically" with fake parts of film to remedy this). With some ordinary craftmanship among the printers this would have been a great book. But it is not.… (mehr)