Perhaps the most haunting book in recent times would be Cyclops, by Albert Watson.

How do you define a trend setter? By definition it is beyond definition.

Watson’s book is like the Ten Commandments. Thou shall not… It is easier to state what it isn’t and hope that the negative in your carrier burns a positive, dense, deep, provocative, intense, inspiring, bromide.

This is not a review of a book of Photographs, but a rounded book of ideas, of travel, of anthropology, portraits of celebrities and of common people. It is about fashion as in the verb. It is about documentation and photoessay. It is about presentation and excellence and most importantly it is about passion and fetishes in the non-pejorative sense.

Albert Watson makes distinctive images.

He is beyond being a magazine photographer despite being commissioned by Life, Condo Naste´, Time, Italian Vogue, Stern, Newsweek and Rolling Stone. He is an artist with a camera.

Every Watson images is an erosion of the darkness, where the subject just peeps through, all the rules of back light and butterfly light and Rembrandt light all vanish, there is darkness and there is the subject. To say that this is a book of black and white images would perhaps be perjury. This is a book of non colour images. Even the printing goes through it’s gamut to come up with a process of CrystalRaster to render the platinum originals as faithfully as possible. 5 layers of dots, two different blacks, two greys and a varnish make the experience dazzling. Gone is the screen and mesh and the dot size, here all the dots are equal but closer or further apart bringing the tonality of the final print close to continuous tone and silver bromide

The book originally should have been called Fetishes because that is what it is about. They are all talisman which when rubbed produces genies, rewind experiences and most magically can translate fast forward some of their potency on to others a world and millennia away. There is from Tutankhamen’s Tomb a golden thumb stall, his carbonised glove circa 1323 BC and an Apollo Astronaut’s glove handshake across time and space.  Chairman Mao’s limousine and a crushed frog share space with Christie Turlington, Jonny Depp, Queen Latifah, Uma Thurman, Bobby Brown, Mike Tyson, Clint Eastwood and a whole bunch of ferocious characters from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, the comment is provocative. The seductive, sensuous nude, faces off with a poisonous snake from Marrakesh. The thin line dividing the schizoid self is under the microscope.

The book however is called Cyclops, a veiled hint at the little known fact that Albert Watson has sight in only one eye, it however is single minded and focussed on the job in hand. In the land of the two eyed sighted, the one eyed is king. Watson’s brand new book called Morooc is a continuation of his affair with Morocco and its land and people. He has a home in Marrakesh and spends a great deal of time there.

The book has a most revolutionary layout and design. There is no grid lock mercifully and all the books on usage of single major font have been re written. 38 fonts make their way here and used with such great panache and wit. David Carson is a genius, he can make Fuckedskinny (the font, lest you think this is abusive to the anorexic) look sublime, There is no pagination either.

This is a book for those wanting or claiming ‘specialisation’, the only specialisation should be left for brain surgeons. For photographers the name of the game should be exploration, discovery, cross pollination.

Albert Watson where will you take us next?