Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds: Photographs from the Tropics

Seventy-six surrealistic postcards stun the viewer with crisp beauty: a fierce contrast between inner and outer worlds. People of this tropical vision are frozen in decisive moments, barely animating textured architectural still-lifes and sunset webbed shadows. Echoes of human forms create a pictorial time warp similar to that in Egyptian friezes. Color is intense, composition is tight, and imagery is a multi-leveled hyperbole for human desperation. Superbly printed on heavy matte stock, with a short quote from Carlos Fuentes's Hydra Head serving as the only introduction. Webb is a freelance photojournalist who has published in Geo, Time and other magazines. (May 12)