Patrick James Michel: Five

In his first book of photographs, seasoned fashion photographer Michel turns his quixotic lens toward native people in five exotic corners of the Earth. In a brief introduction in English, French and German, Michel links his subject's homelands to the natural elements Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and a fifth composite of them all. Northern Kenya, cradle of civilization and home of the Samburu people, represents Earth. For Water, he visits the mighty Ganges and the people it physically and spiritually cleanses along its banks. The baking Sahara and its resident Tuareg nomads--blue flames of the desert in their flowing indigo garb--are Fire. The native North Americans of Arizona, mostly Navajo pictured here, commune with the Air, or spirit world. In the Australian outback these four""come together in a weaving, drunken embrace"" to spawn a fifth element, Michel writes. Moving past the esoteric romance, the photographs themselves give the viewer an intense, if enigmatic, glimpse of distant lives. In one picture, a young aborigine boy dripping with water glances toward the lens as he plays billabong; in another, a Samburu warrior camouflaged in army fatigues stares piercingly at the camera. Michel also excels at capturing nature's majestic beauty. In Arnhem Land, Australia, a pale green sunlight cuts through the blue mist and palms like a primordial forest, and in the Sahara, the desert dunes and escarpments are lit in brilliant yellow and orange. A back-of-the-book pictorial index reveals location names in pithy captions. 200 photographs.