Bi-Polar: Photographs from an Unquiet Mind

Provocative juxtapositions animate this exquisite collection from National Geographic photographer Richards (The Color of Everything). Using his bipolar disorder as a lens through which to see the world, Richards organizes the photographs according to the “emotional polarities” they evoke. For example, he finds a dichotomy of hope and fear in Franz Joseph Land, a Russian archipelago damaged by climate change, arranging images of a landscape cluttered with human detritus alongside photos of thriving wildlife (including a surreal underwater picture of a family of walruses). Exploring the contrast between awe and hope, Richards intersperses shots of rock climber Alex Honnold, fresh off a ropeless ascent, with portraits of Richards’s emaciated father wasting away from liver cancer (“One body reminds me of infinite potential,” he writes, and the other of “inescapable finitude”). The impact of Richards’s photos is amplified by the devastating clarity of his prose, as when he writes about the latter set of images, “Alex appears superhuman. Cancer seems inhumane. I didn’t know it at the time, but I look at the pictures now and see that all I really wanted to do was make them both human again.” The results are fascinating and unforgettable. (Oct.)