The photographs of Marc Riboud (1923-2016 RIP) in “Vers l’Orient” were made on the early version of the photography network we use every day:  35mm canisters were sent to regional press offices, where they were developed and edited, transmitted over the most primitive equipment to Paris or New York and reproduced in magazines before the photographer returned to see them. Sixty years later, with every photographer networked, our hand computers feeding the Instagram urban globalism blender, a person arriving with only vague ideas of what a place looks like is a rare exception. 

After the war, Riboud and Henri Cartier-Bresson went on similar trips across several continents that created a bulk of their archives and provided the first modern look at several countries. Riboud recounts in the essay being given guidance by HCB in the form of letters, “waiting for me at General Delivery in Kabul, in Jaipur, in Madras, in Ahmedabad, or in some Indonesian city whose name I forget.” There are examples of the limitations of humanism in both archives, but the fresh curiosity of the informal, small-camera style did much to air out the stench of colonial era cataloging.

The five-volume set of “Vers l’Orient" is as good as mid-century globalism gets. I avoid books with slipcases, but here the slipcase isn’t attempting to make the set feel more precious than it is. The bold design, the paper quality and the printing style, which captures inky Tri-X blacks are excellent. Most HCB books feel designed for libraries, while this Riboud set should be in a home.