Authors: Nathan Troi Anderson & J.K. Putnam

Publisher:  Mark Batty Publisher

ISBN: 978-0-979554674

What does beauty mean to you? It may be as delicate as a newly sprung flower or as stubble as a puddle of rain dew.

This book of photographs by Nathan Troi Anderson and J.K. Putnam helps to show that beauty can be everywhere in the world around us. From a rusty car to the skeleton vein of a leaf - it seems what one person may see as a form of decay, is something quite special to another.

My first thoughts when I received this book were “wow” and I was right. Page after page of photographs feature the rustic, the ruined and the ever-surreal.

The photograph of a rusty truck stuck in a middle of a wood made me stop and study it for a long time. I am beginning to see why this is called beauty and I thought of a great name for pages 14 and 15 -  Road to Nowhere.

The photographs of tumbling waterfalls were simply stunning and made me gasp in awe. Anderson and Putnam manage to capture beauty, freedom and nature in one brilliant shot.

However I was a little disappointed to see the pictures of a rotting raccoon strangulated by the branch of a tree. I suppose to these authors there may be something fascinating and perhaps beautiful about this but to me it was just horrible and I felt so sad for the poor animal.

Obviously others may think differently altogether but this is just my opinion and I suppose as I reviewer I ought to say what I think.

Trees in shed captured on page 74 just speak supreme beauty to me. The branches reach out into the air and below their trunks lay a carpet of rich red and orange leaves. This is certainly one of my favourite pages in Decay and I think others will agree.

Cracked clay and a ruin are two more pages I came across that I fell in love with. The clay is cracked and looks rather like it could turn into powder at any moment but still has a state of beauty even in that form.

The ruin was also a good snapshot - again illustrating beauty where one might just see a crumbling temple.

I could go on but I think I shall leave it up to readers of this beautiful, graphic design book which offers a different look at our world where you will see that “decay is just another senseless borderline between the whisper of the ghosts of past days and the roar of painfully recovered memories”.

I loved this so much and the accompanying CD compliments the book too. Fantastic.