Black Garden

Book Review by Nicholas Dantona

At the risk of being redundant by referencing Vanessa Winship and Monika Bulaj, I want to talk a little about Black Garden by peripatetic Jason Eskenazi.

Like Winship and Bulaj, he traveled in a region over a period of time 11 years, to explore a culture, relationships and a way of life. Except instead of adopting a strictly documentary style Eskanazi uses 20th century Russian history as the underlying metaphor for his primary motifs of various fairy tales: a parent figure (The Soviet Union) and a child (the citizens when the regime collapsed). In this fairy tale it was the loss of a Utopian dream and the hard lessons of independence. 

Black Garden is comprised of 154 photographs taken between 2009-2018. During that time he wandered through the old Ottoman Empire: Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Greece, Ukraine, Egypt, Libya, Israel, and Afghanistan. 

The images concentrate on 3 main themes: the subjugation of women, domination over the animal kingdom and self-destruction through war. 

This is the second book of a trilogy. 

The full narrative covers 3 books, 314 photos all numbered sequentially through 9 chapters. The work spans 11 years. The photographs are black and white, shot on Tri-X film with a Leica M6 and an OM-1. 

I like what he said after the project was completed.

“My journey is done. I have nothing more to say. I’m home.”