Sweet life

Dustjacket slightly damaged. Van der Elsken’s magnum opus.“Out of stream of consciousness photography emerged several distinct genres, the ‘personal’documentary, the diaristic photobook, the photonovel and so on. Another was the photographic odyssy, the photographer’s quest to find himself (it is generally a boy thing), the photographic version of On the road. The epitome of this genre is, of course, Robert Frank’s The Americans, but not far behind is Ed van der Elsken’s Sweet life. Whereas Frank criss-crossed the United States, Van der Elsken was even more wide-ranging. Sweet life is the result of a 14-month world trip that he made in 1960-1, covering West Africa, the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, the United States and Mexico. Sweet life was the name of a little tramp steamer in the Philippines, which makes its appearance in the book.” (From: The Photobook: A history, volume 1 by Martin Parr and Gerry Badget.)