The Suffering of Light

Book excerpt: Review The images - rich in color and visual rhythm - span 30 years and several continents. Of course, Haiti and the Mexican border are well represented, locales that opened up a new way to see. He has been able to render Haiti - a place often depicted for its chaos - with a precise eye, finding personal moments that are as still as they are complex. He can use shadows as skillfully as a be-bop musician to set the tempo. The people in his frames can look like dwarfs being stomped on by giant, disembodied feet. He can make an American street seem far more foreboding than any Third World slum. (David Gonzalez The New York Times 2011-12-18) A 30-year retrospective of a great, and often overlooked, American pioneer of colour photography who pays scant regard to genre boundaries, merging art photography, photojournalism and often complex street photographs. (Sean O'Hagan The Guardian 2011-12-13) In far-flung corners of the globe, Webb captures glimpses of beauty in impoverished lives and stoicism in the face of strife. (Jack Crager American Photo 2011-12-01).