Slant Rhymes (La Fabrica, 2017) is a collection of photographs from Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb that explores the relationships between their work. After reading/flipping through their excellent Aperture Workshop book on Street Photography and the Poetic Image, I needed more Rebecca Norris Webb photographs in my life, and quickly ordered this book and Memory City (review forthcoming), and after spending some time with these, I still need more RNW in my life.
Alex Webb’s blacker than black blacks, high-toned reds, and muted everything else is not really my cup of tea, but I still have a deep appreciation of his work, and I know he’s very popular in some circles. But Rebecca Norris Webb… wow! Her work is absolutely incredible, evocative, emotional, moving, and deeply inspiring.
Next to on Street Photography and the Poetic Image and Memory City, Slant Rhymes has something of a retrospective feel. It’s not a singular body of work, but mixes images from Webb and Norris Webb’s long relationship, sometimes taken around the same time and/or in the same place, at other times taken half a world and decades apart.
Throughout the book, quotes and short written pieces appear, a sort of conversation between the couple, talking about their processes (perambulation; conversation & connection) and their relationship with each another, and with photography, and the relationships between their photographs and them.
RNW: For some thirty years, we keep pouring words and images into the space between us, trying to fill it up.
AW: Is this our beautiful and impossible task?
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Overall, I rate Slant Rhymes 3.5 stars, though mostly because I also have on Street Art and the Poetic Image, and Memory City. If Slant Rhymes was the only book I had from Webb and Norris Webb, it would likely rate somewhat higher.
Slant Rhymes is fairly recent, and is already in a second printing. You can find copies direct from La Fabrica, and various online stores. And if you’re not interested in a book, be sure to check out their website and give them a follow on Instagram. There’s some great work to be seen there, from both.
