BOOK D'outre-monde - Malala Andrialavidrazana

Publishing: Actes Sud

Malala Andrialavidrazana presents a photographic study of funerary customs around the world, with photographs taken from an extensive corpus of over seven thousand shots taken during an expedition to South America, Asia and Oceania in 2003. Her interest in burial grounds was initially prompted by studies in architecture. She sees the burial grounds as a powerful expression of a community's ties to a particular location, "revealing a great deal about the identity of a society and the individuals that compose it." In a world of growing uniformity, dominated by mass communication, she sees cemeteries as a reassuring sign of ongoing diversity in cultural heritage.

Carol Brown
Artistic advisor 2004 for the HSBC Fondation for photography