Photographed brilliantly by Layne Kennedy and featuring wonderful essays by Greg Breining, “A Hard-Water World: Ice Fishing and Why We Do It” is a great book in its own right, and a fabulous example of how images and words in book form – when handled with such intelligence – can still illuminate a topic like no other media.
Frankly, when I split open “A Hard-Water World” I wasn’t really expecting that much. For one thing, too many topical photography books disappoint. And for another, ice fishing isn’t exactly a topic I was dying to understand any better than the knowledge I had gained one winter day in New Hampshire, when my girlfriend at the time introduced me to the world that clearly meant a great deal to her extended clan.
A lot more drinking and drunken snowmobile driving was done that day than fishing, as far as I could tell. But from what I have learned from Breining’s humorous, adept writing and Kennedy’s wide-reaching, adept photography, is that that day wasn’t so unusual in the world of ice fishing, where drinking is often as important as designing ice houses, socially passing time inside those ice houses, using various augers to drill holes in the ice, and coming up with all manner of amusing activities to accompany this “sport” that – at least to the outsider – basically boils down to watching a hole in the ice was dragged onto the ice.
You can turn to “A Hard-Water World” for an insider’s excelling vision into the self-depreciating, wacky and ultimately sociologically illuminating world of ice fishing—through both personal anecdotes and wide-reaching facts. But even if the thought of learning about ice fishing makes your interest run cold, consider turning to “A Hard-Water World” for an unusually fine example of a good essay using images and words.
As I read “A Hard-Water World” I was constantly reminded that when it comes to image/word packages, the best packages involve the best words, in which the writer is as knowledgeable as he is a good story. Great photography, strong layout and good reproduction cannot alone make a book hold up. And so, it occurred to me that this book could help image-making storytellers better learn how to make content that fits the expanding need for online “slideshows” or any manner of modern multi-media experience.
This is to say that, understandably, photographic reportage usually focuses too heavily on the images, even though most photographers are the first to admit that a picture does NOT tell a thousand worlds. As the late Susan Sontag pointed out, pictures say very little without accompanying words. The create moods (and possibly misunderstandings) without the appropriate accompanying caption.
In “A Hard-Water World” I appreciated that Briening’s essays did not simply come at the beginning and end of the body of images but were more digestibly spread throughout the book. As I read and became more interested in the topic, I felt compelled to look more closely at Kennedy’s images, which at first, I admit, I had underrated – as they don’t jump off the page.
But as the images and words began to form a cohesive tapestry – the photographer and author often traveled together – I began to see so much more in Kennedy’s vision, and I realized with great appreciation how much more he had captured than I first realized.
Any book that entertains me while teaching me about a new aspect of societies while also making me consider the nature of story telling with images and words is, without doubt, a very big winner. “A Hard-Water World” relays that much of ice fishing is the act of combating boredom, but this book on the topic is anything but boring.