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Ramadan in Yemen (signed)

by Max Pam

Photographs: Max Pam

Text: Max Pam

Publisher: Éditions Bessard

92 pages

Pictures: 90 color illustrations

Year: 2011

ISBN: 978-2-9537204

Comments: book enclosed in hardcover clemshell box; 28 x 28 cm; limited edition of 1000 copies; personally numbered, stamped, embossed and signed

Ramadan in Yemen documents photographer Max Pam’s travels through this amazing country in the late 1990s. Max believes the journal he kept at this time is one of his best and this journal forms the heart to the book.

"What could I say about Yemen that did it justice. I tried in my journal to work it honestly. I tried with 60 rolls of black and white 120 film to translate the experience. That hot, spare and beautiful Ramadan.

No eating or drinking anything between sunrise and sunset. The faithful waiting for the moment. The cannon booms from the mosque in the afterglow of the day. KABOUMMM and a frenzy of quat buying, tea drinking and food eating begins in the suqs and squares and oases and towns all over the country. Everyone happy, elated laughing and joking sitting down together as one nation.

And you know what, people always wanted me to share and be part of their Ramadan, their community, their Yemen. I travelled all over the country with them. To Shibam, Taizz, Al Mukallah, Sanaa, over the desert, by the sea and into the mountains. The shared taxis were always a half past dead Peugeot 405’s with sometimes 10 or 12 people jammed in.

The 92 pages of this book give my version of that unforgettable Ramadan month. An experience freely given to me by the generosity of Yemeni people. " (Max Pam)

Mentioned by Parr / Badger THE PHOTOBOOK: A HISTORY Volume III