The Arts & Culture Journal

Fallyrag was lucky enough to meet Leonard Neumann, by chance, in a gallery in West London. Following a lengthy conversation about the photography it emerged that Leonard himself was a keen photographer. Here, he describes ‘The Reader’ series for Fallyrag and talks about his influences:

“The idea for my Reading series came from Andre Kertesz’s ‘The Readers’, a lovely book that forced me to look deeply into its images. Prior to reading Kertesz’s book, I had taken several images in Paris, London, New York and Texas of people reading, so the theme emerged rather naturally.

“I decided to expand on this idea and look more deeply into the subject. The subjects’ concentration, juxtaposed with the ambient scenery, was a prominent theme e.g. a Parisian man reading beneath a hedge in the Luxembourg Gardens whilst the world promenades above, the gondoliers at a Venice café reading the morning edition and the lovers reading the same book - All are so involved in the reading material that they seem to have forgotten the world around them.

“I have always noticed that throughout the world, in most societies, there is a wonderful tradition of relaxation through reading, while sitting on a park bench and you will notice that many of the images are taken in parks or park-like settings.  

“My first taste of photography, like many, was the book ‘The Family of Man’, a wonderful book and exhibition that Edward Steichen curated in 1955 for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As a young Capetonian, I was also inspired by David Goldblatt, the patriarch of South African photography, as well as Paul Alberts, the staff photographer of the Afrikaans newspaper ‘Die Burger’.