A book that arrived in the post last week. I’ve seen it in the Athenium bookstore in Beaune, but otherwise I found it available only from the book’s own website and this is quite canny if you’re publishing yourself; you receive the full $50 per copy, not $5 or whatever you get from amazon while they discount it to $22! Of-course you are much harder to find without amazon…

This is a reasonably large size book, roughly the same size as ‘Remington Norman’s’ updated book – but its 168 pages are in landscape format versus Norman’s portrait. Matt, burgundy cloth covered, it’s only decoration is a wine-bottle styled label.

If it’s not obvious from the title, this is a book of Côte d’Or photos, shot over about 2 years – and what lovely photos they are too – you almost have a sense of getting under the skin of region.

As I normally moan about ‘forewards’, this book laughs in my face with a ‘foreward’, an ‘introduction’ and then an ‘afterword’ – but then it needs them as it is the only text – that the words are contributed by Aubert de Villaine, Allen Meadows and Guillaume d’Angerville lends them a certain gravitas.

There’s no getting away from it, this is a very pretty book but it is also a coffee table book. Given that my coffee-table remains clutter-free I find I don’t engage with such books enough. You spend many hours with a written book before consigning it to the bookshelf, photobooks are looked at only a few times before finding their place on the shelf; I don’t regret buying it, but personally get more value from a book with words.