THE TROPICS BEFORE THE ENGINE
The Tropics Before the Engine is a photographic and ethnographic reportage documenting indigenous populations across various tropical countries and their primitive, traditional means of transportation, largely captured during the 1970s and early 1980s. Commissioned and published by IVECO, the volume creates a powerful documentary contrast.
It explores a world where the transportation of goods and people still relied entirely on muscular strength (both human and animal) and natural elements, capturing these societies right before the sweeping mechanization brought by the combustion engine.
Through hundreds of stunning color photographs, many spanning double pages, photographer Enzo Ragazzini captures human ingenuity and the profound dignity of manual labor.
A famous sequence from the book showcases workers unloading sulfur at Cochin Harbour in India. In these images, the laborers are portrayed with a complete physical commitment and a sculptural presence that critics have likened to the anonymous yet dignified peasants in the Flemish paintings of Bruegel the Elder.
The accompanying texts are written by the acclaimed Italian author Goffredo Parise, whose reflections add deep anthropological and poetic weight to the images, turning the book into a precious historical testimony of life rhythms that have now largely vanished.
235 pages. Text in English.
"This book, which was born of an anthropological idea, is by no means intended to be a scientific study of the problems of the world without engines; it is instead a fantastic voyage into the "past", to places, landscapes and peoples that are different but share the common, age-old problem of transport and work without engines...whilst the old methods of work and transportation may sometimes ensure the continuity of traditions, of the craftsman's culture and its unwritten rules, those same methods, in localitieswhich are extremely poor and where social injustice prevails to a very great extent (nearly everywhere), often amount to a sentence to slavery"
Enzo Ragazzini
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