Henry Rollins--singer-songwriter, actor, writer and radio personality--is on a mission to bridge the gap between himself and the world. When he travels, he seeks out people and places off the beaten path. In the introduction to Occupants: Photographs and Writings, he explains, "It's just me, a camera and a notebook. I see what I see and meet whom I meet." This collection of photographs and text is culled from his experiences around the world between 2003 and 2010, in places like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Africa, Asia, Israel, Mali and the U.S.
Rollins is clearly disillusioned with the world he has encountered in his travels, especially the ways Western influences affect people in remote corners of the globe. Using travelogue, political commentary and creative, personal testimony, he pairs each photograph with a passage of abstract, stream-of-consciousness text--sometimes raw and rant-like, often reflecting sentiments of Rollins's dissatisfaction with the U.S. and war. The "captions" section at the end of the book offers thumbnail sketches that give brief, fascinating explanations about how each photograph came to be.
Rollins proclaims himself an amateur photographer, yet his photographs are provocative, moving and aesthetically accomplished. He has built his reputation on the strength of his spoken-word performances, and the freestyle prose passages in this book are designed to influence the viewer to see the images via Rollins's agenda and point of view. However, the gravitas of these photographs is powerful enough to speak volumes on its own. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines