Wallrafen, Hannes. The World of Márquez: A Photographic Exploration of Macondo by Hannes Walrafen.

Ryan, 1992. First edition. Hardcover with protected dust jacket, like new. Text by Gabriel García Márquez. Photographs by Hannes Wallrafen. Introduction by Márquez, followed by excerpts from his writings, such as Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred years of Solitude, accompanied by Wallrafen’s color photographs. Original price 30 pounds (London).  Wallrafen later lost his eyesight at the height of his career and published the book, Memories of a Blind Photographer.  Uncommon in the first edition, especially in this condition. Summary:

The World of Márquez: A Photographic Exploration of Macondo (1992), with photographs by Hannes Wallrafen and text by Gabriel García Márquez, is a photographic book that explores the landscapes and atmosphere that inspired the fictional town of Macondo.

The book combines Wallrafen’s color photographs with excerpts from Márquez’s novels and stories. The images portray real places, people, and scenes in Latin America that evoke the magical and everyday qualities of Macondo, the setting of many of Márquez’s works, including One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Through this pairing of photographs and literary passages, the book visually interprets the world of Márquez’s fiction and shows how ordinary landscapes and communities can reflect the dreamlike, magical realism of his writing.

In short: the book is a visual journey that connects Márquez’s imaginative literary world with real-life places and cultures that inspired it.

Hannes Wallrafen (born 1951) is a German-born Dutch photographer renowned for his documentary photojournalism and intricately staged narrative imagery. After studying photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, he began his career in 1976 as a social documentary photographer, capturing socio-political subjects for magazines and international development organizations. During the late 1980s and 1990s, Wallrafen transitioned away from traditional photojournalism to create elaborate, meticulously constructed photographic tableaux exploring memory, history, and narrative staging. In 2004, at the height of his career, he lost his eyesight due to a hereditary eye condition, a transformative event documented in his autobiography De blinde fotograaf (The Blind Photographer). Following his blindness, Wallrafen reinvented his creative practice by shifting from visual arts to soundscapes, founding the "Geluid in Zicht" (Sound in Sight) foundation to produce immersive acoustic experiences, audio architecture, and sound installations for public spaces and museums.