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A Camera in the Garden of Eden: The Self-Forging of a Banana Republic. By Kevin Coleman. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. 316 pp., $27.95, paperback, ISBN 978-1-4773-0855-4.
In the past fifteen years, a number of superb studies of US agribusiness in CentralAmerica have appeared. This is not one of them. Although A Camera in the Garden of Eden promises a historical analysis of Honduras- the prototypical banana republic-it is more of a disquisition on photographic theory using the town of El Progreso as a case study. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Author Kevin Coleman describes his book as a "local history of subaltern photography," and he has much to offer in this vein (10). Drawing upon unique access to private collections in Honduras, as well as the United Fruit Company Photograph Collection at Harvard, he presents provocative insights on the competing visions of US corporate managers, Honduran liberals, and the middle- and...