Ramadan in Yemen

Ramadan in Yemen is Max Pam's account of three months in Yemen during Ramadan, 1993. It stands among the most direct fusions of documentary photography and diary-keeping in his four-decade practice.

The book pairs black-and-white and color photographs with facsimile reproductions of Pam's own journal pages. It records Yemeni cities and landscapes alongside Ramadan's daily rhythms of fasting, prayer, and hospitality. Handwritten notes and travel ephemera, including postage stamps, run throughout. Éditions Bessard published it as a signed, numbered edition of 250 copies. It is a cloth-bound hardcover of 90 pages, housed in a slipcase, with a black-and-white photographic plate mounted to the front board. The silver-stamped titling was designed by the typographer Titus Nemeth.

Max Pam (b. 1949, Melbourne) has spent five decades photographing his travels across Asia, the Indian Ocean rim, and the Middle East. His books include Going East, Indian Ocean Journals (Steidl, 2000), and Contingency in Madagascar (Intellect, 2013). Several pair black-and-white travel photography with his own diary text, in a first-person, notebook-like format. Ramadan in Yemen was among the first titles Pam produced with the Paris publisher Éditions Bessard. That relationship continued through Supertourist and The Contingency of Eye Contact: A Memoir 1970-1975.