Book review: Brain Pickings
Maria Popova, a blogger and critic living in Brooklyn, names Fritz Kahn “the little-known Godfather of Infographics”. She writes that his “influence reverberates through much of our present visual communication and today’s best infographics. … Now, visual culture powerhouse Taschen has captured the life’s work of this infographic pioneer in the magnificent monograph Fritz Kahn. … It collects and contextualizes his most influential images and essays and, above all, celebrates a boundless mind that never settled for limiting itself to a single discipline, to any one area of curiosity, to the onus and hubris of specialization that our culture so vehemently and so toxically fetishizes. … Kahn could also be considered a pioneer of interactive storytelling long before the technologies of interaction existed. He transformed the pictorial image from a static object to passively behold to an active invitation to engage, reimagine, and connect. … Above all, however, Kahn was a kind of scientific poet who enlisted the tenets of literature and the arts in making scientific ideas not only accessible but exciting. … [The monograph] is itself a miracle of human imagination, wholeheartedly recommended.” – Brain Pickings is a blog featuring Maria Popovas writing on culture, books, and eclectic subjects off and on the Internet. Popova was named by Forbes as one of the 30 most influential individuals in Media. Her work has also been spotlighted and profiled in many prominent publications such as The New York Times.
Brain Pickings (full article)