Jakarta Inside Out by Daniel Ziv

As I intend to emulate this book on a small scale for Assignment 5, I need to identify the characteristics of the publication before setting down in writing the proposed brief for the assignment:
- what is the subject of the book and how is it structured?
- how are the photographs and text laid out?
- what are the visual characteristics of the images?
 As Guildford is a town with a very different character to Jakarta, I expect to have to adapt the idea of the Jakarta book to suit my local visual environment.  
Subject and structure of the book
As written on the dust jacket, Jakarta Inside Out is "a no-nonsense, humorous, contemporary snapshot of a 21st century Southeast Asian city bursting at the seams.....of ordinary people in their urban landscape, of culture and pop-culture."
The book has just over sixty topics, arranged in alphabetic order. Like Couplands book on Vancouver, the  topics are the idiosyncrasies of the city and its inhabitants. In the case of Jakarta, most of the topics concern its street life and its night life, whereas in the Vancouver book, there is more about the neighborhoods and the impact of it's surroundings.

Lay out of the photographs and text

In the Jakarta book, each topic is set out on a double page, most of which is used for a single square photograph illustrating the topic. The rest of the space contains a column of text about the topic. Mostly the text is black text on a white background, but on some pages where the photograph is dark toned (e.g. night scenes), a black background is used with white text. 

There are double page spreads every 4 or 5 topics with full bleed photo with landscape framing.
The size of the book is 22 cm high by about 17 cm wide, which is an aspect ratio of about 1.3 for a single page. The shape is similar to the Vancouver book 20.3 cm high by 16.7 cm wide. The pages are therefore significantly less oblong than the more familiar A4 which has an aspect ratio of 1.41. However, this format creates a double page spread with an aspect ratio of 0.67, which is similar to the aspect ratio of 35mm film (0.68) 

Visual characteristics of the images

People feature in almost every photograph: the powerful, the poor, the happy and the sad. 

All the photographs are colour and the subjects are often colourful. There are no monochrome images.
The photographs in the Jakarta book are mostly high impact street photography in contrast to the rather more understated photos in the Vancouver book. The Jakarta photos are more in the style of William Klein, photos taken close up, snatched amongst a crowd, with out of focus figures, sloping horizons and movement blur. The Vancouver book photos are more in the style of Martin Parr - they look as if they have been taken with deliberation and awareness. The framing and composition is less spontaneous, but use is made of colours and detail to intrigue and draw the viewer's attention.
Some example layouts from Jakarta Inside Out by Daniel Ziv