As they set off for Madagascar in 2003, photographer Max Pam and writer Stephen Muecke adopted as their guiding principle the idea of contingency--central to which is the conscious embrace of risk and chance. In doing so, they established a new aesthetic in which image and text are inextricably linked to the notion of possibility. This stunning collection of photos and essays is the result of their vision, collectively illustrating the beauty and wisdom on offer in one of the world's poorest nations. A contribution to the wave of new ethnography exemplified by Michael Taussig and Kathleen Stewart, these encounters with events, images, and experimental writing dramatize thoughts and feelings in the ongoing construction of place.

In this book, this Australian photographer, one of the great contemporary photographers, gathers together a personal biography in which photographs mix with all kinds of personal and sentimental documents: facsimiles of his notebooks and diaries, passports, postcards, letters, drawings...They shape a collage that is as beautiful as it is disturbing in which word and image imitate each other and Pam demonstrates, as few other creators can, that everything can be turned into a small work of art if it finds the right eye and discourse.

"Hijacked 1" brings together, for the first time, an uncompromising movement of international cultural exchange. Presenting the most diverse and provocative new photography from Australia and America, the book erases traditional boundaries between artists, professionals, and emerging talent in order to point toward the future of contemporary photography.

Features the work of such artists as Greta Anderson, Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy, Caitlin Harrison, Nathalie Latham, James Mellon, Martin Mischkulnig, Fiona Morris, Jack Pam, Emily Portmann, Brad Rimmer, Juha Tolonen, Timothy Archibald, Dean Karr, Brian Cross, Todd Fisher, Jonathan Gitelson, Lisa Kereszi, Jason Lazarus, Robin Schwartz, Shen Wie, Grant Willing, Ed Zipco, and more.