In concise analyses, John Szarkowski investigates the aesthetic, formal, social and historical issues of 100 photographs selected from the Modern's collections. This archive of pictures contains a vast range of works from familiar and not-so-familiar photographers. Included are some the of most recognizable pictures of the past 150 years by acknowledged masters of their field such as Adamson, Cameron, Stieglitz, Weston, Cartier-Bresson, Cunningham, Arbus and Frank.

    Schooled as a painter and designer in New York, Man Ray turned to photography after discovering the 291 Gallery and its charismatic founder, Alfred Stieglitz. As a young expatriate in Paris during the twenties and thirties, Man Ray embraced Surrealism and Dadaism, creeds that emphasized chance effects, disjunction and surprise. Tireless experimentation with technique led him to employ solarization, grain enlargement, mixed media and cameraless prints (photograms)--which he called "Rayographs." These successful manipulations for which he was dubbed "the poet of the darkroom" by Jean Cocteau, were a major contribution to twentieth-century photography. Man Ray presents 43 of the greatest images from the artist's career. The essay by Jed Perl describes the influences on Man Ray's career and his enduring contribution to photography.

    His journal has become a classic of photographic literature. Weston was a towering figure in twentieth-century photography, whose restless quest for beauty and the mystical presence behind it resulted in a body of work unrivaled in the medium. John Szarkowski observes that "It was as though the things of everyday experience had been transformed... into organic sculptures, the forms of which were both the expression and the justification of the life within... He had freed his eyes of conventional expectation, and had taught them to see the statement of intent that resides in natural form."

    First published in 1973 and long since out of print, a classic photo essay about life among Africa's Nuba tribe, by one of the century's foremost film directors, is presented in an impressive full-color gift edition.

    It is the oldest and largest community of spiritualists in the world. Twenty thousand visitors a year travel to this Victorian village in upstate New York to consult mediums in order to communicate with dead relatives and peer into their own futures.

    Luce set for LIFE in the original prospectus. For the next 36 years the editors kept that promise faithfully, reporting on life, the world, and great events with skill, dedication and imagination. Just how well they did their job the reader will see in the 304 pages - 100 of them in color - and 680 photographs (including 77 LIFE covers) that make up this splendid anthology. -- from the book jacket.

    Nearly 100 classic images by noted photographer: Rockefeller Center on the rise, Bowery restaurants, dramatic views of the City's bridges, Washington Square, old movie houses, rows of old tenements laced with laundry, Wall Street, Flatiron Building, waterfront, and many other landmarks.

    In This Proud Land: America 1935-1943 As Seen In the FSA Photographs. Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, [1973]. First edition, first printing. Quarto. 199 pages.

    Includes many of the master's photographs. Annotation

    We see scenes ranging from Native Americans encamped along the beach in the early nineteenth century to late nineteenth-century visitors posing on their yachts or on the porch of the Grand Hotel.

    

    This classic work on the landscape, architecture, and people of Nantucket is at last available in a full-color edition, with 430 full-color photographs.