A classic collection of the acclaimed photographer's limited edition portfolios, now available in a gorgeous trade paperback edition.

    A quotation for every picture is also included taken from Virgil, Shakespeare, Herman Melville, D.H. Lawrence, Eugene Delacroix and others.

    After a spell in Mexico City during the early 1920s--where he ran a studio with Tina Modotti--he moved to California and commenced the work for which he is most famous: close-ups of nature, nudes and landscapes. This volume celebrates Weston's nudes, of which Hilton Kramer wrote: "To Weston's eye... the landscape of the human body was an unending revelation of forms both voluptuous and abstract. His genius as an artist lay in his ability to respond to both with equal passion."

    This new edition reproduces the look and feel of the original volume, which reconfigured into a book format the 24 text-embedded images of Fischer's 1977 photographic series Gay Semiotics. The photographs in Gay Semiotics present the codes of sexual orientation and identification Fischer saw in San Francisco's Castro and Haight Ashbury districts, ranging from such sexual signifiers as handkerchiefs and keys to depictions of the gay fashion "types" of that era--from "basic gay" to "hippie" and "jock." Gay Semiotics also features Fischer's critical essay, which is marked by the same wry, anthropological tone found in the image/text configurations. Fischer's book circulated widely, finding a worldwide audience in both the gay and conceptual art communities. Fischer's insistence on the visual equivalence of word and image is a hallmark of the loose photography and language group that included Fischer, Lutz Bacher, Lew Thomas and others working in the San Francisco Bay Area. First published as an artist's book in 1978 by NFS Press, at a time when gay people had been forced to both evaluate and defend their lifestyles, Gay Semiotics earned substantial critical and public recognition. Thirty-seven years later, the book remains a proactive statement from a voice within the gay community from a moment in history just before the devastation wrought by AIDS. Hal Fischer (born 1950) grew up in Highland Park, Illinois. He arrived in San Francisco in 1975 to pursue an MA in photography at San Francisco State. Through his work as an art reviewer and photographer, he soon became embedded in the Bay Area's artistic and intellectual scene. He continues to live and work in San Francisco.

    

    Previously unpublished photographic portraits as well as selections from Imogen Cunningham's earlier work confront the condition of old age and testify to the wisdom, dignity, despair, and loneliness of the elderly.

    --Tod PapageorgePublic Relations is a distillation of a photographic project begun by Garry Winogrand in 1969 when he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to photograph what he called "the effect of media on events." With his characteristic zeal, passion, spontaneity and intensity, Winogrand photographed an array of public events including museum openings, press conferences, sports games, demonstrations, award ceremonies, a birthday party and a moon shot. The photographs depict our emerging dependence on the media as well as how the media changes and sometimes even creates the event itself. First published to accompany a 1977 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

    A wonderful photographic collection based on the design and theme of its forerunner, The Family of Man.

    

    August Sander developed a personal style characterized by startlingly direct photographs of German people of all classes and callings, to produce a body of work unparalleled in the history of photography.

    Do you remember the most famous pinup of them all? Betty Grable smiling at you all through World War II. The original sweater girl, Lana Turner. Rita Hayworth in all her glory. The stunning and statuesque Ava Gardner. A defiant, scantily clad Jane Russell standing near the hay. Bogart, Garfield, Kirk Douglas, Judy Garland. The brooding Robert Mitchum, the brute power of Burt Lancaster, the alienated Montgomery Clift, the animal menace of Marlon Brando. And perhaps the last of the studio pinups, the fragile and beautiful Marilyn Monroe. These flesh and blood fantasies, and many others, are here — 106 stars in 163 full-page glamour photos by 24 leading Hollywood photographers.The pictures these photographic artists took span the period from the outbreak of World War II to the Korean conflict of 1951. As John Kobal writes in his informative introduction. "The Forties were the years of Old Hollywood's last stand, though the people concerned didn't know it." In a lively introduction, illustrated by ten pictures of the stars off the set, Mr. Kobal discusses the people and films of the Forties, the importance of these photos and the photographers who took them, and their magical appeal to movie fans. The captions give the year, photographer, studio, the movies that many of the portraits are associated with, and the costume designer. Originally printed in fan magazines, on posters, and in fashion spreads, these portraits are legendary. They are part of almost everyone's past, part of their dreams and fantasies.