Best of
Photography

2009

Polar Obsession


Paul Nicklen - 2009
    Raised on Baffin Island, Nunavut, he grew up in one of the only non-Inuit families in a tiny native settlement amid the ice fields, floes, and frigid seas of Northern Canada. At an age when most children are playing hide-and-seek, he was learning life-and-death lessons of survival: how to read the weather, find shelter in a frozen snowscape, or live off the land as his Inuit neighbors had done for centuries.Today Nicklen is a naturalist and wildlife photographer uniquely qualified to portray the impact of climate change on the polar regions and their inhabitants, human and animal alike. In a wise and wonderful intertwining of art and science, his bold expeditions plunge him into freezing seas to capture unprecedented, up-close documentation of the lives of leopard seals, whales, walruses, polar bears, bearded seals, and narwhals. Bathed in polar light, his images, inspiring and amazing, break new ground in photography and provide a vivid, timely portrait of two extraordinary, endangered ecosystems.

Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals


Christopher J. Payne - 2009
    From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients. The blueprint for these hospitals was set by Pennsylvania hospital superintendent Thomas Story Kirkbride: a central administration building flanked symmetrically by pavilions and surrounded by lavish grounds with pastoral vistas. Kirkbride and others believed that well-designed buildings and grounds, a peaceful environment, a regimen of fresh air, and places for work, exercise, and cultural activities would heal mental illness. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these beautiful, massive buildings--and the patients who lived in them--neglected and abandoned. Architect and photographer Christopher Payne spent six years documenting the decay of state mental hospitals like these, visiting seventy institutions in thirty states. Through his lens we see splendid, palatial exteriors (some designed by such prominent architects as H. H. Richardson and Samuel Sloan) and crumbling interiors--chairs stacked against walls with peeling paint in a grand hallway; brightly colored toothbrushes still hanging on a rack; stacks of suitcases, never packed for the trip home. Accompanying Payne's striking and powerful photographs is an essay by Oliver Sacks (who described his own experience working at a state mental hospital in his book Awakenings). Sacks pays tribute to Payne's photographs and to the lives once lived in these places, "where one could be both mad and safe."

Looking in: Robert Frank's the Americans


Sarah Greenough - 2009
    Drawing on newly examined archival sources, it provides a fascinating in-depth examination of the making of the photographs and the book's construction, using vintage contact sheets, work prints and letters that literally chart Frank's journey around the country on a Guggenheim grant in 1955-56. Curator and editor Sarah Greenough and her colleagues also explore the roots of The Americans in Frank's earlier books, which are abundantly illustrated here, and in books by photographers Walker Evans, Bill Brandt and others. The 83 original photographs from The Americans are presented in sequence in as near vintage prints as possible. The catalogue concludes with an examination of Frank's later reinterpretations and deconstructions of The Americans, bringing full circle the history of this resounding entry in the annals of photography. This volume is a reprint of the 2009 edition.

Lost London: 1870 - 1945


Philip Davies - 2009
    Most have never been published before. Taken to provide a unique record of whole districts of London as they were vanishing, each of the photographs is a full-plate image, a stunning work of art in its own right.

Avedon Fashion 1944-2000


Richard Avedon - 2009
    Each carefully selected image represents an artistic collaboration with significant models, stylists, and designers. Avedon Fashion accompanies the first major exhibition to survey this body of work, at the International Center of Photography in May 2009. With critical essays by Carol Squiers, curator at the ICP, and photography critic Vince Aletti, as well as an appreciation by photo-historian Philippe Garner, Avedon Fashion chronicles an astonishing record of photographic achievement.

Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision


David duChemin - 2009
    A personal book full of real-world wisdom and incredible images, author David duChemin (of pixelatedimage.com) shows you both the how and the why of finding, chasing, and expressing your vision with a camera to your eye. Vision leads to passion, and passion is a cornerstone of great photography. With it, photographs draw the eye in and create an emotional experience. Without it, a photograph is often not worth--and can't capture--a viewer's attention.Both instructional and inspirational, Within the Frame helps you on your photographic journey to make better images of the places and people you love, whether they are around the world or in your own backyard. duChemin covers how to tell stories, and the technology and tools we have at our disposal in order to tell those narratives. Most importantly, he stresses the crucial theme of vision when it comes to photographing people, places, and cultures--and he helps you cultivate and find your own vision, and then fit it within the frame.

Who Killed Amanda Palmer?: A Collection of Photographic Evidence


Amanda Palmer - 2009
    A collection of photographs of Amanda Palmer's (of The Dresden Dolls) death in varying ways, accompanied by stories written by Neil Gaiman (Sandman comics, Coraline, Stardust, Neverwhere).

Ara Güler's Istanbul


Ara Güler - 2009
    As the crossroads between Europe and Asia, Istanbul has lived through several empires and has a character that is as many layered as its history – something that Güler’s photographs convey with great sensitivity. In these remarkable black-and-white images, the city’s melancholy aesthetic oscillates between tradition and modernity. Both writer and photographer were born in Istanbul, and each in his youth held the ambition of becoming a painter. Here, each in his own way paints a picture of his home town and captures its very soul.

Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera


Ron Schick - 2009
     Working alongside skilled photographers, Rockwell acted as director, carefully orchestrating models, selecting props, and choosing locations for the photographs -- works of art in their own right -- that served as the basis of his iconic images. Readers will be surprised to find that many of his most memorable characters -- the girl at the mirror, the young couple on prom night, the family on vacation -- were friends and neighbors who served as his amateur models. In this groundbreaking book, author and historian Ron Schick delves into the archive of nearly 20,000 photographs housed at the Norman Rockwell Museum. Featuring reproductions of Rockwell's black-and-white photographs and related full-color artworks, along with an incisive narrative and quotes from Rockwell models and family members, this book will intrigue anyone interested in photography, art, and Americana.

Los Angeles. Portrait of a City


Jim Heimann - 2009
    It traces the city's development from the 1880s' real estate boom, through the early days of Hollywood and the urban sprawl of the late 20th century, right up to the present day. With over 500 images, L.A. is shown emerging from a desert wasteland to become a vast palm-studded urban metropolis. Events that made world news–including two Olympics, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, and the Rodney King riots–reveal a city of many dimensions. The entertainment capital of the world, Hollywood, and its celebrities are showcased along with many other notable residents, personalities, architects, artists, and musicians. The city's pop cultural movements, its music, surfing, health food fads, gangs, and hot rods are included, as are its notorious crimes and criminals. This book depicts Los Angeles in all its glory and grit, via hundreds of freshly discovered images including those of Julius Shulman, Garry Winogrand, William Claxton and many other superb photographers, culled from major historical archives, museums, private collectors, and universities. These are given context and resonance through essays by renowned California historian Kevin Starr and Los Angeles literature expert David Ulin.

6 Billion Others: Portraits of Humanity from Around the World


Yann Arthus-Bertrand - 2009
    This understated yet compelling look at ways of life both familiar and strange creates an instructive, affecting biography of modern humanity. Inspired by the idea that "every single person has got something interesting to say, and every single person has the right to say it," Arthus-Bertrand created a questionnaire of 40 prompts on universal topics such as family, happiness, money, and love, and dispatched six filmmakers to interview more than 5,000 subjects in 75 countries around the world. About one-tenth of the resulting 3,500 hours of film is available online, with subtitles.

The Life & Love of Trees


Lewis Blackwell - 2009
    Not only essential, they have been an inspiration throughout our history. In breathtaking photographs and stories we are taken on a journey from the boreal forest at the edge of the Arctic to the rainforests girdling the planet; from ancient bristlecones to fresh-leaved seedlings; from the charming and familiar to the scary and rare. An elegantly written and highly accessible text is complemented by an extraordinary collection of images created by some of the world's leading nature photographers.

Bryan Peterson's Understanding Photography Field Guide: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera


Bryan Peterson - 2009
    Want to finally understand exposure? Interested in learning to "see" and composing your images more creatively? Ready to master the magic of light? It’s all here, the techniques every amateur photographer needs to take better nature, landscape, people, and close-up photos. You’ll even get creative techniques, like making "rain" and capturing "ghosts," and practical advice on gear, equipment, and postprocessing software. Filled with Bryan’s inspirational photographs, this is the one essential guide for every camera bag.

Misery Obscura: The Photography of Eerie Von (1981-2009)


Eerie Von - 2009
    Beginning as the unofficial photographer for punk legends The Misfits and later taking charge of the bass guitar as a founding member of underground pioneers Samhain and metal gods Danzig, the evil eye of Eerie Von's camera captured the dark heart of rock's most vital and bleeding-edge period, a time when rock and roll was not only dangerous, but downright menacing. Eerie Von's lens has documented everything from The Misfits' humble beginnings in Lodi, New Jersey, to the heights of Danzig's stadium-rock glory alongside metal superstars Metallica. As well as an essential visual document of music history, Eerie's road stories of triumph and damnation bring to life an era the likes of which will never again be seen.

Scott Kelby's Digital Photography Boxed Set, Volumes 1, 2, and 3


Scott Kelby - 2009
    Each chapter is packed with plain English tips on using flash, shooting close up photography, travel photography, shooting people, and even how to build a studio from scratch, where he demystifies the process so anyone can start taking pro-quality portraits today! Plus, he's got full chapters on his most requested topics, including loads of tips for landscape photographers, wedding photographers, and there's an entire chapter devoted to sharing some of the pro's secrets for making your photos look more professional, no matter what you're shooting.

Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things


Terry Border - 2009
    His complex vignettes are made of the simplest, everyday items: a jar of spices, a cigarette stub, a flower, a snack food. These sly photos range from whimsical scenes to sexy scenarios, the sad truths to the hilarious happenings in everyday life. In the tradition of bestselling humorous photography books like Chicks with Baggage, Play with Your Food, and Hello Cupcake!, this volume will surprise you with every viewing. A sunflower missing a petal becomes the tortured artist Van Gogh; an egg arrives to visit his mom only to discover roast chicken on the table; when confronted by a jar of peanut butter, peanuts hold a wake; and hot dogs leave behind their own brand of little presents. Marshmallows, wine corks, bread, soap, rocks, and tea bags—no common household item is safe from the twisted (wire) mind behind these uncommon creations!

Bird


Andrew Zuckerman - 2009
    These winged creaturesfrom exotic parrots to everyday sparrows, and endangered penguins to woody owlsare captured with Zuckerman's painstaking perspective against a stark white background to reveal the vivid colors, textures, and personalities of each subject in extraordinary and exquisite detail. The ultimate art book for ornithologists and nature enthusiasts alike, Bird is a volume of sublime beauty.

Visual Poetry: A Creative Guide for Making Engaging Digital Photographs


Chris Orwig - 2009
    But how do you create these photographs? It's not the how that's important, but the who and the what. Who you are as a person has a direct impact on what you capture as a photographer.Whether you are an amateur or professional, architect or acupuncturist, physician or photographer, this guide provides inspiration, simple techniques, and assignments to boost your creative process and improve your digital images using natural light without additional gear.Chris Orwig's insights--to reduce and simplify, participate rather than critique, and capture a story--have made him an immensely popular workshop speaker and faculty member at the prestigious Brooks Institute. His engaging stories presented as lessons follow his classroom approach and highlight what students say is his contagious passion for life.In this accessible and beautifully illustrated four-color guide you will: Discover visual poetry in the creative process Use less to say more with your subject matter Learn to see light, color, shape, and expression Understand what gear is essential Create compelling portraits Make lasting memories of your family and kids Capture the outdoors and adventure Begin the transition from amateur to professional Chris also includes exclusive interviews with such photographers as: Steve McCurry, Chris Rainier, John Sexton, Rodney Smith, Joyce Tenneson, John Paul Caponigro, Marc Riboud, and Pete Turner.Share your work with the author and other readers at www.flickr.com/groups/visual-poet and visit the Web site: www.visual-poet.com.

Understanding Close-Up Photography: Creative Close Encounters with Or Without a Macro Lens


Bryan Peterson - 2009
    You’ve seen the dewdrops, but what about dewdrops on a bird’s wing or raindrops on a car windshield? You’ve seen the bumblebees on vibrant flowers, but what about the fluid edge of just one petal or the colorful rusting metal at industrial sites? Even when Peterson does capture the more traditional subjects, it's done in untraditional ways–and often with minimal specialized equipment! Most important, he moves beyond the commonplace to inspire new ways of getting close, using your lenses, and discovering unconventional subjects.

Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930


John Harley Warner - 2009
    From the advent of photography in the 19th and into the 20th century, medical students, often in secrecy, took photographs of themselves with the cadavers that they dissected: their first patients. Featuring 138 of these historic photographs and illuminating essays by two experts on the subject, Dissection reveals a startling piece of American history. Sherwin Nuland, MD, said this is "a truly unique and important book [that] documents a period in medical education in a way that is matched by no other existing contribution." And Mary Roach said Dissection "is the most extraordinary book I have ever seen--the perfect coffee table book for all the households where I'd most like to be invited for coffee."

Manchester: Looking For The Light Through The Pouring Rain


Kevin Cummins - 2009
    This book provides a portrait of these individuals, the city, and their times. Whether it be on a rain-soaked stage in Brazil, a rented room in Whalley Range, or on the dancefloor of the legendary Hacienda. This stunning visual record of the city and its pop history is complemented by four textual contributions from Paul Morley, Stuart Maconie, Gavin Martin and John Harris. What is it about that city that makes it the Memphis of the UK? Cummins' photographic record of the past 30 years captures the highs, the lows and the transcendent pop moments of Manchester's most famous sons.

Tony Hillerman's Landscape: On the Road with Chee and Leaphorn


Anne Hillerman - 2009
    Narrated by his daughter, Anne Hillerman, with original photos from Don Strel, Tony Hillerman’s Landscape is a timely showcase of a hauntingly beautiful region that captured one man’s imagination for a lifetime, and is a daughter’s loving tribute to her father.

Michael Freeman's Perfect Exposure: The Professional's Guide to Capturing Perfect Digital Photographs


Michael Freeman - 2009
    Choosing the exposure for a photograph is infinitely complex and one of photography's most absorbing paradoxes because it affects everything in the image and its effect on the viewer. Understanding how and why exposure works is essential, not only because it helps you to decide what is instinctively "right," but this book will give you confidence in that decision--an invaluable skill for every single photographer. Full of beautiful photographs taken by Michael Freeman, this book will arm you with the tools you need for perfect exposure of your photographs.Michael Freeman is the author of the global bestseller, The Photographer's Eye. Now published in sixteen languages, The Photographer's Eye continues to speak to photographers everywhere. Reaching 100,000 copies in print in the US alone, and 300,000+ worldwide, it shows how anyone can develop the ability to see and shoot great digital photographs.

National Geographic Image Collection


Michelle Anne Delaney - 2009
    For the first time ever, readers will plumb the fascinating depths of this immense archive from the earliest photographs collected in the late 19th century to the cutting-edge work of today. Both iconic and never-before-seen images from virtually every corner of the globe, every species of wildlife, and amazing human achievements in exploration, adventure, science, and more are showcased and placed in historic, artistic, technical, and journalistic context.Following this lavish visual journey, readers will be awed by a behind-the-scenes profile of the entire collection, its size, its richly diverse character, and its special collections, ranging from delicate and beautiful Autochromes to the famous Alexander Graham Bell collection to the amazing stratosphere collection. Fine artwork and imaginative illustrations are also featured.Finally, a listing of photographers whose work is represented stands as a fitting tribute to those without whose tireless and brilliant efforts the Collection would not exist.

The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965


Sam Stephenson - 2009
    Smith was trying to complete the most ambitious project of his life, a massive photo-essay on the city of Pittsburgh.821 Sixth Avenue was a late-night haunt of musicians, including some of the biggest names in jazz—Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk among them—and countless fascinating, underground characters. As his ambitions broke down for his quixotic Pittsburgh opus, Smith found solace in the chaotic, somnambulistic world of the loft and its artists. He turned his documentary impulses away from Pittsburgh and toward his offbeat new surroundings.From 1957 to 1965, Smith exposed 1,447 rolls of film at his loft, making roughly 40,000 pictures, the largest body of work in his career, photographing the nocturnal jazz scene as well as life on the streets of the flower district, as seen from his fourth-floor window. He wired the building like a surreptitious recording studio and made 1,740 reels (4,000 hours) of stereo and mono audiotapes, capturing more than 300 musicians, among them Roy Haynes, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Roland Kirk, Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, and Paul Bley. He recorded, as well, legends such as pianists Eddie Costa, and Sonny Clark, drummers Ronnie Free and Edgar Bateman, saxophonist Lin Halliday, bassist Henry Grimes, and multi-instrumentalist Eddie Listengart.Also dropping in on the nighttime scene were the likes of Doris Duke, Norman Mailer, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Salvador Dalí, as well as pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves, photography students, local cops, building inspectors, marijuana dealers, and others.Sam Stephenson discovered Smith’s jazz loft photographs and tapes eleven years ago and has spent the last seven years cataloging, archiving, selecting, and editing Smith’s materials for this book, as well as writing its introduction and the text interwoven throughout.W. Eugene Smith’s Jazz Loft Project has been legendary in the worlds of art, photography, and music for more than forty years, but until the publication of The Jazz Loft Project, no one had seen Smith’s extraordinary photographs or read any of the firsthand accounts of those who were there and lived to tell the tale(s) . . .

A Village Lost and Found


Brian May - 2009
    At the book's heart is a reproduction of T. R. Williams' 1856 series of stereo photographs, "Scenes In Our Village." Using the viewer supplied with this book, the reader can become absorbed in a village idyll of the early Victorian era: the subjects seem to be on the point of suddenly bursting back into life and continuing with their daily rounds. The book is also something of a detective story, as the village itself was only identified in 2003 as Hinton Waldrist in Oxfordshire, and the authors' research constantly reveals further clues about the society of those distant times, historic photographic techniques, and the life of the enigmatic Williams himself, who appears, Hitchcock-like, from time to time in his own photographs.

Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital


Todd Gustavson - 2009
    Few inventions have had the impact of this ingenious, elegant, and deceptively simple device.This gorgeous cornerstone volume, created in collaboration with the world-famous George Eastman House, celebrates the camera and the art of the photograph. It spans almost two hundred years of progress, from the first faint image ever caught to the instantaneous pictures snapped by today’s state-of-the-art digital equipment.The informative narrative by Todd Gustavson traces the camera’s development, the lives of its brilliant but often eccentric inventors, and the artists behind the lens. Images and highly descriptive captions for more than 350 cameras from the George Eastman House Collection, plus more than 100 historic photos, ads, and drawings, complement the text.A foreword by the George Eastman House Director Anthony Bannon, and insightful essays by Steve Sasson, inventor of the digital camera, and Alexis Gerard, visionary founder and president of Future Image Inc., completes this illuminating study of one of the greatest modern technological achievements.

Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present


Deborah Willis - 2009
    Determined to redress this imbalance, Willis examined everything from vintage ladies’ journals to black newspapers, and started what would become a lifelong quest. With more than two hundred arresting images, many previously unpublished, Posing Beauty recovers a world many never knew existed. Historical subjects such as Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker illuminate the past; Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali take us to the civil rights era; Denzel Washington, Lil’ Kim, and Michelle Obama celebrate the present. Featuring the works of more than one hundred photographers, including Carl van Vechten, Eve Arnold, Lee Friedlander, and Carrie Mae Weems, Willis’s book not only celebrates the lives of the famous but also captures the barber shop, the bodybuilding contest, and prom night. Posing Beauty challenges our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be “beautiful.”

Stripteese


Dita Von Teese - 2009
    A perfect collectible book for fans of Dita, classic burlesque devotees, or for anyone who loves a playful and beautifully packaged book, DITA: STRIPTEASE is an exquisite visual tribute to this one-of-a-kind performer, featuring three of her most beloved dances:Martini Glass Show: Performed all over the world, the martini glass show is Dita′s most famous burlesque act. Featuring her in her "Diamonds in the Buff" costume, Dita performs a traditional striptease that culminates with her bathing herself in an oversize martini glass, complete with olive sponge.Bird of Paradise Show: Inside a posh gilded Victorian birdcage, burlesque′s brightest star reinvents the classic feather fan dance with two lush oversize feather fans of exotic, rare magenta pheasant feathers. In an extraordinary costume of beautifully curved feathers, Dita spins around on her golden perch, and treats audiences to an unforgettable wet and wild finale as sparkling water showers over her body.Classic Striptease: This striptease features Dita dressed in a vintage suit complete with a veiled hat, seamed stockings, and sky-high stilettos. Audiences get a glimpse into Dita′s personal wardrobe-and what she reveals underneath it!

Oil


Edward Burtynsky - 2009
    It occurred to me that the vast, human-altered landscapes that I pursued and photographed for over twenty years were only made possible by the discovery of oil and the mechanical advantage of the internal combustion engine. It was then that I began the oil project. Over the next ten years I researched and photographed the largest oil fields I could find. I went on to make images of refineries, freeway interchanges, automobile plants and the scrap industry that results from the recycling of cars. Then I began to look at the culture of oil, the motor culture, where masses of people congregate around vehicles, with vehicle events as the main attraction. These images can be seen as notations by one artist contemplating the world as it is made possible through this vital energy resource and the cumulative effects of industrial evolution."

Nick Knight


Nick Knight - 2009
    As a fashion photographer, he is one of the world’s most influential and visionary image makers. He is renowned for his groundbreaking creative collaborations with the world’s top couturiers, advertising work for major fashion brands, and award-winning editorials for premier publications. Nick Knight is the long-awaited mid-career retrospective of his work, from 1990 to the present day. This lush volume with three eight-page gatefolds includes an incredible array of work, including images for Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Levi Strauss, and Yohji Yamamoto, British and American Vogue, W, V, i-D, and Visionaire magazines, and from his Web site, SHOWstudio.com.

Ellen von Unwerth: Fräulein


Ellen Von Unwerth - 2009
    Now one of the world’s most original and successful fashion photographers, she pays homage to the world‘s most delectable females in Fräulein. This celebration of our era’s sexiest female icons includes Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss, Vanessa Paradis, Britney Spears, Eva Mendes, Lindsay Lohan, Dita von Teese, Adriana Lima, Carla Bruni, Eva Green, Christina Aguilera, Monica Bellucci and dozens more. Switching effortlessly between color and immaculate black and white, von Unwerth‘s photography revels in sexual intrigue, femininity, romance, fetishism, kitsch humor, decadence and sheer joie de vivre. Whether nude or in lingerie and a dazzling smile, her subjects are never objectified. Some flaunt personal fantasies; others are guarded, suggesting that we have stumbled into a secret world. Fashion and fantasy were never so enchantingly combined. These images were shot over the last 15 years and many are previously unpublished. First published in TASCHEN's limited collector's edition — now available in this popular hardcover edition!

Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 70s


Ryuichi Kaneko - 2009
    And not only for the aficionados. Photobooks that once were entirely unknown outside Japan (except to a few well-informed scholars and collectors) now sell at astronomical prices at auctions and online. And yet the photobook has been central to the development of Japanese photography, particularly in its postwar phase. To sketch the stages of this boom: 1999's "Fotografia Publica" included just one Japanese photobook, Kiyoishi Koishi's "Early Summer Nerves" of 1937, plus two photo magazines from the 1930s, "Nippon" and "Koga"; Andrew Roth's "The Book of 101 Books" (2001) listed four seminal titles by Hosoe, Kawada, Araki and Moriyama; but it was not until 2004, with the first volume of Martin Parr and Gerry Badger's indispensable "The Photobook: A History," that it began to be clear what a rich body of work awaited excavation. "Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 70s" may be seen as a culmination of this trajectory and, as such, marks a very exciting moment in photo publishing and in the history of photography. It presents 40 definitive publications from the era, piecing together a previously invisible history from some of the most influential works, as well as from forgotten gems, and situating them against the broader historical and sociological backdrop. Each book, beautifully reproduced through numerous spreads, is accompanied by an in-depth explanatory text, and sidebars highlight important editors, designers, themes and periodicals. A superb production, "Japanese Photobooks" is a landmark celebration of the distinct character and influence of the Japanese photobook.

Dennis Hopper: Photographs, 1961-1967


Tony Shafrazi - 2009
    “I was doing something that I thought could have some impact someday. In many ways, it’s really these photographs that kept me going creatively.” —Dennis Hopper During the 1960s, Dennis Hopper carried a camera everywhere—on film sets and locations, at parties, in diners, bars and galleries, driving on freeways and walking on political marches. He photographed movie idols, pop stars, writers, artists, girlfriends, and complete strangers. Along the way he captured some of the most intriguing moments of his generation with a keen and intuitive eye. A reluctant icon at the epicenter of that decade’s cultural upheaval, Hopper documented the likes of Tina Turner in the studio, Andy Warhol at his first West Coast show, Paul Newman on set, and Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. In many ways this work is photography as film, a poignant narrative expressed through a series of stark images–early shots of Tijuana bullfights, LA happenings and urban street scenes show an experimental freedom that would translate into the vivid cinematic imagery of Easy Rider and beyond. From a selection of photographs compiled by Hopper and gallerist Tony Shafrazi—more than a third of them previously unpublished—this extensive volume distills the essence of Hopper's brilliantly prodigious photographic career. Also included are introductory essays by Shafrazi and legendary West Coast art pioneer Walter Hopps, and an extensive biography by journalist Jessica Hundley. With excerpts from Victor Bockris’s interviews of Hopper’s famous subjects, friends, and family, this volume is an unprecedented exploration of the life and mind of one of America’s most fascinating personalities.

Lillian Bassman: Women


Deborah Solomon - 2009
    Her signature style, once described by Richard Avedon as making "visible that heart-breaking invisible place between the appearance and the disappearance of things," offered a sensuous and intimate vision of modern women. Says Judith Thurman, "Bassman's women--perennially soulful,elusively chic--have the poignance of an endangered species."Well-known art writer and journalist Deborah Solomon contributes an introduction. An illustrated chronology gives a cinematic overview of a remarkable life.

Bear Portraits


Jill Greenberg - 2009
    Her portraits of bears, collected here for the first time, surprise and engage. We encounter cubs as cute as a child's Teddy, grizzlies that look like they might swallow you whole, and Polar bears seated in Sphinx-like tranquility. Full-grown brown bears, grizzlies, black bears, Polar bears, and bear cubs are photographed on location against a portrait backdrop. The poses and facial expressions are at turns oddly comedic, pensive, terrifying, and sometimes unexpectedly human. Alive with Greenberg's signature lighting and seen through the unique perspective of her lens, these startling bear portraits bring us face to face with our fears and fantasies.

Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild


Michael Forsberg - 2009
    But as the United States and Canada grew westward, the Plains were plowed up, fenced in, overgrazed, and otherwise degraded. Today, this fragmented landscape is the most endangered and least protected ecosystem in North America. But all is not lost on the prairie. Through lyrical photographs, essays, historical images, and maps, this beautifully illustrated book gets beneath the surface of the Plains, revealing the lingering wild that still survives and whose diverse natural communities, native creatures, migratory traditions, and natural systems together create one vast and extraordinary whole.   Three broad geographic regions in Great Plains are covered in detail, evoked in the unforgettable and often haunting images taken by Michael Forsberg. Between the fall of 2005 and the winter of 2008, Forsberg traveled roughly 100,000 miles across 12 states and three provinces, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, to complete the photographic fieldwork for this project, underwritten by The Nature Conservancy. Complementing Forsberg’s images and firsthand accounts are essays by Great Plains scholar David Wishart and acclaimed writer Dan O’Brien. Each section of the book begins with a thorough overview by Wishart, while O’Brien—a wildlife biologist and rancher as well as a writer—uses his powerful literary voice to put the Great Plains into a human context, connecting their natural history with man’s uses and abuses.   The Great Plains are a dynamic but often forgotten landscape—overlooked, undervalued, misunderstood, and in desperate need of conservation. This book helps lead the way forward, informing and inspiring readers to recognize the wild spirit and splendor of this irreplaceable part of the planet.

The California Surf Project


Eric Soderquist - 2009
    Chris Burkard, a talented photographer, and Eric Soderquist, a professional surfer, cajoled their Volkswagen bus along Highway 1 from the Oregon border to the Tijuana Sloughs and discovered everything the Golden State's legendary coastline has to offer. Relive their incredible adventure of surfing perfect waves, sharing campfires with total strangers, and keeping the bus running with duct tape and prayers in more than 200 gorgeous photographs, soulful text, and a professionally produced thirty-minute DVD.

Photographically Speaking: A Deeper Look at Creating Stronger Images


David duChemin - 2009
    As photographers, we frequently have difficulty speaking about images because, frankly, we don’t know how to think about them. And if we don’t know how to think about a photograph and its “visual language”– how an image is constructed, how it works, and why it works–then, when we’re behind the camera, are we really making images that best communicate our vision, our original intent? Vision–crucial as it is–is not the ultimate goal of photography; expression is the goal. And to best express ourselves, it is necessary to learn and use the grammar and vocabulary of the visual language.Photographically Speaking is about learning photography’s visual language to better speak to why and how a photograph succeeds, and in turn to consciously use that visual language in the creation of our own photographs, making us stronger photographers who are able to fully express and communicate our vision. By breaking up the visual language into two main components–“elements” make up its vocabulary, and “decisions” are its grammar–David duChemin transforms what has traditionally been esoteric and difficult subject matter into an accessible and practical discussion that photographers can immediately use to improve their craft. Elements are the “words” of the image, what we place within the frame–lines, curves, light, color, contrast. Decisions are the choices we make in assembling those elements to best express and communicate our vision–the use of framing, perspective, point of view, balance, focus, exposure.All content within the frame has meaning, and duChemin establishes that photographers must consciously and deliberately choose the elements that go within their frame and make the decisions about how that frame is constructed and presented. In the second half of the book, duChemin applies this methodology to his own craft, as he explores the visual language in 20 of his own images, discussing how the intentional choices of elements and decisions that went into their creation contribute to their success.

Visionmongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography


David duChemin - 2009
    With a voice equally realistic and encouraging, photographer David duChemin discusses the experiences he's had, the lessons he's learned, and the practices he's adopted in his own winding journey to becoming a successful working photographer.When it comes to this personal, honest combination of craft and commerce, there is no single path to success. Everyone's goals are different, as is everyone's definition of success. As such, VisionMongers does not prescribe a one size-fits-all program. Instead, duChemin candidly shares ideas, wisdom, and inspiration to introduce you to, and help you navigate, the many aspects of transforming your passion into your vocation. He addresses everything from the anxiety-riddled question "Am I good enough?" to the basics--and beyond--of marketing, business, and finance, as well as the core assumption that your product is great and your craft is always improving.Along the way, duChemin features the stories of nine other photographers--including Chase Jarvis, Gavin Gough, and Zack Arias--whose paths, while unique, have all shared a commitment and passion for bringing their own vision to market. With VisionMongers, you'll learn what paths have been taken--what has worked for these photographers--and you'll be equipped to begin the process of forging your own.

The Cat's Pajamas: 101 of the World's Cutest Cats


Rachael Hale - 2009
    From the proud Abyssinian to the Classic Tabby, The Cat's Pajamas is a complete compendium of the world's cutest cats.Rachael Hale, an internationally acclaimed photographer and cat devotee, is adept at capturing the unique charm of every cat she photographs. Along with her gorgeous portraits, The Cat's Pajamas provides information on each breed, details of temperament, color, and history, as well as fascinating anecdotes.

The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton and Antarctic Photography


David Hempleman-Adams - 2009
    Among the greatest achievements in the history of photography, those of the early polar explorers surely stand out, for the beauty of their images and the almost impossible conditions they encountered. And none of these are more remarkable than the photographs recorded by the official chroniclers of two epic Antarctic expeditions--that of Robert Falcon Scott, departed in 1910, which tragically resulted in his death; and, four years later, that of Ernest Shackleton, whose heroic sea journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia has become the stuff of legend.Their photographers--Herbert George Ponting and Frank Hurley--transported bulky cameras and glass plate negatives across the forbidding polar landscape to record some of the earliest images of this dramatic environment. That the photographs survived to be presented on their return to King George V is miraculous, and they have remained ever since in the Royal Collection. "The Heart of the Great Alone "reproduces the best of these marvelous images, some of which have never appeared in book form before--ships encased in ice floes, ice cliffs and ravines, campsites and dog sleds, and the incomparable beauty of Antarctic flora and fauna. Together they form an invaluable record of an environment that global warming has forever changed. With a superb narrative drawing on Ponting's and Hurley's writings and other unique archival material from the Royal Collection, and with extended captions for each image, this book is a unique addition to the literature of polar exploration.

Photographing Oregon: A Guide to the Natural Landmarks of Oregon


Greg Vaughn - 2009
    Come explore coastal cliffs and beaches, sand dunes, lighthouses, wildlife refuges, gardens, waterfalls, verdant valleys, volcanic peaks, unique rock formations, the deepest canyon in North America and remote desert outposts. 304 pages, 240+ outstanding color photographs, hundreds of locations covered, grained cover ideal for field use.

Cafe Lehmitz


Anders Petersen - 2009
    Anders Petersen was 18 years old when he first visited Hamburg in 1962, chanced upon Cafe Lehmitz, and established friends that made an impact on his life. In 1968 he returned to Lehmitz, found new regulars, renewed contact and began to take pictures. His photographs, which we first published in book form in 1978, have become classics of their genre Tom Waits used our cover picture for his album Rain dogs. Their candidness and authenticity continue to move the viewer. The solidarity evident in them prevents voyeurism or false pity arising vis-A -vis a milieu generally referred to as asocial. The other world of Cafe Lehmitz, which no longer exists in this form, becomes visible as a lively community with its own self-image and dignity.

Robert Doisneau


Taschen - 2009
    Doisneau continues to tell stories full of feeling, poetry and humor, and to enchant us with his capacity to communicate that implicit but fleeting relationship - a tender complicity - that made him one with what he photographed.Born in Gentilly on April 14, 1912 between ‘Bièvres’ and the now vanished fortifications, just outside Paris, Doisneau remained a denizen of the suburbs till his death: the Montrouge apartment that he took in 1937 remained his home for the rest of his life. The particular interest he took in working-class milieux and environments led to images rich in poetic social realism, images that profoundly influenced the film and literature of his time. In 1950, the magazine Life commissioned a set of images of the lovers of Paris from the agency Rapho. The result was the famous series of ‘Kisses’, including the ‘Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville’, which has become Doisneau’s signature image. The ‘Kisses’ were for the most part staged, but display a wonderful complicity with the participants in this typically Parisian theatre. Always the loner, Doisneau has continued the rounds of his own chosen area between Paris, Montrouge and Gentilly and there are now more than 400.000 pictures to testify to his perambulations and discoveries. He is the true piéton de Paris.

Rio de Janeiro


Mario Testino - 2009
    Peruvian by birth, Testino has been fascinated by Rio de Janeiro since his earliest summer vacations. "When I was 14, on holiday, and going from my house to the beach and seeing everyone walk everywhere in their tiny bathing suits—the girls and boys were so sexy and carefree and wild—I just could not believe it." This easy sensuality, sexual freedom and lust for life left a deep impression; Testino has been going back ever since, for work and fun, passion and inspiration. Featuring candid shots of exquisite cariocas baring nubile flesh, including supermodel Gisele Bündchen, MaRIO DE JANEIRO Testino captures the essence of this incomparably seductive city and its sultry citizens . From its breathtaking sunset panoramas, to the throbbing chaos of its world-famous carnival, this is Testino's love poem to the Brazilian metropolis that captured his teenage heart, and never let go. Features include: • Foreword by songwriter and singer Caetano Veloso • Introduction by actress/TV personality Regina Casé • Essay by supermodel Gisele Bündchen• Softcover with plastic jacket—for beach reading—available in yellow, orange or red, inspired by Rio's glorious sunsets!

Small Trades


Irving Penn - 2009
    Capturing the humble coal heaver and the crisply dressed waiter with equal directness, Penn’s arresting portraits also underscore fascinating cultural differences.Small Trades was Penn’s most extensive body of work to which he returned over many decades producing ever more exacting prints. Two hundred-six unique images from the series are flawlessly reproduced in this book.  In addition, the introductory essay describes the history and context of the Small Trades series and its importance to Penn’s career and the history of photography.  An interview with Edmonde Charles-Roux, the chief editor for French Vogue from 1952 to 1966, who assisted Penn on the assignment in Paris, provides fascinating insights of the Paris sittings.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year Portfolio 19


Rosamund Kidman-Cox - 2009
    The winning and commended photographs, each selected by an international panel of expert judges, are all included, and together these images cover a wide range of subjects and a diverse portfolio of styles. The photos include nature abstracts, depictions of animal behavior, and environmental reportage, and each image celebrates the splendor, drama, and variety of life on earth. The photographs are also accompanied by memorable captions that tell the story of how and why each shot was taken.

Charmed by Audrey: Life on the Set of Sabrina


Mark Shaw - 2009
    Life magazine assigned one of its top young photographers, Mark Shaw, to shoot a feature, and he spent weeks with the star on and around the set. Shaw's extraordinary level of access resulted in an amazing array of photos and over 60 rolls of film that captured the budding ing�nue's charm and grace on set and in everyday life. The images chronicled Hepburn waking up at home, having her hair washed at the beauty parlor, reading, relaxing, studying the script, chatting with her costars and director Billy Wilder, and acting in one of her most famous roles. Through the handful of photographs published in Life for the Sabrina article have become iconic images of Hepburn, the majority of the negatives were misplaced and never published. Rediscovered 50 years later, these photographs offer a stunning visual biography of Hepburn's youth and rising star.

The Dust Bowl Through the Lens: How Photography Revealed and Helped Remedy a National Disaster


Martin W. Sandler - 2009
    More than 100 million acres of land had turned to dust, causing hundreds of thousands of people to seek new homes and opportunities thousands of miles away, while millions more chose to stay and battle nature to save their land.FDR's army of photographers took to the roads to document this national crisis. Their pictures spoke a thousand words, and a new form of storytelling- photojournalism-was born. With the help of iconic photographs from Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, and many more, Martin Sandler tells the story of a nation as it endured its darkest days and the extraordinary courage and spirit of those who survived.

One Hundred Butterflies


Harold Feinstein - 2009
    Feinstein's breathtaking photographs capture the color, vibrancy, and infinite variety of patterns that occur on the wings of these ornate insects. One hundred impeccably reproduced, oversized photographs allow viewers to appreciate the Blue Morpho of Central America, the African Birdwing, and the Asian Swallowtail at a scale and depth impossible to experience in nature. An elegantly printed deluxe gift book, it is a treasure for butterfly enthusiasts and art lovers alike.

The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography


Lyle Rexer - 2009
    The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography is the first book in English to document this phenomenon and to put it into historical context, while also examining the diverse approaches thriving within contemporary photography. Author Lyle Rexer examines abstraction at pivotal moments, starting with the inception of photography, when many of the pioneers believed the camera might reveal other aspects of reality. The Edge of Vision traces subsequent explorations--from the Photo Secessionists, who emphasized process and emotional expression over observed reality, to Modernist and Surrealist experiments. In the decades to follow, in particular from the 1940s through the 1980s, a multitude of photographers--Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind and Barbara Kasten among them--took up abstraction from a variety of positions. Finally, Rexer explores the influence the history of abstraction exerts on contemporary thinking about the medium. Many contemporary artists--most prominently Ilan Wolff, Marco Breuer and Ellen Carey--reject photography's documentary dimension in favor of other possibilities, somewhere between painting and sculpture, that include the manipulation of process and printing. In addition to Rexer's engagingly written and richly illustrated history, this volume includes a selection of primary texts from and interviews with key practitioners and critics such as Edward Steichen, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and James Welling.

The House of Dance and Feathers:: A Museum by Ronald W Lewis


Rachel Breulin - 2009
    Lewis has assembled a museum to the various worlds he inhabits. Built in 2003, the House of Dance & Feathers represents many New Orleans societies: Mardi Gras Indians, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, Bone Gangs, and Parade Krewes. More than just a catalogue of the artifacts in the museum, this full-color book is a detailed map of these worlds as experienced by Ronald W. Lewis.

Regarding Heroes


Yousuf Karsh - 2009
    'I speak with some experience when I say that I have rarely left the company of accomplished men and women without feeling that they had in them real sincerity, integrity yes, and sometimes vanity of course and always a sense of high purpose.' In his sixty-year career, he seldom wavered from this goal, even when fame and fortune came his way. Nor did he discard his trademark variations in lighting style that he perfected in the late 1940s. Unchanging, too, was his genius at capturing the ephemeral expressions that would reveal his sitter's psychology, those fleeting disclosures of character and purpose his famous sitters trusted him to expose.He was the preferred photographer of Kings, Queens, Princes, Presidents, Prime Ministers and Generals because he rendered them with an unbiased and unfailing regard for their dignity. With musicians, artists, writers, scientists, actors, and other creative intellectuals, he shared a similiar ambition: to create works of art of lasting value. In making what now seem singular, monumental statements honoring those he considered his contemporary heroes, he stood alone in his field, so much so that it could be argued he was the last of his kind.This large-format volume, printed in tritone, collects many highlights of Karsh's career one hundred iconic portraits in all. Ranging from the famous 1941 Roaring Lion image of Churchill, through the unforgettable photographs of Anita Ekberg and the Kennedys from the 1950s, to his sittings with Kurt Vonnegut and Jessye Norman in 1990, Regarding Heroes is a dazzling reminder of the breadth of Karsh's vision and the brilliance of his technique. The introductory essay by David Travis takes serious critical stock of the importance of Karsh's work and his place in the pantheon of major portrait artists. Rounding out the volume are brief biographical essays on each subject that include Karsh's own perceptive comments about his experience.

Uncovered: Women In Word And Image


Jordan Matter - 2009
    They demand response, provoke moral questions and force confrontation with the very notion of taboo. Over a period of six years, Jordan Matter photographed women bare-breasted in New York City. They varied in terms of age, education and profession. Every one was a volunteer. Every subject faced reactions to her decision to defy convention, and many confronted feelings of shame and inadequacy. But after the shoots, the women were unexpectedly euphoric—and Matter wondered just what he had uncovered. Many of the women agreed to interviews or wrote their own texts for this collection, revealing their journeys toward self-acceptance. The result is a remarkable chorus of shared experience, secret fears, optimism and wisdom. Uncovered celebrates the controversial female body. But it also honors the individual women who were willing to confront their culture and themselves. These are their images and their stories, in their own words. Ten percent of the profits from sales of Uncovered merchandise will benefit the Somaly Mam Foundation, a nonprofit public charity committed to ending sexual slavery in Southeast Asia.

Taking Aim: Unforgettable Rock 'n' Roll Photographs


Graham Nash - 2009
    Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Johnny Cash share pages with Kurt Cobain, Sting,Michael Stipe, and many others, in shots by legendary photographers such as Daniel Kramer, Charles Peterson, Annie Leibovitz, and others. A rare collection, Taking Aim is destined for the shelves of both photo collectors and rock and roll fans.

Scotland's Mountains: A Landscape Photographer's View


Joe Cornish - 2009
    Accompanying the portfolio are detailed accounts of the photographer’s experiences in each region, the physical and creative challenges faced in order to capture the images, and reflections on the remarkable landscapes and features encountered. Acutely observed, visually engaging, and artistically definitive, this inspirational portfolio is essential for those drawn to the magic and majesty of Scotland’s rugged landscapes.

Players


Rick Day - 2009
    Photos are worked over to give the bodies a strong and special glow. "I wanted to blur the lines of sexuality with this project. Men and women should be able to turn the pages and lose themselves in beauty and lust." - Rick Day

Elephant Reflections


Dale Peterson - 2009
    The photographs move from the purely aesthetic to the informative, depicting animals who are at once enigmatic, individual, mysterious, elusive, and iconic. In riveting prose, Peterson introduces the work of field scientists in Africa and explains their recent astonishing discoveries. He then explores the natural history and conservation status of African elephants and discusses the politics of ivory. Elephant Reflections is a book that could change the way the world thinks about elephants while we still have some measure of control over their fate.Read an excerpt here: Elephant Reflections by Dale Peterson and Karl Ammann by University of California Press

Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard, 1905-1930


Luc Sante - 2009
    The result was the real-photo postcard, so-called because the cards were printed in darkrooms rather than on litho presses, usually in editions of a hundred or fewer, the work of amateurs and professionals alike. They were not intended for tourists, but as a medium of communication for the residents of small towns, isolated on the plains and in the hills. The cards document everything about their time and place, from intimate matters to events that qualified as news. They show people from every walk of life and the whole panorama of human activity: eating, sleeping, labor, worship, animal husbandry, amateur theatrics, barn-raising, spirit-rapping, dissolution, riot, disaster, death. Uncountable millions of them were made in the peak years, 1905 to 1912.Previous books on the subject have been content to dwell on the nostalgia value of the images. This book takes a broader and deeper view. The 122 postcards it reproduces cover the vast range of subjects encompassed by the medium—sometimes lyrical and sometimes bracingly harsh—while Luc Sante’s pathbreaking introductory essay places them in their full historical and artistic context.Sante argues that the cards were a medium of expression very much like the folk music being made in the same places at the same time—open to the complete and unvarnished experience of life, and enacting tradition even as they embody modernity. Besides that, he demonstrates that they represent a crucial stage in the evolution of photography, as the essential link between the plain style of the Civil War photographers and the vision of the great midcentury documentarians, Walker Evans above all.Combining his gifts as a chronicler of early twentieth-century America, a historian of photography, and a clear-eyed and eloquent critic, Sante shows how the postcards’ �vast, teeming, borderless body of work” add up to a �self-portrait of the American nation.”

Eikoh Hosoe: Kamaitachi


Eikō Hosoe - 2009
    Hosoe, the renowned photographer, and Hijikata, the founder of ankoku butoh dance, had visited a farming village in northern Japan, where Hijikata improvised a performance inspired by the legend of a weasel-like demon named Kamaitachi. As Hosoe photographed Hijikata's spontaneous interactions with the landscape and with the people they encountered, the two artists together enacted an intense investigation of tradition and an exploration, both personal and symbolic, of contemporary convulsions in Japanese society. In 2005, Aperture published a limited-edition facsimile in homage to the original, in close consultation with the artist; now, they have made this enchanting body of work available in its first ever affordable trade edition, which was painstakingly reworked by renowned graphic artist Ikko Tanaka--the designer of the original volume--shortly before his death. His reinterpretation of this classic book object, which is truly a paragon of Japanese bookmaking, includes as a special bonus four never-before-published images from the classic Kamaitachi series.Eikoh Hosoe was born in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, in 1933. He is an integral part of the history of modern Japanese photography, and remains a driving force not only for his own work, but also for his efforts as a teacher and ambassador, fostering artistic exchange between Japan and the outside world. Hosoe lives in Tokyo and is represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York.

Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950 [With CD (Audio)]


Jim Linderman - 2009
    Comprising a beautiful hardcover book and a CD featuring rare, vintage songs and sermons recorded between 1924-1940, "Take Me to the Water" draws on the collection of Jim Linderman, a scholar of American outsider art, early American folk art and daguerreotype photography. It reproduces 75 sepia photographs that depict amazing scenes of immersion baptisms-the likes of which are rarely seen today-with preacher and baptismal candidates shown immersed in the middle of the river, while the congregation looks on from the riverbank. The CD compiles rare gospel and folk recordings from original 78-rpm records, with artists such as Washington Phillips, Carter Family, Tennessee Mountaineers, the Belmont Silvertone Jubilee Singers and rare vocal recordings of baptismal sermons. Renowned writer Luc Sante provides a history of baptismal rites in America, and writes of this volume: "Whether you have ever actually experienced a baptism or not, whether you are a believer or not, these pictures and the music that accompanies them transmit all the emotional information: the excitement and the serenity, the fellowship and the warmth, the wind and the water you would have to have a heart of tin not to recognize this as one of the happiest collections of archival photographs ever assembled."

Texas BBQ


Wyatt McSpadden - 2009
    Succulent, savory, perfumed with smoke and spice, it transcends the term "comfort food." It's downright heavenly, and it's also a staff of Texas life. Like a dust storm or a downpour, barbecue is a force of Texas nature, a stalwart tie to the state's cultural and culinary history. Though the word is often shortened to "BBQ," the tradition of barbecue stands Texas-tall.Photographer Wyatt McSpadden has spent some twenty years documenting barbecue--specifically, the authentic family-owned cafes that are small-town mainstays. Traveling tens of thousands of miles, McSpadden has crisscrossed the state to visit scores of barbecue purveyors, from fabled sites like Kreuz's in Lockhart to remote spots like the Lazy H Smokehouse in Kirbyville. Color or black-and-white, wide angle or close up, his pictures convey the tradition and charm of barbecue. They allow the viewer to experience each place through all five senses. The shots of cooking meat and spiraling smoke make taste and smell almost tangible. McSpadden also captures the shabby appeal of the joints themselves, from huge, concrete-floored dining halls to tiny, un-air-conditioned shacks. Most of all, McSpadden conveys the primal physicality of barbecue--the heat of fire, the heft of meat, the slickness of juices--and also records ubiquitous touches such as ancient scarred carving blocks, torn screen doors and peeling linoleum, and toothpicks in a recycled pepper sauce jar.

Extreme Ice Now: Vanishing Glaciers and Changing Climate: A Progress Report


James Balog - 2009
    The result is a dramatic and timely demonstration of global warming's dangerous consequences from Alaska to Iceland to the Alps. Serviced via foot, horseback, dogsled, skis, fishing boats, and helicopters at 15 sites in the Northern Hemisphere and programmed to shoot once an hour, every hour of daylight, each of the 26 cameras captures approximately 4,000 images per year. This stunning collection of photographs will form a companion exhibition traveling to museums all over the world as part of an urgent outreach campaign aimed at educating the public about global warming and providing irrefutable scientific evidence of how rapidly our planet's climate is changing.Launched in the fall of 2006 and scheduled to continue until late summer of 2009, the remarkable Extreme Ice Survey archive will ultimately total more than 300,000 photographs-a treasure trove of data for researchers and a portrait of nature as arresting and unforgettable as it is ominous.

Kingfisher: Tales from the Halcyon River


Charlie Hamilton-James - 2009
    From a hide attached to his home by a West Country river, and from a number of vantage points along the same river, Charlie Hamilton James has watched and photographed kingfishers for literally thousands of hours. Written in diary form, it covers the kingfishers' habits season by season and describes them with real intimacy.

Travels to the Edge: A Photo Odyssey


Art Wolfe - 2009
    Inspirational for those who seek to travel and explore our beautiful planet, Landscapes, wildlife, and cultures of Alaska, Bolivia, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Patagonia, Peru, South Georgia Island, the Southwest (US), and beyond Revel in the beauty of awe-inspiring landscapes and the unique animals and people that inhabit them as captured through an artist's lens in Travels to the Edge, the newest book from internationally acclaimed photographer Art Wolfe. Wolfe has personally selected his 100 favorite images of majestic glaciers, expansive deserts, teeming rainforests, remote mountain peaks, and exotic tribal gatherings-all captured on location while traveling for PBS. Brief essays and captions, recorded during his journeys, share Wolfe's knowledge about the world around him and reveal his curiosity and enthusiasm for places, cultures, and creatures great and small.

Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History, 1955-Present


Gail Buckland - 2009
    But many of the images that have shaped our consciousness and desire were made by photographers whose names are unfamiliar. Here are Elvis in 1956—not yet mythic but beautiful, tender, vulnerable, sexy, photographed by Alfred Wertheimer . . . Bob Dylan and his girlfriend on a snowy Greenwich Village street, by Don Hunstein . . . John Lennon in a sleeveless New York City T-shirt, by Bob Gruen . . . Jimi Hendrix, by Gered Mankowitz, a photograph that became a poster and was hung on the walls of millions of bedrooms and college dorms . . .For the first time, the work of these talented men and women is brought into the pantheon; we see the musicians they photographed and how the images gave rock and roll its visual identity.To bring together these images, Gail Buckland, acclaimed photographic editor, curator, and scholar, looked through the archives of one hundred photographers, selecting pictures not on the basis of the usual suspects, but on the power of the images themselves, often picking an image a photographer didn’t even remember he or she had taken.Buckland writes about the photographers, their influences, their relationships with their subjects, how they took the images, how they saw what they saw and captured what they captured: the spirit and essence of rock.A revelation of an art form whose iconic images changed the world as we knew it.

Overpainted Photographs


Gerhard Richter - 2009
    These (mostly small-format) pieces were reproduced in books as early as the first "Atlas," but practically all of the works themselves are housed in private collections and rarely exhibited in public. "Overpainted Photographs" gathers this body of work, which unites the labor of the hand with the work of mechanical reproduction to produce a kind of art as conceptually rich as Richter's better-known paintings, neutralizing the expressive powers of each medium to reach an indifference to their potency. In an overture to Duchamp's "degree zero" found objects, the original photographs are frequently bland in content--an empty office, a ball, a beach scene or tourist snapshot--and Richter's painterly gestures bounce off that content in peculiar ways, sometimes interacting with it, sometimes overlaying it and sometimes threatening to eclipse it altogether. The final effect is to cause both photography and painting to seem like incredibly bizarre activities, disparate in texture but often complicit in aspiration. This monograph offers a unique opportunity to savor what had previously been a neglected but copious aspect of Richter's work.

Bob's World: The Life and Boys of A.M.G.'s Bob Mizer


Dian Hanson - 2009
    His diaries, kept from the age of eight, make it clear that he was openly homosexual from his late teens, but until the age of 42 he lived and worked in his mother's L.A. rooming house, where his strict ethical code prevented him from fully expressing his fantasies. For 24 years he worked in black and white and never showed a completely naked man, but following his mother's death in 1964 Mizer built a kingdom dedicated to the pleasures of male flesh, and photographed fully nude men in explicit poses and psychedelically saturated colors. In the 1970s and '80s Bob Mizer's compound, centered around the old rooming house, became home to dozens of his young models, who lived outdoors on couches and porch gliders among the chickens, geese, goats and monkeys, Roman statuary, cast off Christmas trees and other sundry props that featured in his increasingly quirky films and photography. Sometimes called the Hugh Hefner of gay publishing for his pioneering magazine (republished in entirety by TASCHEN in 1997), Mizer influenced figures in art and society from David Hockney–who first came to America partly to meet Bob Mizer–to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who modeled for Mizer in 1975. Bob's World: The Life and Boys of AMG's Bob Mizer is the first book to celebrate the full-color, deliriously uninhibited carnival of late-period Mizer. Over 250 photos are accompanied by an oral history by contributing artists David Hockney, Jack Pierson and John Sonsini, photographers David Hurles and Hal Roth, models Ben Sorensen and Andrew Sears, and Wayne Stanley, inheritor of the Mizer estate. The book includes a one-hour DVD of Mizer films spanning 1958–1980, specially edited for this edition.

Zebrato


Michael Levin - 2009
    Each image has a simplicity and purity capturing the essence of the landscape. Many of his photographs feature water and clouds and show what has been described as “the smooth skin of light,” yet it is the architectural intrusions into these clean spaces that most engage him.Exhibitions in Canada and United States are to be confirmed.

Rankin's Cheeky


Rankin - 2009
    Known for freewheeling, stylized images of top celebrities, as well as a starkly unconventional aesthetic, Rankin is a dreamweaver second to none.

Dan Winters: Periodical Photographs: Commissioned Work


Dan Winters - 2009
    Sometimes the poses are familiar from early Renaissance portraiture--the profile or three-quarter profile view of the subject beginning from the chest up, the eyes raised skyward, the background a murky monochrome. In other portraits, Winters conjures early photography, and in yet others, one finds entirely contemporary backdrops of freeways or industrial interiors. He excels in lighting, shrouding his subjects in shadow (Morrissey) or very slightly bleaching them (Kate Winslet) to produce a strange remoteness. Winters is responsible for the definitive portraits of Hollywood's most photographed A-listers (Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio) and music superstars (Bono, Eminem, Willie Nelson), as well as scientists, architects and everyday, extraordinary Americans. This long-awaited first monograph from this top editorial photographer provides an overview of his assignment work as a contributor to some of America's most prestigious magazines, including New York, Esquire, Rolling Stone and The New York Times Magazine, with an emphasis on his portraiture. Designed by Scott Dadich, award-winning Creative Director of Wired magazine, it showcases a photographer at the top of his game.Dan Winters, born in Ventura, California, in 1962, lives in Austin and Los Angeles. He is the recipient of more than 100 awards, including the Alfred Eisenstadt Award for Magazine Photography and a First Place World Press Photo Award. His work is included in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Austin, Texas.

Heidilicious


Rankin - 2009
    Gifted with sizzling looks and a dynamic peronality, this German-born beauty is one of the most recognizable faces of our time. Whether as a sultry sex kitten or sophisticated femme fatale, this tribute by one of Ms. Klum's favorite photographers, Rankin, captures her many moods and personas. Because of their long friendship, this photographic master has a unique insight to this unparalleled fashion icon, gaining a variety of fascinating answers to the question, "What is Heidi really like?"

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh


Sally Mann - 2009
    But Sally Mann's take on these iconic themes, rendered through both traditional and esoteric processes, is anything but common. Astonishingly original both in imagery and technique, Mann's work consistently challenges the viewer: in her hands, experiences drawn from daily life are rendered both disquieting and sublime. Now, having studied relationships between parent and child, artist and subject, life and death, Mann investigates the bonds between husband and wife. Exquisitely detailed, intimate, psychologically and emotionally intense, Sally Mann: Proud Flesh engages territory most often inhabited by male artists portraying their wives and female lovers, as Mann turns the camera to her husband of 39 years, Larry. Beautiful, textured and provocative, these unprecedented nude studies neither objectify nor celebrate; rather, they go far under the skin to suggest a relationship between man and woman that is profoundly trusting: sensual, sexual, sometimes painful, often indescribably tender and always unblinkingly honest.

Denver: A Photographic Survey of the Metropolitan Area, 1970-1974


Robert Adams - 2009
    In the former two books, Adams created a comprehensive document that was resolute in its avoidance of romantic notions of the American West and dispassionately honest about man’s despoliation of the land. Both books demonstrate the artist at the height of his powers as a documentary photographer and a poetic sequencer of images. The photographs featured in denver and What We Bought show tract housing with mountain ranges in the distance, trailer lots devoid of people, suburban streets through generic windows, shopping mall interiors, and parking lots: subjects distinctly unspectacular, familiar, and banal. Adams’s compositions are straightforward and democratic, and it is this precise turn from sentimentality that has made Adams one of the most influential figures in the history of American photography. These exquisite new editions, printed in rich tritones, celebrate this landmark work. denver also includes new and previously unpublished photographs from the project, chosen and sequenced by Adams himself.

Dark Night of the Soul


Danger Mouse - 2009
    As half of the acclaimed duo Gnarls Barkley, Danger Mouse is no stranger to high-stakes collaborations. With the help of Sparklehorse, he has recruited a remarkable cast of contemporary artists to lend their vocals, including the Flaming Lips, Black Francis of the Pixies, Julian Casablancas of the Strokes, James Mercer of the Shins, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, Nina Persson of the Cardigans, cryptic Southern songwriter Vic Chesnutt, avant-folk icon Suzanne Vega, punk titan Iggy Pop, and even Lynch himself. To create the images that accompany the music, Danger Mouse chose David Lynch. Known for revealing the gripping horror beneath suburban banality, Lynch crafts eerie beauty from the most irregular of elements. For Dark Night of the Soul , the creator of Twin Peaks, Inland Empire, Blue Velvet, and Eraserhead, delivers a gorgeous, hypnotic series of photographs. This captivating project explores and escapes the reality of the world. The book package includes the full sequence of Lynch’s images, a foreword by Danger Mouse, selected lyrics, and an art-printed CD-R, in a run of only 5000 copies, each individually numbered.www.DNOTS.com

LensWork #83 (The Bill Jay's Best of EndNotes issue)


Bill Jay - 2009
    His acerbic wit and wisdom made it one of the most popular items — and always the first read — in every issue. We'd talked about assembling some sort of "best of" collection for years. He finally did so. We received it shortly before he passed away. So, in tribute to Bill, his selection of The Best of EndNotes is the entire contents of LensWork #83, now released in this Kindle format.

Watchmen: Portraits


Clay Enos - 2009
    With its wealth of exclusive photographs, this stunning book is a unique look into the world of the film.

Bay Area Graffiti


Steve Rotman - 2009
    Bay Area Graffiti is the first comprehensive retrospective of the area's vibrant contemporary street-art scene. Documented by the distinctive photographic eye of Steve Rotman, the book's images showcase innovative art made all over the Bay Area, as well as how it blends into the region's stunning landscapes. Having befriended so many of the Bay Area's major writers and street artists, Rotman provides intimate profiles of dozens of artists from the Bay Area alongside photos of their work.Bay Area Graffiti is for fans of street art and photography the world over!

Photobox: Bringing The Great Photographers Into Focus


Roberto Koch - 2009
    Each image is accompanied by an engaging commentary and a brief biography of the photographer.

Camera Creative: Professional Photography Techniques for Innovative Images


Chris Gatcum - 2009
    These are the techniques you won't find in any camera manual, from exciting photo-taking ideas to post-processing tips and even gear you can make at home on the cheap, including flash diffusers, reflectors, filter gels, lenses, and more. Throughout, you'll get expert insights, simple step-by-step instructions, and eye-popping photos from both amateur and professional photographers. If you're ready to push your camera further, break some rules, and take stunning, innovative images, "Camera Creative" will show you how. Look inside for the secrets behind 52 of today's most popular creative photo techniques, including: -Bokeh-Water-droplet reflections-Fake tilt-shift (model world) -TTV (through the viewfinder) -Small-world panos -HDR -Reverse lens macro-Holga hacks-Star trails-And much more!

Photographing the Jewish Nation: Pictures from S. An-sky's Ethnographic Expeditions


Eugene M. Avrutin - 2009
    An-sky and the photographer Solomon Iudovin gathered materials and took photographs of Jewish daily life in pre-Revolutionary Russia’s Pale of Settlement. Photographing the Jewish Nation offers English-language readers their first look at over 170 extraordinary, recently rediscovered photographs from their expeditions. The pictures provide visual texture—in remarkable detail—that rarely appears in written sources. This volume includes a critical introduction and five chapters that document all aspects of Jewish life inside the Pale, including work, education, and religious and cultural traditions.

Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits


Linda Gordon - 2009
    In this sweeping account, renowned historian Linda Gordon charts Lange’s journey from polio-ridden child to wife and mother, to San Francisco portrait photographer, to chronicler of the Great Depression and World War II. Gordon uses Lange’s life to anchor a moving social history of twentieth-century America, re-creating the bohemian world of San Francisco, the Dust Bowl, and the Japanese American internment camps. She explores Lange’s growing radicalization as she embraced the democratic power of the camera, and she examines Lange’s entire body of work, reproducing more than one hundred images, many of them previously unseen and some of them formerly suppressed. Lange reminds us that beauty can be found in unlikely places, and that to respond to injustice, we must first simply learn how to see it.

Photo: box


Roberto Koch - 2009
    Photographers include Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliot Erwitt, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, David LaChapelle, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, and many more. Each image is accompanied by an engaging commentary and a brief biography of the photographer.The book is organized by subject and theme, offering a fresh perspective on the medium: from reportage to nature, and also covering war, portraits, still lifes, women, travel, cities, art, fashion, the nude, and sports. "PHOTO: BOX" is an irresistible and amazingly affordable survey of photography.

Trust: Photographs of Jim Marshall


Dave Brolan - 2009
    Now, for the first time, photographs from Jim's extensive color archive are published in book form, offering a fresh insight into the work of this renowned photographer and a new look at some of the great figures in music history.

Gentlemen of Bacongo


Daniele Tamagni - 2009
    They are also after their own great dream: to travel to Paris and return to Bacongo as lords of elegance."

All the Days and Nights


Doug DuBois - 2009
    Each photograph is rich with color, nuanced gestures and glances, enveloping the viewer in a multivalent, emotionally tense world. DuBois began photographing his family in 1984, prior to his father's near-fatal fall from a commuter train and his mother's subsequent breakdown and hospitalizations. While these events set a narrative backdrop to his work, the emotional freight is carried by the details as described by the artist: "The pallor of my mother's skin, the glare of my father's gaze and the tactile communion between my sister and nephew. These details constitute a complex and resonant picture of family ties..." More than 20 years later, DuBois' project has developed in remarkable ways.

Hugh Hefner's Playboy, 6 Volumes (Collectors)


Hugh Hefner - 2009
    He served as an infantry clerk in the U.S. Army during World War II and received his bachelor of art degree in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1949. He started Playboy magazine in 1953, and currently resides in Los Angeles.

Metallica: Club Dayz 1982�1984


Bill Hale - 2009
    Influenced musically by the new breed of British metal, yet epitomizing the punk rock scene, the band's loud, snotty, and dismissive attitude is evident everywhere in these photographs that document six of the legendary band's earliest performances. Tracing the band's growth, there are shots of Dave Mustaine and Ron McGovney playing together, Cliff Burton's introductory gig with the band at The Stone, the last Metallica show with Dave Mustaine, and Kirk Hammett's Metallica debut. Behind the camera is the book's author, who was invited behind the scenes to hang out and photograph the band’s brazen energy in concert, as well as their crazy and unpredictable backstage antics. Shot without the safety of a photo pit, many of the photographs are close-ups of wild crowds as they head-bang fearlessly to the music of their local heroes. Perfect for browsing, the collection is interesting in its contribution to music history, for its intriguing photography, and as a documentary on the youth culture in the Bay area during the 1980s.

Family


Lauren Dukoff - 2009
    This lovely hardcover album collects Dukoff's striking portraits and candid images of Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Bat for Lashes, Feathers, Espers, Vetiver, Bert Jansch, Vashti Bunyan, and many others individually and together, in performance and more private spaces. The 150 full-bleed, color and black and white photographs are complemented by a foreword by Banhart, text and artwork by the musicians, artist biographies, and a digital download featuring songs by some of the artists in the book.

Discovering Scotland's Lost Railways


Julian Holland - 2009
    This book focuses on the door to this secret world for the enthusiast as well as those with an interest in Scotland and its transport. Full description

Animals: A Visual Guide to the Animal Kingdom


Keith Laidler - 2009
    Discover how primitive slime fungi cells coalesce and function for a time as a single animal, or witness the millions of Monarch butterflies that aggregate on trees in Mexico. Meet the Coelacanth fish thought to be extinct for millions of years, or Microcebus - the newly discovered mouse lemur and the world's smallest primate. From sponges to spiny ant eaters, brine shrimps to bonobos, Animals allows you to witness some of the most astonishing wonders of the natural world in spectacular detail. Organised according to the scientific classification of animals (orders, families, genus, species), each chapter focuses on a different family of animals, starting with an introductory essay on the evolution, diversity, behaviour, habitats, conservation, etc. Subsequent pages showcase a broad selection of the most interesting, exotic, unusual, endangered, beautiful, specific animals within that group. Animals combines over 350 amazing giant-sized images taken by the world's best wildlife photographers with the latest scientific and zoological research on the natural history and conservation status of hundreds of animals. From nature lovers to conservationists, wildlife watchers to budding zoologists, Animals is the ideal reference that will entertain, inform and enthrall readers of all ages.

Sigur Rós: með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust


Sarah Hopper - 2009
    Med sud � eyrum vid spilum endalaust is a deluxe clothbound companion to the quartet's fifth album of the same name. It documents the creation of this album--whose title translates loosely as "with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly"--through Eva Vermandel's photographs and Nicholas Abrahams' two DVD films of the band: one a feature-length portrait of the complete recording of the song "�ra b�tur" at Abbey Road with full choir and orchestra; the other a 35-minute Super-8 film poem of the band touring and traveling in Iceland, Mexico and America, which includes the filming of the famous "Gobbledigook" video (made in collaboration with Ryan McGinley), tour rehearsals, the early shows on the tour and exclusive band interviews. Each edition is individually numbered and includes a unique strip of 16mm film taken from the "Gobbledigook" video.

Piecebook Reloaded: Rare Graffiti Drawings, 1985-2005


Sacha Jenkins - 2009
    Featuring more than fifty renowned artists, including Reas, Doc TC5, Veefer, Revolt, Pure, Abby, Ces, Part, Ket, Cope 2, and more, Piecebook Reloaded tells the tale of graffiti's evolution, from adrenalin-fueled street game to acceptance into the gallery world and corporate appropriation. From the mid-1980s through the first decade of the new century, distinctive styles pioneered by generations past took different shapes as new kids stepped up with spray cans in hand, taking what their "forebombers" created to heights never imagined. With paper stock identical to that of actual sketchbooks, as well as blank pages for readers to add their own masterpieces to the mix, Piecebook Reloaded delivers the same creative intimacy and honesty that fans of the art found in the first Piecebook's pages.

Photoshop CS4 Down & Dirty Tricks


Scott Kelby - 2009
    Using Scott's simple step-by-step method, with hundreds of full-color images, you'll see exactly how it's all done. The book is written so clearly, and it is so easy to follow, you'll immediately be able to create all of these effects yourself. You'll learn:- The latest photographic special effects - How to fake studio shots (you'll be amazed at how it's done) - The latest cutting-edge type effects - The most popular effects used by big movie studios - The most-requested advertising effects - Commercial effects that clients go crazy over! - The most asked-for current Web effects - Amazing 3D effects using Photoshop Extended - Plus loads of effects that look hard, but are easy once you know the secretsAnd not only that, but the whole book is packed with creative ideas, layouts, and design techniques that will help you unleash your own creativity. It's all here, in the only Photoshop book of its kind. You're gonna love it!

Mastering the Nikon D700


Darrell Young - 2009
    Each chapter explores the features and capabilities of the D700 in detail, surpassing basic user manuals by providing step-by-step menu setting adjustments coupled with illustrations and logical explanations for each option. The authors' writing style allows the reader to follow directions in a friendly and informative manner, as if a friend dropped in to share his experienced knowledge without "talking down" to you, explaining the how and the why.The learning experience for D700 beginners (and refresher information for professionals) goes beyond the camera itself. When camera features and options expand to additional Nikon equipment (such as with the use of optional Speedlights) the authors add the necessary information. Their frequent references to user manuals provided by Nikon (complete with specific page references) allow the reader to easily navigate past the confusion factor that often comes with new equipment.Mastering the Nikon D700 is another title in the Nikonians Press series-the exciting, new, joint venture between Nikonians and Rocky Nook.

The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington: Picturing the Promise


National Museum of African American History and Culture - 2009
    Beginning in the early twentieth century and continuing into the 1990s, Addison Scurlock, followed by his sons, Robert and George, used their cameras to document and celebrate a community unique in the world, and a stronghold in the history and culture of the nation's capital.Through photographs of formal weddings, elegant cotillions, ballet studios, and quiet family life, the Scurlocks revealed a world in which the black middle class refused to be defined or held captive by discrimination. From its home on the vibrant U Street corridor, the Scurlock Studio gave us indelible images of leaders and luminaries, of high society and working class, of Washingtonians at work and at play. In photograph after photograph, the Scurlocks captured an optimism and resiliency seldom seen in mainstream depictions of segregated society.Luminaries such as Duke Ellington, Ralph Bunche, Mary McLeod Bethune, Alain Locke, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lois Mailou Jones testify to the intellectual and cultural vibrancy that was unique to Washington and an inspiration to the nation. Photographs of a Peoples Drugstore protest and Marian Anderson's Easter morning concert at the Lincoln Memorial remind us that the struggle for equality in black Washington began long before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Offering a rich lens into our past, The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington is a powerful trigger of personal and historical memory.

The Big Book of Legs


Dian Hanson - 2009
    Its non-genital, nearly identical in structure to the corresponding male body part, and there is no obvious reason why it should be eroticized. Yet, through much of history, across many cultures, the female leg was hidden from sight and treated as such a taboo topic that it became an object of intense sexual obsession. In the Victorian era, the word leg was so forbidden that it couldnt be uttered in polite society. Even now, 80 years after women legs came out of hiding, their allure remains strong. In this third book of Dian Hanson wildly successful body parts series, she explores how freeing the female leg became central to women liberation, beginning with the French Revolution and ending with the sexual revolution. Learn who wore the first high heels, how nylons became a weapon of war, why Betty Grable were the million dollar legs, while enjoying great vintage photos by Irving Klaw Batters, and other great masters of leg art.

Eudora Welty as Photographer


Pearl Amelia McHaney - 2009
    They show Eudora Welty (1909-2001) ardently pursuing an audience and honing her technique as she worked behind the lens. Considering light, design, texture, framing, and perspective, she experimented with composition. She tried different films, papers, and exposures, took shots from various angles and distances, and cropped and enlarged photographs in her kitchen darkroom. Then she waited until morning to discover what had been revealed.Paramount in Eudora Welty as Photographer are the photographs themselves. Only nine have been published previously. The accompanying essays--by Welty scholar Pearl Amelia McHaney; by chief curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Sandra S. Phillips; and by photographer and photography historian Deborah Willis--describe Welty's developing aesthetic and her representations of the world as illustrated by the photographs.Welty took photographs of people, animals, patterns, shadows, and structures--natural and man-made--in Mississippi, Louisiana, New York, and North Carolina. The photographs are paired to contrast and complement, to surprise and suggest, and to please and provoke. Among the photographs in Eudora Welty as Photographer are prints exhibited in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1934; in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1935; and in New York City in 1936 and 1937.

Sawdust Mountain


Eirik Johnson - 2009
    Timber and salmon are the bedrock of a regional Northwest identity, but the environmental impact of these declining industries has been increasingly at odds with the contemporary ideal of sustainability. In this, his second book, Johnson reveals a landscape imbued with an uncertain future--no longer the region of boomtowns built upon the riches of massive old-growth forests. Johnson, a Seattle native, describes his photographs as, "a melancholy love letter of sorts, my own personal ramblings..." Through this poetic approach, "Sawdust Mountain" records a region affected by historic economic complexities and, by extension, one aspect of our fraught relationship with the environment in the twenty-first century.Eirik Johnson, born in Seattle in 1974, is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, George Eastman House and Aperture Gallery. His first book, "Borderlands," was awarded the Santa Fe Prize for Photography in 2005.