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Vietnam


Larry Burrows - 2002
    His images, published in Life magazine, brought the war home, scorching the consciousness of the public and inspiring much of the anti-war sentiment that convulsed American society in the 1960s. To see these photo essays today, gathered in one volume and augmented by unpublished images from the Burrows archive, is to experience (or to relive), with extraordinary immediacy, both the war itself and the effect and range of Larry Burrows’s gifts—his courage: to shoot “The Air War,” he strapped himself and his camera to the open doorway of a plane . . . his reporter’s instinct: accompanying the mission of the helicopter Yankee Papa 13, he captured the transformation of a young marine crew chief experiencing the death of fellow marines . . . and his compassion: in “Operation Prairie” and “A Degree of Disillusion” he published profoundly affecting images of exhausted, bloodied troops and maimed Vietnamese children, both wounded, physically and psychologically, by the ever-escalating war.The photographs Larry Burrows took in Vietnam, magnificently reproduced in this volume, are brutal, poignant, and utterly truthful, a stunning example of photojournalism that recorded history and achieved the level of great art. Indeed, in retrospect, says David Halberstam in his moving introduction, “Larry Burrows was as much historian as photographer and artist. Because of his work, generations born long after he died will be able to witness and understand and feel the terrible events he recorded. This book is his last testament.”With 150 illustrations, 100 in full color

Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures & Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs


Paul Koudounaris - 2013
    The fully articulated skeleton of a female saint, dressed in an intricate costume of silk brocade and gold lace, withered fingers glittering with colorful rubies, emeralds, and pearls this is only one of the specially photographed relics featured in Heavenly Bodies. In 1578 news came of the discovery in Rome of a labyrinth of underground tombs, which were thought to hold the remains of thousands of early Christian martyrs. Skeletons of these supposed saints were subsequently sent to Catholic churches and religious houses in German-speaking Europe to replace holy relics that had been destroyed in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The skeletons, known as the catacomb saints, were carefully reassembled, richly dressed in fantastic costumes, wigs, crowns, jewels, and armor, and posed in elaborate displays inside churches and shrines as reminders to the faithful of the heavenly treasures that awaited them after death. Paul Koudounaris gained unprecedented access to religious institutions to reveal these fascinating historical artifacts. Hidden for over a century as Western attitudes toward both the worship of holy relics and death itself changed, some of these ornamented skeletons appear in publication here for the first time."

How New York Breaks Your Heart


Bill Hayes - 2018
    Now he presents an exquisite collection that captures the full range of his work and the magic of chance encounters in New York City. Hayes's "frank, beautiful, bewitching" street photographs "unmask their subjects' best and truest selves" (Jennifer Senior, New York Times): A policeman pauses at the end of a day. Cooks sneak in cigarette breaks. A pair of movers plays cards on the back of a truck. Friends claim the sidewalk. Lovers embrace. A flame-haired girl gazes mysteriously into the lens. And park benches provide a setting for a couple of hunks, a mom and her baby, a stylish nonagenarian . . . How New York Breaks Your Heart reveals ordinary New Yorkers at their most peaceful, joyful, distracted, anxious, expressive, and at their most fleeting--bringing the texture of the city to vivid life. Woven through with Hayes's lyric reflections, these photos will, like the city itself, break your heart by asking you to fall in love.

Building Stories


Chris Ware - 2012
    Taking advantage of the absolute latest advances in wood pulp technology, Building Stories is a book with no deliberate beginning nor end, the scope, ambition, artistry and emotional prevarication beyond anything yet seen from this artist or in this medium, probably for good reason.

It Chooses You


Miranda July - 2011
    During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic classifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the “Large leather Jacket, $10”? It seemed important to find out—or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay.Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of PennySaver sellers, glimpsing thirteen surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways.Elegantly blending narrative, interviews, and photographs with July’s off-kilter honesty and deadpan humor, this is a story of procrastination and inspiration, isolation and connection, and grabbing hold of the invisible world.

Tokyo: A Certain Style


Kyoichi Tsuzuki - 1997
    Think again. Tokyo: A Certain Style, the mini-sized decor book with a difference, shows how, for those living in one of the worlds most expensive and densely packed metropolises, closet-sized apartments stacked to the ceiling with gadgetry and CDs are the norm. Photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki rode his scooter all over Tokyo snapping shots of how urban Japanese really live. Hundreds of photographs reveal the real Tokyo style: microapartments, mini and modular everything, rooms filled to the rafters with electronics, piles of books and clothes, clans of remote controls, collections of sundry objects all crammed into a space where every inch counts. Tsuzuki introduces each tiny crash pad with a brief text about who lives there, from artists and students to professionals and couples with children. His captions to the hundreds of photographs capture the spirit and ingenuity required to live in such small quarters. This fascinating, voyeuristic look at modern life comes in a chunky, pocket-sized format-the perfect coffee table book for people with really small apartments.

The Dogist Puppies


Elias Weiss Friedman - 2017
    . . 300 pages of cuteness.” —The Los Angeles TimesThe Dogist Puppies, the follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Dogist, is a beautiful, funny, and endearing look at puppies.   He fires up the Nikon. Fills his pockets with treats. Dresses in special gear—pants with built-in kneepads and shoes that are not only made for walking but also have a thick rubber toe for squatting. And last but not least, he packs a squeaky tennis ball. And then The Dogist is off, combing the streets in his quest to find dogs to photograph. Or, as has been the case for the past four years, puppies. Bringing his singular eye and sensibility to photographing puppies from birth to age one, Elias Weiss Friedman, aka The Dogist, captures hundreds of fuzzy faces to love and little furry bodies to covet. The Dogist Puppies is a celebration of oversize puppy paws and floppy puppy ears, puppies getting belly rubs and puppies unsure, exactly, of what that tail thing is for. Puppies at play, and puppies worn out from playing. Litters of puppies with their mom, and puppies with their human equivalents—children. Puppies in fancy outfits, and those poignant puppies having to wear the “cone of shame.” Friedman has also taken a deep dive into breeds: Border Collies and Westies, Frenchies and Huskies, Boxers and the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, whose tender gaze looks just a little worried—perhaps concerned about living up to that name. The Dogist’s new focus is on puppies. What more do you need to know?

Graffiti Women: Street Art from Five Continents


Nicholas Ganz - 2006
    Female writers have always been in the vanguard of the graffiti movement, though often shunted to the sidelines by their male counterparts. This exhaustive volume places them front and center, featuring 1,000 full-color illustrations from some of the world's most prominent artists, including Brazil's Nina, Japan's Sasu, Mexico's Peste, and the Americans Lady Pink, Swoon, and Miss 17. Two eight-page fold-out collages, a fold-out poster jacket, and an authoritative text round out the impressive package. The first and only comprehensive survey of its kind, this book is sure to attract and expand upon the wide and enthusiastic readership that made "Graffiti World" such a runaway success.

Discoveries: Henri Cartier-Bresson


Clément Chéroux - 2008
    Early on he adopted the versatile 35mm format and helped develop the popular “street photography” style, influencing generations of photographers that followed. In his own words, he expressed that “the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. . . . It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.” In 1947 Cartier-Bresson founded Magnum Photos with four other photographers. August 22 will be the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Girl Culture


Lauren Greenfield - 2002
    In Girl Culture, she combines a photojournalists sense of story with fine-art composition and color to create an astonishing and intelligent exploration of American girls. Her photographs provide a window into the secret worlds of girls social lives and private rituals, the dressing room and locker room, as well as the iconic subcultures of the popular clique: cheerleaders, showgirls, strippers, debutantes, actresses, and models. With 100 hypnotic photographs, 20 interviews with the subjects, and an introduction by foremost historian of American girlhood Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Greenfield reveals the exhibitionist nature of modern femininity and how far it has drifted from the feminine ideologies of the past.

Francesca Woodman: On Being an Angel


Francesca Woodman - 2015
    Typical of Woodman's work in the way they cast the female body as simultaneously physical and immaterial, these photographs and the evocative title they share are apt choices to encapsulate the work of an artist whose legacy has been unavoidably colored by her tragic personal biography and her death, at age 22, by suicide. In less than a decade, Woodman produced a fascinating body of work--in black and white and in color--exploring gender, representation, sexuality and the body through the photographing of her own body and those of her friends. Since her death, Woodman's influence continues to grow: her work has been the subject of numerous in-depth studies and exhibitions in recent years, and her photographs have inspired artists all over the world. Published to accompany a travelling exhibition of Woodman's work, Francesca Woodman: On Being an Angel offers a comprehensive overview of Woodman's oeuvre, organized chronologically, with texts by Anna Tellgren, Anna-Karin Palm and the artist's father, George Woodman. Francesca Woodman (1958-81) was born in Denver, Colorado, to an artistic family and began experimenting with photography as a teenager. In 1975 she attended the Rhode Island School of Design, and in 1979 she moved to New York to attempt to build a career in photography. Woodman's working career was intense but brief, cut short by her death in 1981.

Occupants: Photographs and Writings


Henry Rollins - 2011
    Though he’s known for the raw power of his expression, Rollins has shown that the greatest statements can be made with the simplest of acts: to just bear witness, to be present.             In Occupants, Rollins invites us to do the same. The book pairs Rollins’s visceral full-color photographs—taken in Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and elsewhere over the last few years—with writings that not only provide context and magnify the impact of the images but also lift them to the level of political commentary. Simply put, this book is a visual testimony of anger, suffering, and resilience. Occupants will help us realize what is so easy to miss when tragedy and terror become numbing, constant forces—the quieter, stronger forces of healing, solidarity, faith, and even joy.

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry


Leanne Shapton - 2009
    Think of the collections of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Truman Capote, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. In Leanne Shapton's marvelously inventive and invented auction catalog, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris (who aren't real people, but might as well be). Through photographs of the couple's personal effects--the usual auction items (jewelry, fine art, and rare furniture) and the seemingly worthless (pajamas, Post-it notes, worn paperbacks)--the story of a failed love affair vividly (and cleverly) emerges. From first meeting to final separation, the progress and rituals of intimacy are revealed through the couple's accumulated relics and memorabilia. And a love story, in all its tenderness and struggle, emerges from the evidence that has been left behind, laid out for us to appraise and appreciate. In an earlier work, Was She Pretty?, Shapton, a talented artist and illustrator, subtly explored the seemingly simple yet powerfully complicated nature of sexual jealousy. In Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris--a very different yet equally original book--she invites us to contemplate what is truly valuable, and to consider the art we make of our private lives.

Photography Changes Everything


Marvin Heiferman - 2012
    Compiling hundreds of images and responses from leading authorities on photography, it offers a brilliant, reader-friendly exploration of the many ways in which photographs package information and values, demand and hold attention, and shape our knowledge of and experience in the world. The volume draws on the extraordinary visual assets of the Smithsonian Institution's museums, science centers and archives to launch an unprecedented interdisciplinary dialogue on photography's capacity to shape and change our experience of the world. Photography Changes Everything features over 300 images and nearly 100 engaging short texts commissioned from experts, writers, inventors, public figures and others--from Hugh Hefner to John Baldessari, John Waters, Robert Adams, Sandra Phillips and many others. Each story responds to images selected by project contributors. Together they engage readers in a timely exploration of the extent to which our lives have been transformed through our interactions with photographic imagery. Edited by leading photography curator and author Marvin Heiferman, Photography Changes Everything provides a unique opportunity to better understand the history, practice and power of photography at this transitional moment in visual culture.

Eye to Eye: Photographs by Vivian Maier


Richard Cahan - 2014
    Her story—thousands of photo negatives and prints found in a storage locker and sold for pennies at auction—has stirred millions around the world. Maier was a painfully private woman who now speaks powerfully through the photographs she took only for herself. This new collection offers readers a chance to follow Maier as she travels the world, including images of France, Italy, Malaysia, Yemen, Puerto Rico, and America. These eye-to-eye portraits, published for the first time, are the single constant in her lifetime of photographic work. Maier is often cast as a quirky, antisocial character, moving on the outskirts of real connection. But these photographs show something more. Printed with the latest technology, the book utilizes a modified four-color process that produces images akin to traditional silver gelatin prints. Combined with 15u stochastic screening, Maier's 96 photographs in this volume are spectacularly sharp, full-range black-and-white reproductions.