Book picks similar to
Subway by Bruce Davidson


photography
art
photo
non-fiction

Midsummer Snowballs


Andy Goldsworthy - 2001
    What took place as an astonished public came upon these snowballs -- each weighing about a ton -- is captured in spontaneous and evocative pictures taken by photographers working around the clock.Here, then, is the story of Goldsworthy's largest ephemeral work to date. Made in one century (the 20th) and unwrapped to melt very slowly in the next, this is four-dimensional sculpture in which the lifespan and history of the snowballs are as important as their appearance at any moment. As Judith Collins explains in her introduction, and Goldsworthy in his diaries, this is a natural progression from his previous work with snow. Goldsworthy presents a unique confrontation between the wilderness and the city -- snowballs made in the Scottish winter brought to the streets of London in the summertime.

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States


Kenneth T. Jackson - 1985
    Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day. He treats communities in every section of the U.S. and compares American residential patterns with those of Japan and Europe. In conclusion, Jackson offers a controversial prediction: that the future of residential deconcentration will be very different from its past in both the U.S. and Europe.

Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted


Justin Martin - 2011
    Best remembered for his landscape architecture, from New York's Central Park to Boston's Emerald Necklace to Stanford University's campus, Olmsted was also an influential journalist, early voice for the environment, and abolitionist credited with helping dissuade England from joining the South in the Civil War. This momentous career was shadowed by a tragic personal life, also fully portrayed here.Most of all, he was a social reformer. He didn't simply create places that were beautiful in the abstract. An awesome and timeless intent stands behind Olmsted's designs, allowing his work to survive to the present day. With our urgent need to revitalize cities and a widespread yearning for green space, his work is more relevant now than it was during his lifetime. Justin Martin restores Olmsted to his rightful place in the pantheon of great Americans.

Peter Lindbergh. a Different Vision on Fashion Photography


Peter Lindbergh - 2016
    The image didn t just bring revered faces together for the first time; it marked the beginning of a new fashion era and a new understanding of female beauty. Coinciding with his major retrospective at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, this book gathers more than 400 images from four decades of Lindbergh s photography to celebrate his unique and game-changing storytelling and the new romantic and narrative vision it brought to art and fashion. Whether in striking single portraits or dramatic situations of figure and setting, we trace the photographer s cinematic inflections and his provocative play with female archetypes as subjects adopt the guise of dancers, actresses, heroines, and femmes fatales. Raw and seductive at once, we see how Lindbergh s trademark monochrome pictures also redefined standards of beauty by emphasizing spirit and personality as much as looks, celebrating the elegance and sensuality of older women, and privileging natural and authentic beauty in an era of pervasive retouching. In a testimony to Lindbergh s illustrious status in the fashion world, his images are contextualized by commentaries from collaborators such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Nicole Kidman, Grace Coddington, Cindy Crawford, and Anna Wintour, who chose Lindbergh to shoot her first US Vogue cover. Their tributes explain what makes Lindbergh s images so unique and powerful. Exhibition Peter Lindbergh. A Different History of Fashion at Kunsthal, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, September 10, 2016 February 12, 2017Text in English, French, and German"

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community


Robert D. Putnam - 2000
    This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, which The Economist hailed as "a prodigious achievement."Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures--whether they be PTA, church, or political parties--have disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe.Like defining works from the past, such as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent Society, and like the works of C. Wright Mills and Betty Friedan, Putnam's Bowling Alone has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do.

Photographs not taken: A collection of photographers' essays


Will Steacy - 2012
    Editor Will Steacy asked each photographer to abandon the conventional tools needed to make a photograph-camera, lens, film-and instead make a photograph using words, to capture the image (and its attendant memories) that never made it through the lens. In each essay, the photograph has been stripped down to its barest and most primitive form: the idea behind it. This collection provides a unique and original interpretation of the experience of photographing, and allows the reader into a world rarely seen: the image making process itself. Photographs Not Taken features contributions by: Peter Van Agtmael, Dave Anderson, Timothy Archibald, Roger Ballen, Thomas Bangsted, Juliana Beasley, Nina Berman, Elinor Carucci, Kelli Connell, Paul D’Amato, Tim Davis, KayLynn Deveney, Doug Dubois, Rian Dundon, Amy Elkins, Jim Goldberg, Emmet Gowin, Gregory Halpern, Tim Hetherington, Todd Hido, Rob Hornstra, Eirik Johnson, Chris Jordan, Nadav Kander, Ed Kashi, Misty Keasler, Lisa Kereszi, Erika Larsen, Shane Lavalette, Deana Lawson, Joshua Lutz, David Maisel, Mary Ellen Mark, Laura McPhee, Michael Meads, Andrew Moore, Richard Mosse, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Laurel Nakadate, Ed Panar, Christian Patterson, Andrew Phelps, Sylvia Plachy, Mark Power, Peter Riesett, Simon Roberts, Joseph Rodriguez, Stefan Ruiz, Matt Salacuse, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Aaron Schuman, Jamel Shabazz, Alec Soth, Amy Stein, and others.

Burning Man: Art on Fire


Jennifer Raiser - 2014
    This vastly inhospitable location, called the playa, is the site of Burning Man, where, within a 9-mile fence, artists called Burners create a temporary city devoted to art and participation. Braving extreme elements, over two hundred wildly ambitious works of art are created and intended to delight, provoke, involve, or amaze. In 2013, over 68,000 people attended – the highest number ever allowed on the playa. As Burning Man has created new context, new categories of art have emerged since its inception, including Art to Ride, Collaborative Art, Art for Social Change, and of course, Art to Burn.The Art of Burning Man is an authorized collection of the best of Burning Man art from 1986 through today. Experience the amazing sculptures, art, stories, and interviews from the world’s greatest gathering of artists. Get lost in a rich gallery of images showcasing the best examples of playa art with over 200 photos. Interviews with the artists reveal not only their motivation to create art specifically for Burning Man, but they also illuminate the dramatic efforts it took to create their pieces. Featuring the incredible photography of long-time Burning Man photographers, Sidney Erthal and Scott London, an introduction from Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, and a preface from artist Leo Villareal, this stunning gift book allows Burners and enthusiasts alike to have a piece of Burning Man with them all year around.

An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar


Taryn Simon - 2007
    She has photographed rarely seen sites from domains including: science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature security and religion. This index examines subjects that, while provocative or controversial, are currently legal. The work responds to a desire to discover unknown territories, to see everything. Simon makes use of the annotated-photograph's capacity to engage and inform the public. Transforming that which is off-limits or under-the-radar into a visible and intelligible form, she confronts the divide between the privileged access of the few and the limited access of the public. Photographed with a large format view camera (except when prohibited), Simon's 70 color plates form a seductive collection that reflects and reveals a national identity. In addition to this monograph, there is also an exhibition of Simon's work opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art in March 2007.

The BLDGBLOG Book


Geoff Manaugh - 2009
    Now The BLDGBLOG Book distills author Geoff Manaugh's unique vision, offering an enthusiastic, idea-filled guide to the future of architecture, with stunning images and exclusive new content. From underground exploration to the novels of J.G. Ballard, from artificial glaciers in the mountains of Pakistan to weather control in Olympic Beijing, The BLDGBLOG Book is "part conceptual travelogue, part manifesto, part sci-fi novel," according to Joseph Grima, executive director of New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture."BLDGBLOG is something new and substantially different from anything else I have seen," says Errol Morris, Director of Fast, Cheap & Out of Control and the Academy Award-winning documentary Fog of War. "Secretly, I had always hoped it would become a book. Geoff Manaugh has provided the reader with an excursion into a new world—part digital fantasy, part reality at the intersection of art, architecture, landscape design, and pure ideas. Like the blog, the book is personal, idiosyncratic, and, best of all, incredibly interesting."

The Bone House


Joel-Peter Witkin - 1998
    For this collection Joel-Peter Witkin has personally selected from his own archives his finest images, ranging from his early Coney Island "freak show" studies to his most recent work. Witkin's portraits of subjects both living and dead have disturbed countless viewers for their unwavering viewpoint and magically grotesque compositions. The artist's sojourn captured here, with each photograph a station along his path, veers between oblivion and salvation. This book depicts Witkin's journey until now. Texts by the artist and Eugenia Parry.

Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan


Rem Koolhaas - 1978
    Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture. "Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

The Luminous Portrait: Capture the Beauty of Natural Light for Glowing, Flattering Photographs


Elizabeth Messina - 2012
    Whether you’re photographing children, weddings, maternity and boudoir, or portraits of any kind, The Luminous Portrait will inspire you with Elizabeth’s personal approach and award-wining images, sharing the art to making flattering portraits that appear “lit from within.”

Digital Photography Masterclass: Advanced Photographic and Image Manipulation Techniques for Creating Perfect Pictures


Tom Ang - 2008
    Stunning images and stylish design make this book a great tool for anyone looking to learn about the technical and creative aspects of photography and post-production.

The Photographer's Eye


John Szarkowski - 1980
    Based on a landmark exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1964, and originally published in 1966, the book has long been out of print. It is now available again to a new generation of photographers and lovers of photography in this duotone printing that closely follows the original. Szarkowski's compact text eloquently complements skillfully selected and sequenced groupings of 172 photographs drawn from the entire history and range of the medium. Celebrated works by such masters as Cartier-Bresson, Evans, Steichen, Strand, and Weston are juxtaposed with vernacular documents and even amateur snapshots to analyze the fundamental challenges and opportunities that all photographers have faced. Szarkowski, the legendary curator who worked at the Museum from 1962 to 1991, has published many influential books. But none more radically and succinctly demonstrates why--as U.S. News & World Report put it in 1990--"whether Americans know it or not," his thinking about photography "has become our thinking about photography."

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898


Edwin G. Burrows - 1998
    Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe.In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant's despotic regime, Indian wars, slave resistance and revolt, the Revolutionary War and the defeat of Washington's army on Brooklyn Heights, the destructive seven years of British occupation, New York as the nation's first capital, the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Erie Canal and the coming of the railroads, the growth of the city as a port and financial center, the infamous draft riots of the Civil War, the great flood of immigrants, the rise of mass entertainment such as vaudeville and Coney Island, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the birth of the skyscraper. Here too is a cast of thousands--the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Clement Moore, who saved Greenwich Village from the city's street-grid plan; Herman Melville, who painted disillusioned portraits of city life; and Walt Whitman, who happily celebrated that same life. We meet the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Boss Tweed and his nemesis, cartoonist Thomas Nast; Emma Goldman and Nellie Bly; Jacob Riis and Horace Greeley; police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt; Colonel Waring and his "white angels" (who revolutionized the sanitation department); millionaires John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, and William Randolph Hearst; and hundreds more who left their mark on this great city.The events and people who crowd these pages guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America, and a book that will mesmerize everyone interested in the peaks and valleys of American life as found in the greatest city on earth. Gotham is a dazzling read, a fast-paced, brilliant narrative that carries the reader along as it threads hundreds of stories into one great blockbuster of a book.