Capturing Light: The Heart of Photography


Michael Freeman - 2014
    For professional photographers, chasing the light, waiting for it, sometimes helping it, and finally capturing it is a constant preoccupation -- and for some an obsession.Drawing on four decades of doing just this, Michael Freeman takes a simple but practical approach to reacting to, and capturing photography's most important commodity.There are just three sections titled Waiting, Chasing, and Helping: Waiting explains the kinds of lighting that photographers can anticipate and plan for, while Chasing explores the transient, serendipitous light that photographers have to work quickly to exploit. Helping, the final and most technical section, focuses on the skills and techniques for enhancing, reducing, or otherwise controlling light, covering everything from in-the-field shooting choices to technical transformations to post-production.

Art Psalms


Alex Grey - 2008
    Art Psalms combines poems, artwork, and "mystic rants" that fuse imagination, creativity, and spirituality. Grey’s oracular poetry declares that art, both its creation and its observation, can be a spiritual practice. Many of these writings have been shared at gatherings worldwide, especially at New York City’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM), a contemporary sacred space co-founded by Alex and Allyson Grey. Selections include "Soul Marriage," which invites the reader to commit to personal and global transformation; "Guidance for Servants of God," precepts for life as a sacred path; and "The Plan," which aligns universal and individual creativity. The entire text of Grey’s spoken word performance, "WorldSpirit," is included here. Three annotated portfolios, "Meditations on the Divine Feminine," "Meditations on the Masters," and "Meditations on Mortality," explore the connection between drawing and meditation as ways of seeing. Equally meaningful for art lovers, the health and spiritual communities, and anyone seeking to develop their creativity, Art Psalms features over 150 new reproductions of drawings, paintings, and sacred geometry to enrich and awaken the inner artist in each of us.

There and Back: Photographs from the Edge


Jimmy Chin - 2021
    Filmmaker, photographer, and world-class mountaineer Jimmy Chin goes where few can follow to capture stunning images in death-defying situations. There and Back draws from his breathtaking portfolio of photographs, captured over twenty years during cutting-edge expeditions on all seven continents—from skiing Mount Everest, to an unsupported traverse of Tibet’s Chang Tang Plateau on foot, to first ascents in Chad’s Ennedi Desert and Antarctica’s Queen Maud Land.Along the way, Chin shares behind-the-scenes details about how he captured such astounding images in impossible conditions, and tells the stories of the legendary adventurers and remarkable athletes he has photographed, including Alex Honnold, the star of his Academy Award–winning documentary film Free Solo; ski mountaineer Kit DesLauriers; snowboarder Travis Rice; and mountaineers Conrad Anker and Yvon Chouinard. These larger-than-life images, coupled with stories of outsized drive and passion, of impossible goals with life or death stakes, of partnerships forged through incredible hardship, are sure to inspire wonder and awe.

Painting People: Figure Painting Today


Charlotte Mullins - 2006
    A new generation of artists--as well as some who never abandoned figurative painting in the first place--is relishing the solitary, slow, subtle set of processes involved in not just painting, but painting people. They are choosing paint's unique ability to distill a lifetime of events rather than photography's glimpse of a frozen moment. Painting People, edited by the prominent London art historian and critic Charlotte Mullins, unites and contrasts the work of a key group of artists from around the world, and investigates their richly varied accomplishments in lucid text with detailed commentaries, accompanied by more than 150 reproductions. The list of contributing artists is stellar, ranging from photo-based painters like Luc Tuymans, Peter Doig and Marlene Dumas to Pop artists like Sigmar Polke and Alex Katz, photorealists like Chuck Close and Gerhard Richter, Neoexpressionists like Cecily Brown, and comics-inspired painters like Yoshitomo Nara, Inka Essenhigh and Takashi Murakami. There are erotic grotesques from John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage, meditations on the muse by Elizabeth Peyton and Lucian Freud, "Repro-realistic" work from Neo Rauch and of course self-portraits by Philip Akkerman and Marcel Dzama, among others.