Light, Gesture, and Color


Jay Maisel - 2014
    He is a mentor, teacher, and trailblazer to many photographers, and a hero to those who feel Jay's teaching has changed the way they see and create their own photography. He is a living legend whose work is studied around the world, and whose teaching style and presentation garner standing ovations and critical acclaim every time he takes the stage.Now, for the first time ever, Jay puts his amazing insights and learning moments from a lifetime behind the lens into a book that communicates the three most important aspects of street photography: light, gesture, and color. Each page unveils something new and challenges you to rethink everything you know about the bigger picture of photography. This isn't a book about f-stops or ISOs. It's about seeing. It's about being surrounded by the ordinary and learning how to find the extraordinary. It's about training your mind, and your eyes, to see and capture the world in a way that delights, engages, and captivates your viewers, and there is nobody that communicates this, visually or through the written word, like Jay Maisel.Light, Gesture & Color is the seminal work of one of the true photographic geniuses of our time, and it can be your key to opening another level of understanding, appreciation, wonder, and creativity as you learn to express yourself, and your view of the world, through your camera. If you're ready to break through the barriers that have held your photography back and that have kept you from making the types of images you've always dreamed of, and you're ready to learn what photography is really about, you're holding the key in your hands at this very moment.

Life in the Studio: Inspiration and Lessons on Creativity


Frances Palmer - 2020
    And what an inspiration it is. A renowned potter, an entrepreneur, a gardener, a photographer, a cook, a beekeeper, Palmer has over the course of three decades caught the attention not only of the countless people who collect and use her ceramics but also of designers and design lovers, writers, and fellow artists who marvel at her example. Now, in her first book, she finally tells her story, in her own words and images, distilling from her experiences lessons that will inspire a new generation of makers and entrepreneurs.Life in the Studio is as beautiful and unexpected as Palmer’s pottery, as breathtakingly colorful as her celebrated dahlias, as intimate as the dinners she hosts in her studio for friends and family. There are insights into making pots—the importance of centering, the discovery that clay has a memory. Strategies for how to turn a passion into a business—the value to be found in collaboration, what it means to persevere, how to develop and stick to a routine that will sustain both enthusiasm and productivity. There are also step-by-step instructions (for throwing her beloved Sabine pot, growing dahlias, building an opulent flower arrangement). Even some of her most tried-and-true recipes. The result is a portrait of a unique artist and a singularly generous manual on how to live a creative life.

Monograph by Chris Ware


Chris Ware - 2017
    While illustrator Chris Ware's singular body of work is often categorized as comics, his trailblazing work defies genre. Whether he is writing graphic novels, making paintings, or building sculptures, Ware explores universal themes of social isolation, emotional torment, and depression with his trademark self-effacing voice. The end result is wry, highly empathetic, and identifiable to all walks of life. Ware, like Charles Schulz, Art Spiegelman, and R. Crumb, has elevated cartooning to an iconic art form. This volume is a personal, massive, never-before-seen look at how the artist's life and work combine, beginning with his newspaper family and the influence of their work; his art-school days in Austin and Chicago; to his career from the early 1990s to the present day. It also delves into how, as a storyteller and builder, his near-compulsion to build in three dimensions feeds into the thinking of his innovative narrative art. The book contains a comprehensive collection of his work, including many previously unpublished examples, and is an intimate window into a comics master sure to appeal to fans of art and storytelling.

The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets from One of the World's Top Shooters


Joe McNally - 2008
    These on-location workshops are usually reserved for a handful of photographers each year, but now you can learn the same techniques that Joe shares in his seminars and lectures in a book that brings Joe's sessions to life.What makes the book so unique is the "triangle of learning" where (1) Joe distills the concept down to one brief sentence. It usually starts with something like, "An editor at National Geographic once told me..." and then he shares one of those hard-earned tricks of the trade that you only get from spending a lifetime behind the lens. Then, (2) on the facing page is one of Joe's brilliant images that perfectly illustrates the technique (you'll recognize many of his photos from magazine covers). And (3) you get the inside story of how that shot was taken, including which equipment he used (lens, f/stop, lighting, accessories, etc.), along with the challenges that type of project brings, and how to set up a shot like that of your own.This book also gives you something more. It inspires. It challenges. It informs. But perhaps most importantly, it will help you understand photography and the art of making great photos at a level you never thought possible. This book is packed with those "Ah ha!" moments--those clever insights that make it all come together for you. It brings you that wonderful moment when it suddenly all makes sense--that "moment it clicks."

Flophouse: Life on the Bowery


Dave Isay - 2000
    Photos. NPR feature.

I Bought Andy Warhol


Richard Polsky - 2003
    In a book that spans the years from the wild speculation of the late 1980s to the recession of the 1990s, Polsky, himself a private dealer, takes his readers on a funny, fast-paced tour through an industry characterized by humor, hypocrisy, greed, and gossip.

The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color


Johannes Itten - 1961
    Subjective feelings and objective color principles are described in detail and clarified by color reproductions.

Migrations


Sebastião Salgado - 2000
    Photographs taken over seven years across more than 35 countries document the epic displacement of the world's people at the close of the twentieth century. Wars, natural disasters, environmental degradation, explosive population growth and the widening gap between rich and poor have resulted in over one hundred million international migrants, a number that has doubled in a decade. This demographic change, unparalleled in human history, presents profound challenges to the notions of nation, community, and citizenship. The first extensive pictorial survey of the current global flux of humanity, "Migrations" follows Latin Americans entering the United States, Jews leaving the former Soviet Union, Africans traveling into Europe, Kosovars fleeing into Albania and many others. The images address suffering while revealing the dignity and courage of the subjects. With his unique vision and empathy, Salgado gives us a picture of the enormous social and political transformations now occurring in a world divided between excess and need.

Hold Still: A Portrait of our Nation in 2020


HRH The Duchess of Cambridge - 2021
    People of all ages were invited to submit a photographic portrait, taken in a six-week period during May and June 2020, focused on three core themes – Helpers and Heroes, Your New Normal and Acts of Kindness. From these, a panel of judges selected 100 portraits, assessing the images on the emotions and experiences they conveyed.Featured here in this publication, the final 100 images present a unique and highly personal record of this extraordinary period in our history of people of all ages from across the nation. From virtual birthday parties, handmade rainbows and community clapping to brave NHS staff, resilient keyworkers and people dealing with illness, isolation and loss. The images convey humour and grief, creativity and kindness, tragedy and hope – expressing and exploring both our shared and individual experiences. Presenting a true portrait of our nation in 2020, this publication includes a foreword by The Duchess of Cambridge, each image is accompanied by the story behind the picture told through the words of the entrants, and further works show the nationwide outdoor exhibition of Hold Still.

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.

A Camera, Two Kids, and a Camel: My Journey in Photographs


Annie Griffiths Belt - 2008
    Belt was one of the first female photographers hired at the National Geographic Society. When her children were born, she kept right on going—and this book is a loving compendium of the wisdom she gained. It chronicles three decades of international travel, a moveable family, and the art she created along the way. Belt shares intimate moments, lessons learned from other women and men she met, and all the fun and heartache of the experience. Her quirky sense of humor and many touching stories will delight and excite readers who are making and maintaining career decisions for themselves and their families. In addition to its value as a collection of emotionally rich photographs, A Camera, Two Kids, and a Camel will find wide appeal as a unique and meaningful gift for Mother’s Day, birthdays, and many other occasions.

Twilight: Photographs by Gregory Crewdson


Gregory Crewdson - 2002
    A woman floats in her flooded living room, a cow appears to have fallen from the sky onto a front lawn, a gang of teenagers, seemingly hypnotized, pile up household objects for a bonfire. Created as elaborately staged tableaux, this series of images suggests the bizarre yet beautiful surrealities behind deceptively familiar suburban facades.Scheduled to accompany three simultaneous gallery exhibitions in Spring 2002 and a subsequent retrospective at Mass MoCA, this book chronicles the completion of the Twilight series, which Crewdson began in 1998. Including both production stills and the 40 finished images, all in full color, it also features an essay by Rick Moody, a novelist equally renowned for exposing the underbelly of small-town, middle-class America.

The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes


Christopher James - 2001
    This significantly expanded edition is a full-color, lavishly illustrated, comprehensive resource that explores every aspect of alternative process image making. With his highly conversational writing style, James explores the techniques, processes, idiosyncrasies, history, and cultural connections that are such a significant part of the genre. Best of all, James makes it extremely accessible, providing clear instructions and practical workflow advice. The book delves into a vast menu of alternative and traditional options, among them: calotype, salted paper, cyanotype, argyrotype, chrysotype, POP, kallitype, ambrotype/wet collodion, Van Dyke, platinum/palladium, Ziatype, gelatin dry plate emulsions, carbon, gum bichromate, albumen, hand-applied emulsions, paper, alternative imaging systems, and digital negative production for alternative process image making. This book has become the unanimous standard reference text for alternative process photography, one that students love to read and work from. Not only does this definitive work make the most complex ideas easy to understand, it is conversational, comfortable, inspirational, and fun to read- a tremendous resource and a treasure trove of alternative process images. "The first edition was a stunning achievement, and one I felt that was not likely to be superceded. Five short years later Christopher James has created a very new work and a new standard. The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes: 2nd Edition is, by far, the best alternative photographic process book ever!" - Richard Sullivan, Founder and Co-Owner, Bostick & Sullivan "If I could only have one photography book this would be it." -Timothy Whelan, Photographic Books

Problem Solving for Oil Painters: Recognizing What's Gone Wrong and How to Make it Right


Gregg Kreutz - 1986
    IdeaIs There a Good Abstract Idea Underlying the Picture?What Details Could be Eliminated to Strengthen the Composition?Does the Painting “Read”?Could You Finish Any Part of the Painting?ShapesAre the Dominant Shapes as Strong and Simple as Possible?Are the Shapes Too Similar?ValueCould the Value Range be Increased?Could the Number of Values be Reduced?LightIs the Subject Effectively Lit?Is the Light Area Big Enough?Would the Light Look Stronger with a Suggestion of Burnout?Do the Lights Have a Continuous Flow?Is the Light Gradated?ShadowsDo the Shadow Shapes Describe the Form?Are the Shadows Warm Enough?DepthWould the Addition of Foreground Material Deepen the Space?Does the Background Recede Far Enough?Are the Halftones Properly Related to the Background?SolidityIs the underlying Form Being Communicated?Is the Symmetry in Perspective?ColorIs There a Color Strategy?Could a Purer Color Be Used?Do the Whites Have Enough Color in Them?Are the Colors Overblended on the Canvas?Would the Color Look Brighter if it Were Saturated into its Adjacent Area?PaintIs Your Palette Efficiently Organized?Is the Painting Surface Too Absorbent?Are You Using the Palette Knife as Much as You Could?Are You Painting Lines When You Should Be Painting Masses?Are the EdgesDynamic Enough?Is There Enough Variation in the Texture of the Paint?

David Bowie Is...


Victoria Broackes - 2013
    He continues to be cited as a major influence on contemporary artists and designers working across the creative arts.   This book, published to accompany the blockbuster international exhibition launched at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, is the only volume that grants access to Bowie’s personal archive of performance costumes, ephemera, and original design artwork by the artist, bringing it together to present a completely new perspective on his creative work and collaborations. The book traces his career from its beginnings in London, through the breakthroughs of  Space Oddity and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and on to his enormous impact on 20th-century avant-garde music and art. Essays by V&A curators on Bowie’s London, image, and influence on the fashion world are complemented by Howard Goodall on musicology; Camille Paglia on gender and decadence, and Jon Savage on Bowie’s relationship with William Burroughs and his fans. The more than 300 color illustrations include personal and performance photographs, album covers, costumes, original lyric sheets, and much more.   Praise for David Bowie Is: “Perusing David Bowie Is (V&A Publishing, distributed by Abrams), the exhibition’s catalog, with its procession of poses and costumes and weighty essays tracking the cross-references to pop culture and high art, you get a sense of how much hard work it took to be Mr. Bowie.” —The New York Times “The fans of 50 years or those making discoveries in retrospect will be intrigued by the accompanying book David Bowie Is that is far more than a fanzine.”—The New York Times “Lends context and picks away at Bowie with such insight that it’s a rare hagiography with soul.” —Chicago Tribune “Combining top-notch articles on the singer/actor’s life and work with official images and reproductions of his fashion and associated ephemera, the hefty, mango-colored book is nothing short of a treasure trove of all things Bowie; a one-stop smorgasbord for the eyes whose pictorials chronicle the groundbreaking star from Ziggy Stardust to Thin White Duke to Heathen and every personality in between.” —Examiner.com