Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery


David Attenborough - 2007
    The Collection s exquisite natural history artworks in Amazing Rare Things is supplemented by an introduction and commentary from Sir David Attenborough. This exploration of the natural world from the late fifteenth century to the early eighteenth century represents a period when European knowledge of the world was transformed by voyages of discovery to the farthest reaches of Africa, Asia, America, and beyond. Included are works by Leonardo da Vinci and other foremost artists and collectors of their time who embraced the natural riches of their ever-expanding world and whose legacies help us better understand today our continuing relationship with the natural world.

Jean Haines' Atmospheric Watercolours: Painting with Freedom, Expression and Style


Jean Haines - 2012
    Jean Haines’ enthusiasm for watercolours burst through every page of this inspirational book that will guide you, step by step, to creating beautiful and unique paintings of your own, whatever your ability.

The Oldest Living Things in the World


Rachel A. Sussman - 2014
    Over the past decade, artist Rachel Sussman has researched, worked with biologists, and traveled the world to photograph continuously living organisms that are 2,000 years old and older. Spanning from Antarctica to Greenland, the Mojave Desert to the Australian Outback, the result is a stunning and unique visual collection of ancient organisms unlike anything that has been created in the arts or sciences before, insightfully and accessibly narrated by Sussman along the way. Her work is both timeless and timely, and spans disciplines, continents, and millennia. It is underscored by an innate environmentalism and driven by Sussman’s relentless curiosity. She begins at “year zero,” and looks back from there, photographing the past in the present.  These ancient individuals live on every continent and range from Greenlandic lichens that grow only one centimeter a century, to unique desert shrubs in Africa and South America, a predatory fungus in Oregon, Caribbean brain coral, to an 80,000-year-old colony of aspen in Utah. Sussman journeyed to Antarctica to photograph 5,500-year-old moss; Australia for stromatolites, primeval organisms tied to the oxygenation of the planet and the beginnings of life on Earth; and to Tasmania to capture a 43,600-year-old self-propagating shrub that’s the last individual of its kind. Her portraits reveal the living history of our planet—and what we stand to lose in the future. These ancient survivors have weathered millennia in some of the world’s most extreme environments, yet climate change and human encroachment have put many of them in danger. Two of her subjects have already met with untimely deaths by human hands. Alongside the photographs, Sussman relays fascinating – and sometimes harrowing – tales of her global adventures tracking down her subjects and shares insights from the scientists who research them. The oldest living things in the world are a record and celebration of the past, a call to action in the present, and a barometer of our future.

Vogue and The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute: Parties, Exhibitions, People


Hamish Bowles - 2014
    With subjects that both reflect the zeitgeist and contribute to its creation, each exhibi­tion—from 2005’s Chanel, to 2011’s Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty and 2013’s Punk—creates a provocative and engaging narrative attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors. The show’s opening-night gala, produced in collaboration with Vogue magazine and attended by the likes of Beyoncé, George Clooney, and Hillary Clinton, is regularly referred to as the Party of the Year.Covering the Costume Institute’s history and highlighting exhibitions of the 21st century curated by Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton, this book offers insider access of the first order. Anchored by photo­graphs from the exhibitions themselves in tandem with the Vogue fashion shoots they inspired, it also includes images of exhibited objects and party photos from the galas. Drawn from the extensive Vogue archives, the featured stories showcase the photographs of icons such as Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, Steven Meisel, and Craig McDean; the vision of legendary Vogue editors like Grace Coddington and Tonne Goodman; and the knowledge and wit of writers such as Hamish Bowles and Jonathan Van Meter.

Billy Showell's Botanical Painting in Watercolour


Billy Showell - 2016
    In this her fourth book she reveals in depth the techniques she uses to produce her stunning works of art. Every aspect of botanical painting is covered, including the materials and tools you need, preserving your specimens, drawing, painting, color mixing and composition. Richly illustrated throughout with step-by-step demonstrations and examples of Billy’s work, this book is a visual feast as well as an invaluable source of expert guidance and inspiration. With a diverse range of subjects that include flowers, foliage, fruit and vegetables, Billy provides an insight into her painting techniques that artists of all abilities will find both informative and inspirational.

The Book of Clouds


John A. Day - 2002
    Using a series of his awe-inspiring images, photographer and scientist John Day--who has a Ph.D. in cloud physics and is known round the world as "The Cloudman"--introduces us to earth's great skyscape. His spectacular portfolio of pictures captures a variety of cloud forms and shapes, ranging from cottony-soft cumulus clouds to frightening, whirling funnels, as well as a number of optical effects, such as coronas and halos, seen in the heavens above. A magnificent cloud chart; an explanation of clouds formation; hints on forecasting, observing, and photographing clouds; and his "Ten Reasons to Look Up" teach us to use our inner eye to really perceive those familiar fleeting forms.

Portraits


Steve McCurry - 1999
    In 1985, he photographed an Afghan girl for the National Geographic. The intensity of the subject's eyes and her compelling gaze made this one of the most widely and consistently celebrated portraits in the history of contemporary photography.This accompanies the other remarkable faces he has encountered whilst travelling throughout the world, collected together in an engaging and strangely moving series of unique street portraits: unposed, unstylized images of people that reveal the true universality of the depths of human emotion.Critically acclaimed and recognized internationally for his classic reportage, over the last twenty years he has worked on numerous assignments, travelling extensively throughout the Middle and Far East.McCurry has won first prize in the World Press Awards, and was named Magazine Photographer of the Year in 1984. He is most famous for his evocative color photography, which has captured stories of human experience that, in the finest documentary tradition, transcend boundaries of language and culture.

Cabin Porn: Inspiration for Your Quiet Place Somewhere


Zach Klein - 2015
    As the collection grew, the site attracted a following, which is now a huge and obsessive audience.The site features photos of the most remarkable handmade homes in the backcountry of America and all over the world. It has had over 10 million unique visitors, with 350,000 followers on Tumblr. Now Zach Klein, the creator of the site (and a co-founder of Vimeo) goes further into the most alluring images from the site and new getaways, including more interior photography and how-to advice for setting up a quiet place somewhere. With their idyllic settings, unique architecture and cozy interiors, the Cabin Porn photographs, are an invitation to slow down, take a deep breath, and feel the beauty and serenity that nature and simple construction can create.

Photographers on Photography: How the Masters See, Think, and Shoot (History of Photography, Pocket Guide, Art History)


Henry Carroll - 2018
    Through a carefully curated selection of quotes and images, this book reveals what matters most to the masters of photography. With accompanying text by Henry Carroll, author of the internationally bestselling Read This If You Want To Take Great Photographs series, you’ll learn what photography actually means to the giants of the genres and how they developed their distinctive visual styles.

John James Audubon


Richard Rhodes - 2004
    He had a talent for drawing and an interest in birds, and he would spend the next thirty-five years traveling to the remotest regions of his new country–often alone and on foot–to render his avian subjects on paper. The works of art he created gave the world its idea of America. They gave America its idea of itself. Here Richard Rhodes vividly depicts Audubon’s life and career: his epic wanderings; his quest to portray birds in a lifelike way; his long, anguished separations from his adored wife; his ambivalent witness to the vanishing of the wilderness. John James Audubon: The Making of an American is a magnificent achievement.

Gregory Heisler: 50 Portraits: Stories and Techniques from a Photographer's Photographer


Gregory Heisler - 2013
    From his famously controversial portrait of President George H.W. Bush (which led to the revocation of Heisler’s White House clearance) to his evocative post-9/11 Time magazine cover of Rudolph Giuliani, to stunning portraits of Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Hillary Clinton, Michael Phelps, Muhammad Ali, and many more, Heisler reveals the creative and technical processes that led to each frame. For Heisler’s fans and all lovers of photography, Gregory Heisler: 50 Portraits offers not only a gorgeous collection of both black-and-white and color portraits, but an engrossing look at the rarely seen art of a master photographer at work. With a foreword by New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis


Kim Todd - 2007
    An artist turned naturalist known for her botanical illustrations, she was born just sixteen years after Galileo proclaimed that the earth orbited the sun. But at the age of fifty she sailed from Europe to the New World on a solo scientific expedition to study insect metamorphosis—an unheard-of journey for any naturalist at that time, much less a woman. When she returned she produced a book that secured her reputation, only to have it savaged in the nineteenth century by scientists who disdained the work of “amateurs.” Exquisitely written and illustrated, Chrysalis takes us from golden-age Amsterdam to the Surinam tropics to modern laboratories where Merian’s insights fuel a new branch of biology. Kim Todd brings to life a seventeenth-century woman whose boldness and vision would still be exceptional today.

The North American Indian: The Complete Portfolios


Edward S. Curtis - 1972
    The photographs are accompanied by a selection of Curtis's texts.

The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss


Dr. Seuss - 1995
    Dr. Seuss) in a whole new light. Depicting outlandish creatures in otherworldly settings, the paintings use a dazzling rainbow of hues not seen in the primary-color palette of his books for children, and exhibit a sophisticated and often quite unrestrained side of the artist. 65 color illustrations.

Vitamin P₂: New Perspectives in Painting


Barry Schwabsky - 2011
    Since its publication, a whole new generation of painters has emerged, some inspired by the artists who appeared in that book, others taking cues from new sources.? Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting introduces this new wave of painters to the world.The vast medium of painting continues to be a central pillar of artistic practice, and Vitamin P2 presents the outstanding artists who are currently engaging with and pushing the boundaries of the medium. Over 80 international critics, artists and curators have nominated the 115 artists who have made a fresh, unique or innovative contribution to recent painting. All of the artists in Vitamin P2 have recently emerged onto the international scene, and none appeared in the first Vitamin P.An introduction by Barry Schwabsky, who also wrote the introduction for Vitamin P, provides a broad overview of recent developments in the medium while also looking towards its future.