Finally, photography and offset printing techniques have caught up with Sternfeld's eye, and this new edition of American Prospects succeeds in presenting Sternfeld's most seminal work as it has always meant to be shown. A specially-commissioned essay by Kerry Brougher, Chief Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, considers the historical context in which Sternfeld was working and the pivotal role that American Prospects has played in the course of contemporary filmmaking and art photography. In American Prospects, a fireman shops for a pumpkin while a house burns in the background; a group of motorcyclists stop at the side of the road to take in a stunning, placid view of Bear Lake, Utah; the high-tech world headquarters of the Manville Corporation sits in picturesque Colorado, obscured by a defiant boulder; a lone basketball net stands in the desert near Lake Powell in Arizona; and a cookie-cutter suburban housing settlement rests squarely amongst rolling hills in Pendleton, Oregon. Sternfeld's photographic tour of America is a search for the truth of a country not just as it exists in a particular era but as it is in its ever-evolving essence. It is a sad poem, but also a funny and generous one, recognizing endurance, poignant beauty, and determination within its sometimes tense, often ironic juxtapositions of man and nature, technology and ruin.

    . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder."In lyrical prose and startlingly revealing photographs, she crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page-turning drama of a great novel but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of her own life.

    The text investigates all aspects of photography - aesthetic, documentary, commercial and technical - while placing it in historical context. It includes three technical sections with detailed information about equipment and processes. This edition also updates important new international work from the 1980s and 1990s.

    Here, Mary Street Alinder--who collaborated with Adams on his memoir and was his assistant in later life--is not reticent about the major emotional episodes in Adams's life, including his marriage and extramarital affairs, and his not-altogether-successful fatherhood. She explores the major artistic influences on his work and gives in-depth profiles of the significant figures in his circle. She also explains the technique and style Adams developed to obtain his unique vision, as well as his uneasiness at becoming a commodity. Ansel Adams: A Biography is an intimate and provocative portrait of the world's most famous photographer.

    Created in collaboration with Jeff Tweedy, Wilco, and Tony Margherita, this primarily visual book explores what Wilco does, how it does it, and where it all comes together. The band narrates the book in the form of long captions accompanying a variety of images: a Korean postcard, a Stratocaster, a backstage practice session, and so on. Along the way, central topics such as instruments, touring, and recording are covered both in general (i.e., what happens, physically, when a guitar string breaks) and specific to Wilco. Just as the band assembles its disparate talents and inspirations to make music, this book coheres in the end to reveal a 40 minute CD of original, unreleased songs. Just as Wilco experiments with music by turning convention on its head, this book is an utterly new take on the old genre of the rock 'n' roll book. The Wilco Book will look and read like a Wilco record sounds; it's a translation of the band's sensibility from sound into print.

    Today, it is America's densest urban environment and most vital city, boasting one of the most recognizable skylines in the world.• New York Then and Now places today's post 9/11 cityscape within the context of history, reflecting the changing and enduring aspects of life in the Big Apple.• Remarkable past-and-present photographs showcase Manhattan's development and the amazing architecture that defines the city. See side-by-side images of the lavish Waldorf-Astoria, Radio City Music Hall, Union Square, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Penn Station, Empire State Building, and the Chrysler Building.• The Twin Towers, part of the World Trade Center, redefined the Manhattan skyline when they opened in 1976. After the tragedies of 9/11, the skyline is defined as much by their absence.• New York continues to be one of the most popular destinations in the world-everyone who has experienced the energy and magic of the Big Apple will want this compact edition of New York Then and Now. It's the perfect souvenir or gift!

    I want there to be a combination of the past juxtaposed with the modern. I use nature to symbolize the search, saving a tree, watering the earth. In this fabricated world, strange clouds of smog float by; there are holes in the sky. These mythic images mirror our world, where nature is domesticated, controlled, and destroyed. Through my work I explore technology and a poetry of existence. These can be very heavy, overly didactic issues to convey in art, so I choose to portray them through a more theatrically absurd approach.--Robert ParkeHarrison

    Bringing together the rarest art and artifacts from three decades of TMNT comics, TV shows, and films, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Visual History leaves no shell unturned!

    From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients. The blueprint for these hospitals was set by Pennsylvania hospital superintendent Thomas Story Kirkbride: a central administration building flanked symmetrically by pavilions and surrounded by lavish grounds with pastoral vistas. Kirkbride and others believed that well-designed buildings and grounds, a peaceful environment, a regimen of fresh air, and places for work, exercise, and cultural activities would heal mental illness. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these beautiful, massive buildings--and the patients who lived in them--neglected and abandoned. Architect and photographer Christopher Payne spent six years documenting the decay of state mental hospitals like these, visiting seventy institutions in thirty states. Through his lens we see splendid, palatial exteriors (some designed by such prominent architects as H. H. Richardson and Samuel Sloan) and crumbling interiors--chairs stacked against walls with peeling paint in a grand hallway; brightly colored toothbrushes still hanging on a rack; stacks of suitcases, never packed for the trip home. Accompanying Payne's striking and powerful photographs is an essay by Oliver Sacks (who described his own experience working at a state mental hospital in his book Awakenings). Sacks pays tribute to Payne's photographs and to the lives once lived in these places, "where one could be both mad and safe."

    Shea Serrano deftly pays homage to the most important song of each year. Serrano also examines the most important moments that surround the history and culture of rap music—from artists’ backgrounds to issues of race, the rise of hip-hop, and the struggles among its major players—both personal and professional. Covering East Coast and West Coast, famous rapper feuds, chart toppers, and show stoppers, The Rap Year Book is an in-depth look at the most influential genre of music to come out of the last generation.    Complete with infographics, lyric maps, hilarious and informative footnotes, portraits of the artists, and short essays by other prominent music writers, The Rap Year Book is both a narrative and illustrated guide to the most iconic and influential rap songs ever created.

    Part personal narrative, part documentary, part travelogue, part chapbook, and all Kalman, these brilliant, whimsical paintings, ideas, and images - which initially appear random - ultimately form an intricately interconnected worldview, an idiosyncratic inner monologue.

    Rather than nostalgia or folly, the aim is enlightenment, wonder and the pleasure of weirdness." --The Guardian    Based on the widely popular blog that started as a side project in a basement, Retronaut reveals strange yet enlightening photographs from the past that somehow seem to depict another version of now. Martha Stewart as a fashion model, Kim Jong Il in a bumper car, and Ronald Reagan modeling for a sculpture class—this quirky page-turner enriched with author Chris Wild’s unique wit and oddball knowledge is a must-have for collectors of the unusual.    Wild, a former museum archivist, has revolutionized the way we think of dusty photos—turning them into a sensation that has taken the Internet by surprise. He has selected over 300 of the best photographs from the site's most visited eras and themes, mashing up Victoriana with vintage advertising from the ’60s and ’70s and unearthing rare snapshots of evil dictators taking vacations. Page by page, this unconventional, thought-provoking photographic time machine will change what you think you know about history.

    It is simultaneously a travelogue and visual journey. Martijn Doolaard traded the convenience of a car and the distractions of daily life for a cross-continental cycling journey: a biped adventure that would take him from Amsterdam to Singapore. Leaving behind repetitive routines, One Year on a Bike indulges in slow travel, the subtlety of a gradually changing landscape, and the lessons learned through traveling. Venturing through Eastern European fields of yellow rapeseed to the intimate hosting culture and community in Iran, One Year on a Bike is a vivid chronicle of what can happen when the norm is pointedly replaced by exceptional self-discoveries and beautiful scenery. Doolaard shares the gear and knowledge that made his trip possible alongside the passionate curiosities that served as his impetus.

    The photographs are accompanied by a selection of Curtis's texts.

    But not least it is the home and constant muse of a relatively young art: photography. Since the earliest days of the daguerreotype right up to our time, renowned photographers such as Joseph Nicéphore Niepce, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, and Jeanloup Sieff have lived and worked in the city of lights. Over the years a love affair developed between Paris and photography, giving rise to a remarkable record of the metropolis and a telling history of a new art form. This volume takes the reader on numerous walks, camera in hand, through the streets of Paris. Atmospheric black-and-white photos, shot by great photographers over two centuries, reveal the dramatic and the tranquil, the historic and the everyday—in the capitals parks and gardens, boulevards and backstreets, passages and arcades, bistros and nightclubs.