The Art of Boudoir Photography: How to Create Stunning Photographs of Women


Christa Meola - 2012
    This beautifully illustrated guide will not only enhance your understanding of how to bring out the best in every woman, but also sharpen your photography skills in order to capture her successfully. Whether shooting with a pro model, plain-Jane, curvy gal, or soccer mom, Christa gets to know her subject intimately in order to help her look and feel beautiful, sexy, and confident. Christa shares her personal tips and techniques throughout the entire process, creating an amazing experience that produces photographs packed with emotion. She covers every step in creating a successful boudoir shoot, including how to prepare a subject who has never posed before, coaching sensual movement, beautiful lighting setups with minimal equipment, how to flatter every figure, and more. With "Before and After" profiles and "Do and Don't" scenarios throughout, essential lists, practical tips for male photographers, metadata for every shot, as well as post-processing techniques in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, this book offers clear and inspiring instruction. The Art of Boudoir Photography is about transformation. It's about cultivating sex appeal and enthusiastic positivity. It's that jolt of confidence and bolt of sexual prowess to tease out of your subject. It's for each woman to recognize her individual beauty, provide an opportunity for her to break through her comfort zone, honor her body, and celebrate femininity. For photographers with varying levels of experience, this book is for you-to appreciate and embrace boudoir photography, enhance your understanding of what it is, what it can do for women, and most importantly, how to have fun with it!

The New Garconne: How to Be a Modern Gentlewoman


Navaz Batliwalla - 2016
    It espouses a grown-up style and attitude with a masculine-feminine aesthetic, where culture, history, beauty, intelligence, feminism, quality, and taste are celebrated. Women who embody the look include Katharine Hepburn, Andree Putman, Lauren Hutton, Janelle Monae, Phoebe Philo, Ines de la Fressange, Tilda Swinton, Stella Tennant, and Jenna Lyons.This visually inspiring book explores the look, history, and essence of gentlewoman style. It features profiles of women who typify the style, alongside beautifully photographed and curated imagery and how-to-get-the-look information.

Sculpting a Galaxy: Inside the Star Wars Model Shop


Lorne Peterson - 2006
    In each of these cases, and literally hundreds more, the model-making wizards of Industrial Light & Magic were instrumental in creating a universe full of glorious, heart-pounding illusions.In Sculpting a Galaxy: Inside the Star Wars Model Shop, Lorne Peterson, one of the founding members of ILM, takes the reader on a journey through thirty years of incredible adventures, telling never-before-published stories, explaining how classic scenes were created, and how beloved models were - often from the most unexpected of parts and ingredients. Paint buckets, model car parts, and walnut shells play important roles, alongside high-tech lasers and computer graphics, in creating the familiar yet fantastic components of a galaxy far, far away.Lavishly illustrated with more than 300 full-color photographs from the Lucasfilm Archives, this book provides an unparalleled look behind the scenes of a place that really has created magic. Lorne Peterson's warm, evocative voice and dedication to his craft inform every page, making this not just a stunning visual piece, but an epic history in its own right.

Marie Antoinette


Sofia Coppola - 2006
    Shot entirely in France, much on location at the Palace of Versailles, the film is visually stunning, bringing together a cast that includes Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn, and Marianne Faithful, and the extraordinary costume designs of Oscar-winner Milena Canonero (Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange). A moving story of naivety and responsibility, reputation and misunderstanding, Marie Antoinette is a film that Sofia Coppola has wanted to make for years. In a book that is at once the personal chronicle of a major work and a beautiful tribute to the potential of film, featuring elements of the director's own screenplay as well as captivating stills, the director's personal photos, and original designs for costumes and sets, Marie Antoinette is an essential companion for any lover of modern cinema.

Diane Arbus: Revelations


Diane Arbus - 2003
    Her bold subject matter and photographic approach have established her preeminence in the world of the visual arts. Her gift for rendering strange those things we consider most familiar, and uncovering the familiar within the exotic, enlarges our understanding of ourselves. Diane Arbus Revelations affords the first opportunity to explore the origins, scope, and aspirations of what is a wholly original force in photography. Arbus’s frank treatment of her subjects and her faith in the intrinsic power of the medium have produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in its steadfast celebration of things as they are. Presenting many of her lesser-known or previously unpublished photographs in the context of the iconic images reveals a subtle yet persistent view of the world. The book reproduces two hundred full-page duotones of Diane Arbus photographs spanning her entire career, many of them never before seen. It also includes an essay, “The Question of Belief,” by Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and “In the Darkroom,” a discussion of Arbus’s printing techniques by Neil Selkirk, the only person authorized to print her photographs since her death. A 104-page Chronology by Elisabeth Sussman, guest curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art show, and Doon Arbus, the artist’s eldest daughter, illustrated by more than three- hundred additional images and composed mainly of previously unpublished excerpts from the artist’s letters, notebooks, and other writings, amounts to a kind of autobiography. An Afterword by Doon Arbus precedes biographical entries on the photographer’s friends and colleagues by Jeff L. Rosenheim, associate curator of photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These texts help illuminate the meaning of Diane Arbus’s controversial and astonishing vision.

Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World's Most Coveted Handbag


Michael Tonello - 2008
    With a fabled waiting list of more than two years to purchase one, the average fashionista has a better chance of climbing Mount Everest in Prada pumps than of possessing this coveted carryall. Unless, of course, she happens to know Michael Tonello. . . . With down-to-earth wit, Michael Tonello chronicles the unusual ventures that took him to nearly every continent� and from eBay to Paris auction houses and into the lives of celebrities and poseurs alike� on the road to becoming a successful entrepreneur and Robin Hood to thousands of desperate rich women.

Niagara


Alec Soth - 2006
    And as with his photographs of the Mississippi, these images are less about natural wonder than human desire. "I went to Niagara for the same reason as the honeymooners and suicide jumpers," says Soth, "the relentless thunder of the Falls just calls for big passion." The subject may be hot, but the pictures are quiet, the rigorously composed and richly detailed products of a large-format 8x10 camera. Working over the course of two years on both the American and Canadian sides of the Falls, Soth edited the results of his labors down to a tight and surprising album. He depicts newlyweds and naked lovers, motel parking lots, pawnshop wedding rings and love letters from the subjects he photographed. We read about teenage crushes, workplace affairs, heartbreak and suicide. Oscar Wilde wrote, "The sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life." Niagara brings viewers both the passion and the disappointment--a remarkable portrayal of modern love and its aftermath.

John Lennon: The New York Years


Bob Gruen - 2005
    Presents a summary of the innovative musician's life during his nine years in New York City, together with a collection of 150 full-color photographs and reminiscences on the stories behind the photographs.

Kardashian Konfidential


Kim Kardashian West - 2011
    yet! Come on in to our very first book and find out the real scoop about what it's like to be the Kardashian sisters. We love the red carpet, clothes, clubs and big events and of course, glamming it up! But what we love most is being sisters: We're Kardashians first and forever, and we couldn't wait to write everything down and show you lots of cool stuff in this big scrapbook just for you. We're going to let you in on lots of secrets, like:--What it's really like to have a Momager--The beauty tip that we think is an absolute MUST!--The Peaks and Pits of our lives...so far--What we think about men, and the absolute most important man in our lives--Our private language: Bible!--How to do what you love the way we do!--What you don't know about Kim's weddingEach of us pulled out our personal treasures for "Kardashian Konfidential" funny and cute and even yummy stuff from our scrapbooks, our photo albums, letters, recipe cards and birthday boxes. Plus big beautiful photos taken just for this book. We wanted to make "Kardashian Konfidential" real and special. We think you'll have as much fun reading it as we did putting it together. Totes magotes!"

The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright


Jean Nathan - 2004
    With its pink-and-white-checked cover and photographs featuring a wide-eyed doll, it captured the imaginations of young girls and made the author, Dare Wright, a household name. Close to forty years after its publication, the book was out of print but not forgotten. When the cover image inexplicably came to journalist Jean Nathan one afternoon, she went in search of the book--and ultimately its author. Nathan found Dare Wright living out her last days in a decrepit public hospital in Queens, New York. Over the next five years, Nathan pieced together Dare Wright's bizarre life of glamour and painful isolation to create this mesmerizing biography of a woman who struggled to escape the imprisonment of her childhood through her art.

The Public Library: A Photographic Essay


Robert Dawson - 2014
    Today, the more than 17,000 libraries in America also function as de facto community centers offering free access to the internet, job-hunting assistance, or a warm place to take shelter. And yet, across the country, cities large and small are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operation. Over the last eighteen years, photographer Robert Dawson has crisscrossed the country documenting hundreds of these endangered institutions. The Public Library presents a wide selection of Dawson's photographs— from the majestic reading room at the New York Public Library to Allensworth, California's one-room Tulare County Free Library built by former slaves. Accompanying Dawson's revealing photographs are essays, letters, and poetry by some of America's most celebrated writers. A foreword by Bill Moyers and an afterword by Ann Patchett bookend this important survey of a treasured American institution.

The Americans


Robert Frank - 1958
    There is no question that Robert Frank's The Americans is the most famous and influential photography book ever published. It was 1959 when the book first came out: a series of deceptively simple photographs that Frank took on a trip through America in '55 and '56, pictures of normal people, everyday scenes: lunch counters, bus depots, cars, and the stangely familiar faces of people we don't quite know but have seen somewhere. They are pictures that saw the "American way of life" as we hadn't yet quite been able to see it ourselves, photographs that condensed the entire life of a nation in classic images that still speak to us today, forty years and several generations later.

Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women


Michael Gross - 1995
    It's a tale of beautiful women empowered and subjugated, of vast sums of money, of sex and drugs, obsession, and tragic death. At its heart is the most unholy combination in commerce: beautiful, young women and rich, lascivious men.Investigative journalist Michael Gross has interviewed modeling's pioneers, survivors, and hangers-on, telling the story of the greats: Lisa Fonssagrives; Anita Colby; Candy Jones; Dorian Leigh and her sister Suzy Parker; Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy; Veruschka and Lauren Hutton; Janice Dickinson and Patti Hansen; and the supermodel Trinity: Christy, Naomi, and Linda.Taking us into the private studios and hidden villas where models play and are preyed upon, Gross tears down modeling's carefully constructed facade to reveal untold truths of the ugly trade in pretty women.

The Beatles Anthology


The Beatles - 2000
    Together with Yoko Ono Lennon, they have also made available the full transcripts (including all the outtakes) of the television and video series The Beatles Anthology. Through painstaking compilation of sources worldwide, John Lennon's words are equally represented in this remarkable volume. Furthermore, The Beatles have opened their personal and management archives specifically for this project, allowing the unprecedented release of photographs which they took along their ride to fame, as well as fascinating documents and memorabilia from their homes and offices. What a book The Beatles Anthology is! Each page is brimming with personal stories and rare vintage images. Snapshots from their family collections take us back to the days when John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey were just boys growing up in Liverpool. They talk in turn about those early years and how they came to join the band that would make them known around the world as John, Paul, George and Ringo. Then, weaving back and forth, they tell the astonishing story of life as The Beatles: the first rough gigs, the phenomenon of their rise to fame, the musical and social change of their heyday, all the way through to their breakup. From the time Ringo tried to take this drum kit home on the bus to their much anticipated audience with Elvis, from the making of the Sgt. Pepper album to their last photo session together at John's house, The Beatles Anthology is a once-in-a-lifetime collection of The Beatles' own memories.Interwoven with these are the recollections of such associates as road manager Neil Aspinall, producer George Martin and spokesman Derek Taylor. And included in the vast array of photographs are materials from both Apple and EMI, who also opened their archives for this project. This, indeed, is the inside story, providing a wealth of previously unpublished material in both word and image.Created with their full cooperation, The Beatles Anthology is, in effect, The Beatles' autobiography. Like their music has been a part of so many of our lives, it's warm, frank, funny, poignant and bold. At last, here is The Beatles' own story.

Vivienne Westwood


Vivienne Westwood - 2014
    Fashion designer, activist, co-creator of punk, global brand and grandmother; a true living legend. Her career has successfully spanned five decades and her work has influenced millions of people across the world.For the first and only time, Vivienne Westwood has written a personal memoir, collaborating with award-winning biographer Ian Kelly, to describe the events, people and ideas that have shaped her extraordinary life. Told in all its glamour and glory, and with her unique voice, unexpected perspective and passionate honesty, this is her story.