Think again. Tokyo: A Certain Style, the mini-sized decor book with a difference, shows how, for those living in one of the worlds most expensive and densely packed metropolises, closet-sized apartments stacked to the ceiling with gadgetry and CDs are the norm. Photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki rode his scooter all over Tokyo snapping shots of how urban Japanese really live. Hundreds of photographs reveal the real Tokyo style: microapartments, mini and modular everything, rooms filled to the rafters with electronics, piles of books and clothes, clans of remote controls, collections of sundry objects all crammed into a space where every inch counts. Tsuzuki introduces each tiny crash pad with a brief text about who lives there, from artists and students to professionals and couples with children. His captions to the hundreds of photographs capture the spirit and ingenuity required to live in such small quarters. This fascinating, voyeuristic look at modern life comes in a chunky, pocket-sized format-the perfect coffee table book for people with really small apartments.

    In Japan, one goes there to cleanse the soul. Bathing in Japan is about much more than cleanliness: it is about family and community. It is about being alone and contemplative, time to watch the moon rise above the garden.Along with sixty full-color illustrations of the light and airy baths themselves, The Japanese Bath, delves into the aesthetic of bathing Japanese style and the innate beauty of the steps surrounding the process. The authors explain how to create a Japanese bath in your own home. A Zen meditation, the Japanese bath, indeed, cleanses the soul, and one emerges refreshed, renewed, and serene.

    His influential work spans many practices over a 23-year period, from music packaging to installation work to printmaking. Here, he reveals his personal notebooks, photographs, sketches, and abandoned routes to iconic Radiohead artworks. Arranged chronologically, each chapter is dedicated to a major work—whether an album cover, promotional piece, or a personal project—and is presented as a step-by-step working case study. Featuring commentary by Thom Yorke and never-before-seen archival material, this is the first deep dive into Donwood’s creative practice and the artistic freedom afforded to him by working for a major music act. It is a must-have for fans of the band and anyone interested in graphic design and popular culture.

    Photography is not just a mechanical process; it requires learning how to see. As you develop your ability to look and see, you will open, more and more, to the natural inspiration of your surroundings. Filled with practical exercises, photographic assignments, and techniques for working with texture, light, and color, this book offers a system of training that draws on both Buddhist mindfulness practice and the insights of master photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

    Keegan Allen is a Hollywood native, growing up in a world that millions visit and many more imagine. With an avid fan base that follows him on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and a busy career that includes seven years on the hit series Pretty Little Liars as well as films directed by James Franco and Gia Coppola, Allen also is a lifelong photographer whose first book, life.love.beauty, was a national bestseller. Now Keegan turns his eye and camera to the place he knows best. Hollywood captures the beauty and glamour of the place itself--with unusual angles of the famous sign, the glint of sidewalk stars stamped into the entrance of the Grauman's TCL Chinese Theater in the rain, the Chateau Marmont at twilight, secret local hideaways, red carpets and more--but also the darker side of dreams unrealized in the faces, hands, eyes, and footsteps of those who live on the fringe of celebrity. His photos are enhanced by revealing, intimate captions, lyrics, and other writing, as well as hand-drawn illustrations, exciting parodies, and iconic emulations. A book that will engage and surprise Keegan's legions of fans and followers, Hollywood is an essential gift for anyone who has visited or imagined this storied place.

    Used to confirm identity, to sell products, to reshape the real, to visualize the news, to record and communicate the personal moment, and as an art form in its own right, photography is now one of the most accessible and pervasive of media. "Photography: The Key Concepts" provides an ideal guide to the place of photography in our society and to the extraordinary range of photographic genres. Outlining the history of photography and explaining the body of theory which has built up around its use, the book guides the reader through the genres of documentary, portraiture, landscape, still life, art and global photography. Illustrated with a range of historical and contemporary images and case material, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in photography.

    The result is a rare book of criticism, alive to the pleasure and mysteries of true exploration.

    Editor Will Steacy asked each photographer to abandon the conventional tools needed to make a photograph-camera, lens, film-and instead make a photograph using words, to capture the image (and its attendant memories) that never made it through the lens. In each essay, the photograph has been stripped down to its barest and most primitive form: the idea behind it. This collection provides a unique and original interpretation of the experience of photographing, and allows the reader into a world rarely seen: the image making process itself. Photographs Not Taken features contributions by: Peter Van Agtmael, Dave Anderson, Timothy Archibald, Roger Ballen, Thomas Bangsted, Juliana Beasley, Nina Berman, Elinor Carucci, Kelli Connell, Paul D’Amato, Tim Davis, KayLynn Deveney, Doug Dubois, Rian Dundon, Amy Elkins, Jim Goldberg, Emmet Gowin, Gregory Halpern, Tim Hetherington, Todd Hido, Rob Hornstra, Eirik Johnson, Chris Jordan, Nadav Kander, Ed Kashi, Misty Keasler, Lisa Kereszi, Erika Larsen, Shane Lavalette, Deana Lawson, Joshua Lutz, David Maisel, Mary Ellen Mark, Laura McPhee, Michael Meads, Andrew Moore, Richard Mosse, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Laurel Nakadate, Ed Panar, Christian Patterson, Andrew Phelps, Sylvia Plachy, Mark Power, Peter Riesett, Simon Roberts, Joseph Rodriguez, Stefan Ruiz, Matt Salacuse, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Aaron Schuman, Jamel Shabazz, Alec Soth, Amy Stein, and others.

    Arranged thematically from industrial to military sites, from ghosts towns to recreational sites, the book explains through extended captions the story of how each place came to be abandoned - natural or chemical disaster, war, economic collapse, changing attitudes and tastes. Often it's because the world has moved on and these places are no longer of use or interest in the march of progress. Throughout, though, emerges a picture not of what has been lost, but of what remains. Left to the elements but also ignored by humanity, the photographs of these ghost towns, crumbling structures and vessels illuminate worlds for us that we thought were lost. Through these, we gain a glimpse into the past. With more than 150 outstanding colour photographs exploring hauntingly beautiful places over one or two spreads, Abandoned Places is an excellent pictorial examination of worlds that we've left behind.

    It covers everything from "seeing" the finished photo in advance, to lens choices. It is illustrated with many of Ansel Adams most famous images.

    Here too are the famous convention halls, parks, and racetracks of a great American city whose architectural treasures have been, and continue to be, recklessly squandered.Rare photographs and prints, many of them published here for the first time, document the transformative architectural achievements of such giants as Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, John Wellburn Root, Daniel Burnham, William Holabird, and Frank Lloyd Wright. But this remarkable book is much more than a portfolio of now-vanished buildings; within its pages are evocative sketches of scores of Chicago personalities, from the world-famous (Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Dreiser, Clarence Darrow, Ben Hecht, Jane Addams, Cyrus McCormick, George Pullman, and Gustavus Swift, to name just a few) to the locally notorious.

    Starting with the earliest records of domestic cats 9,000 years ago in Africa and the Mediterranean and moving to the present, Lewis Blackwell weaves stories of one of humankind’s closest companions with a collection of more than 100 unforgettable images.Praise for The Life and Love of Cats: “Fabulous felines.” —People“As good as Blackwell's text is (and it's quite good—an approachable, informative, and appreciative study of cats of all breeds), the true appeal of the book is the stunning images.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Filled with gorgeous color photos of domestic and wild felines: Russian blues, Siamese, lions, leopards, Bengal tigers and more.” —BookPage“A global tour of one of the world’s most popular animals.” —The Charlotte Observer “This is a gorgeous coffee table book” —dooce

    Chicago's change and growth over the last century is captured in this photographic history. Modern color photos sit side by side with black and white archival photographs. Every important building, avenue, neighborhood, and point of interest is documented. It covers all of Chicago's landmarks from Navy Pier to the Stockyards and from the Southside all the way up the Magnificent Mile. Take in a game at Wrigley Field, then take it all in from the top of the Sear's Tower. The Water Tower and all the other architectural features that make Chicago great are also included.

    The subject is presented, not as a foreign language, but as a native one that the student knows but cannot yet read.Responding to the need she so clearly perceives, Ms. Dondis, a designer and teacher of broad experience, has provided a beginning text for art and design students and a basic text for all other students; those who do not intend to become artists or designers but who need to acquire the essential skills of understanding visual communication at a time when so much information is being studied and transmitted in non-verbal modes, especially through photography and film. Understanding through seeing only seems to be an obviously intuitive process. Actually, developing the visual sense is something like learning a language, with its own special alphabet, lexicon, and syntax. People find it necessary to be verbally literate whether they are writers: or not; they should find it equally necessary to be visually literate, artists or not. This primer is designed to teach students the interconnected arts of visual communication. The subject is presented, not as a foreign language, but as a native one that the student knows but cannot yet read. The analogy provides a useful teaching method, in part because it is not overworked or too rigorously applied. This method of learning to see and read visual data has already been proved in practice, in settings ranging from Harlem to suburbia. Appropriately, the book makes some of its most telling points through visual means. Numerous illustrated examples are employed to clarify the basic elements of design (teach an alphabet), to show how they are used in simple syntactic combinations (See Jane run.), and finally, to present the meaningful synthesis of visual information that is a finished work of art (the apprehension of poetry...).

    For more than twenty years and from Blackwood, Wales to Tokyo, Japan, Nicky Wire has kept a personal visual history of the band in their various stages from Generation Terrorists through Holy Bible and right up to last year's remarkable album, Postcards from a Young Man. Edited down from over 1,000 of Wire's personal polaroids and with accompanying text by the man himself, Death of The Polaroid promises to be a rich, visual biography of one of the most loved and iconoclastic British bands of the past two decades.