Written by an international team of experts, this definitive history of photography looks at every step of the field's dynamic evolution, period by period and movement by movement. Each key genre is chronologically presented within its social, economic, and political context, along with close analysis of specially selected works that best exemplify the characteristics of the period. With more than 500 gorgeous examples in black and white and color, the book explores in-depth virtually every aspect of the medium since its first public demonstration in 1839 to the latest innovations: from early portraits and the birth of photojournalism to travel photography and the mapping of the world; from the Pictorialists to the avant-garde; from celebrity and fashion to documentary and landscape. Along the way readers will learn why some photographs are considered iconic, and why the medium as an art form continues to challenge and enthrall us.

    This hip primer proves that whether shooting with a film or digital camera, you don't need to invest in expensive photography equipmentor have an art school degree to take amazing photographs. Whether readers are tired of disappointing snapshots or have just picked up a camera for the first time, Hot Shots teaches with a friendly tone, picture-perfect advice, fun tricks, and easy-to-understand text. Author, lomographer, and Flickr.com guru Kevin Meredith has created a must-have handbook for any aspiring photographer.

    Art as Therapy is packed with 150 examples of outstanding art, with chapters on Love, Nature, Money, and Politics outlining how these works can help with common difficulties. For example, Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter helps us focus on what we want to be loved for; Serra's Fernando Passoa reminds us of the importance of dignity in suffering; and Manet's Bunch of Asparagus teaches us how to preserve and value our long-term partners.De Botton demonstrates how art can guide and console us, and along the way, help us to better understand both art and ourselves.

    Calle's projects have frequently drawn on episodes from her own life, but this book-part visual memoir, part meditation on the resonances of photographs and belongings-is as close as she has come to producing an autobiography, albeit one highly poetical and fragmentary. The first section is composed of various reflections on objects such as a shoe, a postcard, a bathrobe and a bed, or musings on the artist's body, such as "The Love Letter": "For years a love letter languished on my desk. I had never received a love letter, so I paid a public scribe to write one. Eight days later, I received seven beautiful pages of pure poetry penned in ink. It had cost me one hundred francs and the man said: '...as for myself, without moving from my chair I was everywhere with you.'" The second section of the book, "The Husband," is comprised of ten recollections of episodes from Calle's first marriage, by turns funny ("He was an unreliable man. For our first date he showed up one year late."), erotic and sad. A third section gathers various autobiographical tales, and the book closes with three interlinked stories titled "Monique." This new edition includes five new photo-text presentations and is the first English translation.Sophie Calle (born 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist and conceptual artist. Among her many publications are "The Address Book," "Blind," "Take Care of Yourself" and "Double Game."

    He is also drawn to the mystery and unexpected beauty found in abandoned architecture. Here Vanden Brink captures and illuminates in stunning black and white images abandoned structures such as mills, bridges, grain elevators, churches, and storefronts-structures that once were important and useful. With text by historic preservation expert Howard Mansfield, this collection of photos grants permanence to places that may soon vanish forever.

    These objects are our constant companions in life. As such, writes Soetsu Yanagi, they should be made with care and built to last, treated with respect and even affection. They should be natural and simple, sturdy and safe - the aesthetic result of wholeheartedly fulfilling utilitarian needs. They should, in short, be things of beauty.In an age of feeble and ugly machine-made things, these essays call for us to deepen and transform our relationship with the objects that surround us. Inspired by the work of the simple, humble craftsmen Yanagi encountered during his lifelong travels through Japan and Korea, they are an earnest defence of modest, honest, handcrafted things - from traditional teacups to jars to cloth and paper. Objects like these exemplify the enduring appeal of simplicity and function: the beauty of everyday things.

    This exquisite book, now in softcover, is the result of that bold and immensely personal project. Through the accompanying essay, Brandenburg shares his innermost thoughts and passions as he witnesses the cycle of nature near his home in the northwoods of Minnesota.Brandenburg also contributes new photos and an Epilog that illustrates and discusses the devastating summer wind storm that wreaked havoc on the locations photographed for the original project.

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

    Recent films such as Lost in Translation and Memoirs of a Geisha seem to have made everyone an expert on Japan, even if they've never been there. But the only way for a Westerner to get to know the real Japan is to become a part of it. Kate T. Williamson did just that, spending a year experiencing, studying, and reflecting on her adopted home. She brings her keen observations to us in A Year in Japan, a dramatically different look at a delightfully different way of life. Avoiding the usual clichés--Japan's polite society, its unusual fashion trends, its crowded subways--Williamson focuses on some lesser-known aspects of the country and culture. In stunning watercolors and piquant texts, she explains the terms used to order various amounts of tofu, the electric rugs found in many Japanese homes, and how to distinguish a maiko from a geisha. She observes sumo wrestlers in traditional garb as they use ATMs, the wonders of "Santaful World" at a Kyoto department store, and the temple carpenters who spend each Sunday dancing to rockabilly. A Year in Japan is a colorful journey to the beauty, poetry, and quirkiness of modern Japana book not just to look at but to experience.

    Though he’s known for the raw power of his expression, Rollins has shown that the greatest statements can be made with the simplest of acts: to just bear witness, to be present.             In Occupants, Rollins invites us to do the same. The book pairs Rollins’s visceral full-color photographs—taken in Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and elsewhere over the last few years—with writings that not only provide context and magnify the impact of the images but also lift them to the level of political commentary. Simply put, this book is a visual testimony of anger, suffering, and resilience. Occupants will help us realize what is so easy to miss when tragedy and terror become numbing, constant forces—the quieter, stronger forces of healing, solidarity, faith, and even joy.

    For the first time ever, readers will plumb the fascinating depths of this immense archive from the earliest photographs collected in the late 19th century to the cutting-edge work of today. Both iconic and never-before-seen images from virtually every corner of the globe, every species of wildlife, and amazing human achievements in exploration, adventure, science, and more are showcased and placed in historic, artistic, technical, and journalistic context.Following this lavish visual journey, readers will be awed by a behind-the-scenes profile of the entire collection, its size, its richly diverse character, and its special collections, ranging from delicate and beautiful Autochromes to the famous Alexander Graham Bell collection to the amazing stratosphere collection. Fine artwork and imaginative illustrations are also featured.Finally, a listing of photographers whose work is represented stands as a fitting tribute to those without whose tireless and brilliant efforts the Collection would not exist.

    While it embodies the entire system of his teaching, with much technical advice and critical comment for the student, it also contains inspiration for those to whom the happiness to be found through all the arts is important.No other American painter attracted such a large, intensely personal group of followers as Henri, whose death in 1929 brought to an end a life that has been completely devoted to art. He was an inspired artist and teacher who believed that everyone is vitally concerned in the happiness and wisdom to be found through the arts. Many of his paintings have been acquired by museums and private collectors. Among them are the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Wichita Art Museum, and Yale University Art Gallery.

    Although, in the early years of the twentieth century, there were other artists similarly experimenting with the dissolution of the object and the promotion of color and form to means of expression in their own right, Kandinsky was the most logical and consistent in his pursuit of abstract means of expression. He made it his life's work to carry painting up to and over the threshold of abstraction, whereby his artistic activities were always accompanied by theoretical reflections and insights.

    Black-and-white photographs of the world's most majestic ancient trees, from the yews of England to the baobabs of Madagascar.

    They reveal an unexpected rebirth of imagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990. Contrary to the twenties and thirties, no “school” or main trend emerges here. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Their diversity announces the end of Soviet Union. Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, the holes of the widening net, architects revisited all the chronological periods and styles, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba sanatorium), others expressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Tbilisi wedding palace). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base, lays claim to its suprematist influence (Promethee). Then comes the speaking architecture widespread in the last years of the USSR: a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Kiev crematorium), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Kiev institute), a political center watching you like a Big Brother (Kaliningrad House of Soviet). This puzzle of styles testifies to all the ideological dreams of the period, from the obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of privacy and it also outlines the geography of the USSR, showing how local influences made their exotic twists before bringing the country to its end.