Book picks similar to
Photographs by Robert Capa


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Brassai: Paris By Night


Brassaï - 1987
    First published in French in 1932, this new edition brings one of Brassa's finest works back into print. The back alleys, metro stations, and bistros he photographed are at turns hauntingly empty or peopled by prostitutes, laborers, thugs, and lovers. "Paris by Night" is a stunning portrait of nighttime in the City of Light, as captured by its most articulate observer. 62 photos.

Looking in: Robert Frank's the Americans


Sarah Greenough - 2009
    Drawing on newly examined archival sources, it provides a fascinating in-depth examination of the making of the photographs and the book's construction, using vintage contact sheets, work prints and letters that literally chart Frank's journey around the country on a Guggenheim grant in 1955-56. Curator and editor Sarah Greenough and her colleagues also explore the roots of The Americans in Frank's earlier books, which are abundantly illustrated here, and in books by photographers Walker Evans, Bill Brandt and others. The 83 original photographs from The Americans are presented in sequence in as near vintage prints as possible. The catalogue concludes with an examination of Frank's later reinterpretations and deconstructions of The Americans, bringing full circle the history of this resounding entry in the annals of photography. This volume is a reprint of the 2009 edition.

A History of Women Photographers


Naomi Rosenblum - 1994
    In every aspect of the medium -- portraiture, social and scientific documentation, advertising, photo-journalism, personal expression -- women have been highly active creators. Yet their achievements have often been overlooked and occasionally even credited to their male spouses or colleagues.With A History of Women Photographers, Dr. Naomi Rosenblum -- author of A World History of Photography -- helps set the record straight. She explores the work of some 250 women photographers, from Julia Margaret Cameron to Tina Modetti, Margaret Bourke-White, and Cindy Sherman. Her ground-breaking work provides an invitingly readable chronicle both of the women's creativity and of the challenging contexts within which they worked. In addition to the illuminating text and striking photographs are densely detailed individual biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography. All of this has made A History of Women Photographers an invaluable resource.The new edition has 2 new color images (replacing two earlier choices) and 15 additional black-and-white images; the final three chapters have been revised and updated, as have the copious bibliography and biographies.

Nan Goldin: The Other Side 1972-1992


Nan Goldin - 1993
    Ever since the early 1970s Goldin has lived with and among drag queens, documenting both their glamour and their struggles. The Other Side is her very personal declaration of love and gratitude to these drag queens, who showed her a way out of the captivity of pre-packaged, socially prescribed identity. As she put it: "The pictures in this book are not of people suffering gender dysphoria but rather expressing gender euphoria.... The people in these pictures are truly revolutionary; they are the real winners in the battle of the sexes because they have stepped out of the ring". In contrast to much of the early 90s drag queen mania, The Other Side has brilliantly passed the test of time: Goldin's photographs are as beautiful, moving, and vibrant as ever, heralding the utopian promises of a world where gender has stopped being a prison -- a vision that remains as vital and acute as it was when the book was first published.

Avedon at Work: In the American West


Laura Wilson - 2003
    Yet in 1979, the Amon Carter Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, daringly commissioned him to do just that.The resulting 1985 exhibition and book, In the American West, was a milestone in American photography and Avedon's most important body of work. His unflinching portraits of oilfield and slaughterhouse workers, miners, waitresses, drifters, mental patients, teenagers, and others captured the unknown and often-ignored people who work at hard, uncelebrated jobs. Making no apologies for shattering stereotypes of the West and Westerners, Avedon said, "I'm looking for a new definition of a photographic portrait. I'm looking for people who are surprising—heartbreaking—or beautiful in a terrifying way. Beauty that might scare you to death until you acknowledge it as part of yourself."Photographer Laura Wilson worked with Avedon during the six years he was making In the American West. In Avedon at Work, she presents a unique photographic record of his creation of this masterwork—the first time a major photographer has been documented in great depth over an extended period of time. She combines images she made during the photographic sessions with entries from her journal to show Avedon's working methods, his choice of subjects, his creative process, and even his experiments and failures. Also included are a number of Avedon's finished portraits, as well as his own comments and letters from some of the subjects.Avedon at Work adds a new dimension to our understanding of one of the twentieth century's most significant series of portraits. For everyone interested in the creative process it confirms that, in Laura Wilson's words, "much as all these photographs may appear to be moments that just occurred, they are finally, in varying degrees, works of the imagination."

Annie Leibovitz at Work


Annie Leibovitz - 2008
    Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it." —Annie LeibovitzAnnie Leibovitz describes how her pictures were made, starting with Richard Nixon's resignation, a story she covered with Hunter S. Thompson, and ending with Barack Obama's campaign. In between are a Rolling Stones Tour, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, The Blues Brothers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keith Haring, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Patti Smith, George W. Bush, William S. Burroughs, Kate Moss and Queen Elizabeth. The most celebrated photographer of our time discusses portraiture, reportage, fashion photography, lighting, and digital cameras.

Photo Icons


Hans-Michael Koetzle - 1996
    To demonstrate the unique and profound influence on culture and society that photographs have, Photo Icons puts the most important landmarks in the history of photography under the microscope. Each chapter of this special edition focuses on a single image which is described and analyzed in detail, in aesthetic, historical, and artistic contexts. The book begins with the very first permanent images (Nic?phore Ni?pce's 1827 eight-hour-exposure rooftop picture and Louis Daguerre's famous 1839 street scene) and takes the reader up through the present day, via the avant-garde photography of the 1920s and works such as Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother (1936), Robert Doisneau's Kiss in Front of City Hall (1950), and Martin Parr's 'New European photography.'

Hard Ground


Tom Waits - 2011
    Their initial contact grew into a friendship that O'Brien chronicled for the Miami News, where he began his career as a staff photographer. O'Brien's photo essays conveyed empathy for the homeless and the disenfranchised and won two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. In 2006, O'Brien reconnected with the issue of homelessness and learned the problem has grown exponentially since the 1970s, with as many as 3.5 million adults and children in America experiencing homelessness at some point in any given year.In Hard Ground, O'Brien joins with renowned singer-songwriter Tom Waits, described by the New York Times as "the poet of outcasts," to create a portrait of homelessness that impels us to look into the eyes of people who live "on the hard ground" and recognize our common humanity. For Waits, who has spent decades writing about outsiders, this subject is familiar territory. Combining their formidable talents in photography and poetry, O'Brien and Waits have crafted a work in the spirit of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in which James Agee's text and Walker Evans's photographs were "coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative" elements. Letting words and images communicate on their own terms, rather than merely illustrate each other, Hard Ground transcends documentary and presents independent, yet powerfully complementary views of the trials of homelessness and the resilience of people who survive on the streets.

Self Portrait


Lee Friedlander - 1992
    Here Friedlander focuses on the role of his own physical presence in his images. He writes: "At first, my presence in my photos was fascinating and disturbing. But as time passed and I was more a part of other ideas in my photos, I was able to add a giggle to those feelings." Here readers can witness this progression as Friedlander appears in the form of his shadow, or reflected in windows and mirrors, and only occasionally fully visible through his own camera. In some photos he visibly struggles with the notion of self-portraiture, desultorily shooting himself in household mirrors and other reflective surfaces. Soon, though, he begins to toy with the pictures, almost teasingly inserting his shadow into them to amusing and provocative effect--elongated and trailing a group of women seen only from the knees down; cast and bent over a chair as if seated in it; mirroring the silhouette of someone walking down the street ahead of him; or falling on the desert ground, a large bush standing in for hair. These uncanny self-portraits evoke a surprisingly full landscape of the artist's life and mind. This reprint edition of Lee Friedlander: Self Portrait contains nearly 50 duotone images and an afterword by John Szarkowski, former Director of the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art.

Early Color


Saul Leiter - 2006
    Although Edward Steichen had exhibited some of Leiter's color photography at The Museum of Modern Art in 1953, it remained virtually unknown to the world thereafter. Leiter moved to New York in 1946 to become a painter, but through his friendship with Richard Pousette-Dart he quickly recognized the creative potential of photography. Leiter continued to paint, exhibiting with Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning, but the camera remained his ever-present means of recording life in the metropolis. None of Leiter's contemporaries, with the partial exception of Helen Levitt, assembled a comparable body of work: subtle, often abstract compositions of lyrical, eloquent color.

A Drive into the Gap


Kevin Guilfoile - 2012
    About fathers and sons. It’s about memory and identity, and an insidious illness that can rob a person of both.It’s also a detective story, an investigation into the improbable journey of a baseball bat from one of the most iconic moments in baseball history to a 12-year-old boy’s bedroom.

Obama: An Intimate Portrait: The Historic Presidency in Photographs


Pete Souza - 2017
    senator, in January 2005, and served as the chief official White House photographer for the President's full two terms. Souza was with President Obama more often, and at more crucial moments, than any friend or staff member, or even the First Lady--and he photographed it all. Souza captured nearly 2 million photographs of Obama, in moments ranging from classified to disarmingly candid.This large-format (12"x10"), exquisitely produced book presents more than 300 of Souza's favorite and most iconic images from these historic years; many have never been seen before. This seminal work on the Obama presidency documents moments of national importance--including the historic image of the President and his advisors watching tensely in the Situation Room as the Bin Laden mission unfolded--alongside unguarded moments with the President's family, his many encounters with children, and his time spent interacting with world leaders, members of Congress, White House staff, artists, musicians and more.The photographs are paired with captions and stories providing behind-the-scenes context for each, and offer insight into the special relationship Souza and the President forged during their time together. The result is a stunning record of a landmark era in American history.Souza's work enabled us to feel that we knew the President. This book puts us in the White House with him.

Fashion Photography 101


Lara Jade - 2012
    Lara shares her experience of fashion photography in the digital age, including dedicated sections on retouching, genres of fashion photography, and making the best use of social media. Whether you're taking your first-ever shot, working with a professional model for the first time, or pitching to new clients, here is everything you need to produce moody, magical images that leap from the page straight into the viewer's imagination.

Bellocq: Photographs from Storyville, the Red-Light District of New Orleans


E.J. Bellocq - 1970
    This new edition includes 52 tritone photos printed in a large format. The text from the original edition--by John Szarjowski, former director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art--is reprinted here, along with a new Introduction by Susan Sontag.

Man Ray


Manfred Heiting - 2001
    An excellent, comprehensive overview of the life and work of the groundbreaking artist who broke down the boundaries between photography and graphic design with his innovative techniques.