As word began to spread, similar establishments popped up across the country. Men lined up outside these cafés waiting to pay three times the usual cost for coffee served by a panty-free young woman, hoping to catch a fortuitous glimpse. Within a few years, a new craze took hold: the no-panties "massage" parlor. Competition for customers led these new types of businesses to offer an increasingly bizarre range of services: fondling clients through holes in coffins whilst they lie naked inside playing dead, interiors catering to commuter-train fetishists, young virgin role-playing, etc. Amongst these many destinations was a Tokyo club called Lucky Hole. Here, the premise was ridiculously simple: clients stood on one side of a plywood partition, a hostess on the other; in between them was simply a hole big enough for a certain part of the male anatomy to pass through. Nobuyoshi Araki was a frequent visitor to the sex clubs of Tokyo's Shinjuku neighborhood, and he photographed them profusely until the golden age of Japan's sex industry came to a screeching halt in February 1985, with the enactment of the New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act. In over 800 photos, Tokyo Lucky Hole documents the free-for-all spirit of those clubs via Araki's lens.

    Marilyn Monroe: A Life in Pictures is the only book to bring together all of the most iconic images of the legendary bombshell. Glamorous shots by celebrity photographers mix with casual snapshots and childhood portraits to span Marilyn's luminous but too-short life. Hundreds of evocative images, both lush and poignant, are interwoven with quotations by and about Marilyn to create an elegant collective portrait like no other. Aesthetically arresting throughout, this volume illuminates the life of a legend, both onscreen and off.

    Spanning a period of forty years, David Lynch's widely respected films and television series include "Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway," and "Mulholland Drive," However, his prolific visual art production, which began even before his films, has rarely been seen. This catalogue of his artistic output, published on the occasion of a large-scale exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, covers a wide variety of disciplines: painting, photography, drawings, sculpture, furniture, music, and "moving pictures." His art echoes his films in theme and aesthetic, yet offers viewers a fresh and more intimate glimpse into his singular universe. The book also contains several essays that analyze his artworks, as well as a conversation with Lynch, interviewed within the context of the show. 469 illustrations in color.

    THE GREAT LIFE PHOTOGRAPHERS presents the most iconic images of the past century, as well as little-known gems from the LIFE archives. Many of these images are markers of the major milestones of history--the first pictures from inside the womb or from outer space, Robert Capas falling soldier, and memorable scenes from Tiananmen Square. Defining celebrity portraits of Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, and Michael Jackson are also featured. This startingly rich collection of both color and black-and-white photographs is a vivid fulfillment of Henry Luces charge: To see life; to see the world....To be amazed!

    Conceived and closely edited by Gerhard Richter himself, Atlas cuts straight to the heart of the artist's thinking, collecting more than 5,000 photographs, drawings and sketches that he has compiled or created since the moment of his creative breakthrough in 1962. Year by year, the images closely parallel the subjects of Richter's paintings, revealing the orderly but open-ended analysis that has been so central to his art. Offering invaluable insight into Richter's working process, this encyclopedic new edition, which completely revises and updates the rare, out-of-print 1997 edition and includes 147 additional plates, features 780 multi-image panels, each reproduced full page and in full color. Richter redefined the terms of contemporary painting as he looked to photography for a way to release painting from the political and symbolic burdens of Socialist Realism and Abstract Expressionism. From pictures of family and friends to images from the mass media, Richter's photographs--sometimes found, sometimes original--have provided the basis for many of his paintings, often re-emerging in a luminous, monochromatic palette, and falling ambiguously between documentary and historical painting.

    Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your work. In your print Reptiles you have given such a striking illustration of reincarnation.' I replied, 'Madame, if that's the way you see it, so be it, '" An engagingly sly comment by the renowned Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972)--the complex ambiguities of whose work leave hasty or single-minded interpretations far behind. Long before the first computer-generated 3-D images were thrilling the public, Escher was a master of the third dimension. His lithograph "Magic Mirror" dates as far back as 1946. In taking that title for this book, mathematician Bruno Ernst is stressing the magic spell Escher's work invariably casts on those who see it. Ernst visited Escher every week for a year, systematically talking through his entire oeuvre with him. Their discussions resulted in a friendship that gave Ernst intimate access to the life and conceptual world of Escher. Ernst's account was meticulously scrutinized and made accurate by the artist himself. Escher's work refuses to be pigeonholed. Scientific, psychological, or aesthetic criteria alone cannot do it justice. The questions remain. Why did he create the pictures? How did he construct them? What preliminary studies were necessary before he could arrive at the final version? And how are the various images Escher created interrelated? This book, complete with biographical data, 250 illustrations, and explications of mathematical problems, offers answers to these and many other questions, and is an authentic source text of the first order.

    Adams's breathtaking images are accompanied by excerpts from the writings of Sierra Club founder John Muir, the renowned conservationist who devoted his life to celebrating and preserving the American wildnerness.

    For serious amateur photographers who alraedy shoot perfectly focused, accurately exposed images but want to be more creative with a camera, here's the book to consult.

    "Magnum Magnum" brings together the best work, celebrating the vision, imagination, and brilliance of Magnum photographers, both the acknowledged greats of photography in the twentieth century--among them, Henri-Cartier Bresson, Robert Capa, Eve Arnold, Marc Riboud, and Werner Bischof--and the modern masters and rising stars of our time, such as Martin Parr, Susan Meiselas, Alec Soth, and Donovan Wylie. Organized by photographer, the book harks back to the agency's early days and the spirit that made it such a unique and creative environment, one in which each of the four founding members picture-edited the others' photographs. Here a current Magnum photographer selects and critiques six key works by each of the sixty-nine featured photographers, with a commentary explaining the rationale behind the choice. This new edition provides a permanent record of iconic images from the last sixty years and an insight, as seen through the critical eyes and minds of Magnum photographers, into what makes a memorable photograph. 9.5" x 11.5," 413 illustrations in color and duotone.

    This collection of photographs captures these accoutrements.

    It is unusual, remarkable, for a major writer also to be an accomplished photographer. Eudora Welty is one of the very few whose great talent has been expressed in both photographs and fiction. This book, Eudora Welty: Photographs, brings together in one volume about 250 representative photographs from the few thousand that she took during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Although her camera's view finder compresses much, like the frame in which she conceives her fiction, it finds elements that convey her deep compassion and her artist's sensibilities. From the confines of her native Mississippi these photographs unfold the world of Eudora Welty's art, reaching, extending, and exploring. In the Deep South of Depression times, when she began writing, she discovered the place into which she had been born and which would always be her subject. From here, as these photographs show, she approached and risked the outside world. From rural Mississippi to New Orleans, Charleston, New York City, and Yaddo, and then to Ireland, England, and the Continent, Welty widened her vision and expanded her art. These photographs reveal that both in her fiction and in the pictures she took it has always been in place, in the special qualities of what is local, that she found her impulse.

    With characteristic perversity - and trademark originality - THE ONGOING MOMENT is Dyer's unique and idiosyncratic history of photography. Seeking to identify their signature styles Dyer looks at the ways that canonical figures such as Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Kertesz, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus and William Eggleston have photographed the same scenes and objects (benches, hats, hands, roads). In doing so Dyer constructs a narrative in which those photographers - many of whom never met in their lives - constantly come into contact with each other. Great photographs change the way we see the world; THE ONGOING MOMENT changes the way we look at both. It is the most ambitious example to date of a form of writing that Dyer has made his own: the non-fiction work of art.

    He continues to be cited as a major influence on contemporary artists and designers working across the creative arts.   This book, published to accompany the blockbuster international exhibition launched at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, is the only volume that grants access to Bowie’s personal archive of performance costumes, ephemera, and original design artwork by the artist, bringing it together to present a completely new perspective on his creative work and collaborations. The book traces his career from its beginnings in London, through the breakthroughs of  Space Oddity and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and on to his enormous impact on 20th-century avant-garde music and art. Essays by V&A curators on Bowie’s London, image, and influence on the fashion world are complemented by Howard Goodall on musicology; Camille Paglia on gender and decadence, and Jon Savage on Bowie’s relationship with William Burroughs and his fans. The more than 300 color illustrations include personal and performance photographs, album covers, costumes, original lyric sheets, and much more.   Praise for David Bowie Is: “Perusing David Bowie Is (V&A Publishing, distributed by Abrams), the exhibition’s catalog, with its procession of poses and costumes and weighty essays tracking the cross-references to pop culture and high art, you get a sense of how much hard work it took to be Mr. Bowie.” —The New York Times “The fans of 50 years or those making discoveries in retrospect will be intrigued by the accompanying book David Bowie Is that is far more than a fanzine.”—The New York Times “Lends context and picks away at Bowie with such insight that it’s a rare hagiography with soul.” —Chicago Tribune “Combining top-notch articles on the singer/actor’s life and work with official images and reproductions of his fashion and associated ephemera, the hefty, mango-colored book is nothing short of a treasure trove of all things Bowie; a one-stop smorgasbord for the eyes whose pictorials chronicle the groundbreaking star from Ziggy Stardust to Thin White Duke to Heathen and every personality in between.” —Examiner.com

    One reviewer called it "a stupendous photographic chronicle of a tumultuous century" and the Evening Standard adjudged it "the photographic book of the year." Barnard has now transformed this "heavyweight champ of photo books" into a 1,200-page mini format book that one can hold in the palm of one hand. This edition contains 1,090 photographs in color and duotone and has been extended to include events up to and including September 11, 2001.

    Drawing on Vogue’s exceptional archive, this book focuses on the work of eight of the magazine’s legendary fashion editors (including Polly Mellen, Babs Simpson, and Grace Coddington) who collaborated with photographers, stylists, and designers to create the images that have had an indelible impact on the fashion world and beyond. Featuring the work of world-renowned photographers such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Annie Leibovitz and model/muses, including Marilyn Monroe, Verushka, and Linda Evangelista, The Editor’s Eye is a lavishly illustrated look at the visionary editors whose works continue to reverberate in the culture today.Praise for Vogue: The Editor's Eye:Selected in “Guide to coffee table books as holiday gifts.” —Associated Press“What makes a great fashion image? A new book, The Editor’s Eye, celebrates the work of Vogue’s boundary-pushing fashion editors.” —Vogue“Vogue: The Editor’s Eye is the perfect gift book for anyone with an interest in fashion or photography or brilliant book design. No electronic tablet yet created can duplicate the sheer visual pleasure of paging through this gorgeous book.” —Connecticut Post“Told via in-depth interviews with each of these visionaries, Vogue: The Editor’s Eye gives a glimpse into the process, proving that the magazine’s cutting-edge fashion spreads are as much about editorial point of view as they are about model-photographer-designer collaboration.” —BookPage.com“Vogue: The Editor’s Eye tells how the vision, creativity (and let’s not forget lavish budgets) possessed by eight fashion editors from 1947 to the present have produced the striking layouts that are the magazine's signature.” —The Denver Post