The Devil and Dr. Barnes: Portrait of an American Art Collector


Howard Greenfeld - 1987
    The Devil and Dr. Barnes traces the near-mythical journey of a man who was born into poverty, amassed a fortune through the promotion of a popular medicine, and acquired the premier private collection of works by such masters as Renoir, Matisse, Cézanne, and Picasso. Ostentatiously turning his back on the art establishment, Barnes challenged the aesthetic sensibilities of an uninitiated, often resistant and scoffing, American audience. In particular, he championed Matisse, Soutine, and Modigliani when they were obscure or in difficult straits. Analyzing what he saw as the formal relationships underlying all art, linking the old and the new, Barnes applied these principles in a rigorous course of study offered at his Merion foundation. Barnes's own mordant words, culled from the copious printed record, animate the narrative throughout, as do accounts of his associations with notables of the era--Gertrude and Leo Stein, Bertrand Russell, and John Dewey among them--many of whom he alienated with his appetite for passionate, public feuds. In this rounded portrait, Albert Barnes emerges as a complex, flawed man, who--blessed with an astute eye for greatness--has left us an incomparable treasure, gathered in one place and unforgettable to all who have seen it.

The Salt House


Cynthia Huntington - 1999
    Each chapter is like a prose poem, shedding increasing light on the challenge of finding "home" without the illusion of permanence, a quest based not on ownership but on affinity and familiarity with an area and its people. Cynthia Huntington expands her theme through images of the landscape, the shack, the new marriage.The shack, named "Euphoria," is built as a house set on stilts above the sand, to take the wind under it. Only a partial shelter, it is inhabited for only one season a year, yet it endures. The outer cape has the feel of a place for migrants and drifters -- for birds and other wildlife, and for people such as artists, fishermen, and coast guardsmen. A place where "year-round" often means several addresses. Similarly, her narrative describes improvised, fragile beginnings: a new marriage, learning to be at home in the world, becoming intimate with the natural world, without the necessity of settling down. The Salt House shares a world that is less natural history or memoir than it is neighborhood exploration -- the process of learning a place and becoming native to it.

Mastering Hand Building: Techniques, Tips, and Tricks for Slabs, Coils, and More


Sunshine Cobb - 2018
    In this book, Sunshine Cobb covers all the foundational skills, with lessons for constructing both simple and complex forms from clay. Ceramic artists will also find a variety of next-level techniques and tips: designing templates and replicating pieces, lidded vessels, using molds, a variety of decorative techniques, and other avenues of exploration are all inside.Artist features and inspirational galleries include work from today's top working artists, such as Bryan Hopkins, Lindsay Oesterritter, Liz Zlot Summerfield, Bandana Pottery, Shoko Teruyama, Courtney Martin, Sam Chung, Deborah Schwartzkopf, and many more.  Take your hand building skills—and your artwork—to the next level with Mastering Hand Building. The Mastering Ceramics series is for artists who never stop learning. With compelling projects, expert insight, step-by-step photos, and galleries of work from today’s top artists, these books are the perfect studio companions. Also available from the series: Mastering the Potter's Wheel and Mastering Kilns and Firing.

Be in a Treehouse: Design / Construction / Inspiration


Pete Nelson - 2014
    To that end, he shares the basics of treehouse construction with his own recent projects as case studies. Using photographs taken especially for this project along with diagrams, he covers the selection and care of trees, and explains the fundamentals of building treehouse platforms. To ignite the imagination, Nelson presents 27 treehouses in the United States, Europe, and Africa. The book will be indispensible to anyone who aspires to have a treehouse, from the armchair dreamer, to the amateur builder, to the professional contractor.

Endangered


Tim Flach - 2017
    Traveling around the world—to settings ranging from forest to savannah to the polar seas to the great coral reefs—Flach has constructed a powerful visual record of remarkable animals and ecosystems facing harsh challenges. Among them are primates coping with habitat loss, big cats in a losing battle with human settlements, elephants hunted for their ivory, and numer­ous bird species taken as pets. With eminent zoologist Jonathan Baillie providing insightful commentary on this ambitious project, Endangered unfolds as a series of vivid, interconnected stories that pose gripping moral dilemmas, unforgettably expressed by more than 180 of Flach’s incred­ible images.

Heaven & Earth: Unseen by the Naked Eye


Katherine Roucoux - 2002
    Atoms, ice crystals, grains of pollen, snowflakes, butterfly wings, cloud formations, searing comets, and showers of stars are born, live and die. The unprecedented scope of Heaven & Earth offers an awe-inspiring voyage of discovery through this infinite world that is science - from the smallest particles on the earth's surface to tiny dots in galaxies that are billions of light years away.Revealing the extensive range of matter contained in the cosmos, this book navigates a fascinating trajectory through an unexplored world, to celebrate the immeasurable beauty and countless mysteries of planet earth and the universe. It charts - chapter by chapter - intricate landscapes of increasing scale and distance, captured by microscope, x-ray, satellite and telescope. Each magnificent photograph is accompanied by an extended caption that explains it in detail, offering a dose of scientific information that enables us to associate with it on a human scale.This volume presents a unique and richly illustrated insight into the momentous relation between aesthetics and nature, in the light of nature's magnitude and its complexity of life. The result is the ultimate fusion of art and science, through a sequence of images that are as subtle as they are stupendous.

Swallowed by the Great Land: And Other Dispatches from Alaska's Frontier


Seth Kantner - 2015
    In a raw, stylized voice it told the story of a white boy growing up with homesteading parents in Arctic Alaska and trying to reconcile his largely subsistence and Native-style upbringing with the expectations and realities tied to his race. It hit numerous bestseller lists, was critically acclaimed, and won a number of awards.

Earth and Space: Photographs from the Archives of NASA


Nirmala Nataraj - 2015
    Astonishing images of Earth from above, the phenomena of our solar system, and the celestial bodies of deep space will captivate readers and photography lovers with an interest in science, astronomy, and the great beyond. Each extraordinary photograph from the legendary space agency is paired with explanatory text that contextualizes its place in the cosmic ballet of planets, stars, dust, and matter—from Earth's limb to solar flares, the Jellyfish Nebula to Pandora's Cluster. Featuring a preface by Bill Nye, this engaging volume offers up-close views of our remarkable cosmos, and sparks wonder at the marvels of Earth and space.

The New Street Photographer's Manifesto


Tanya Nagar - 2012
    Filled with details on techniques to improve perspective, composition, and exposure, and illustrated with the author's lively and evocative images, as well as advice and photos from 11 contemporary masters of street-shooting style, New Street Photographer's Manifesto has its lens pointed squarely toward the future.

Paul Strand: Masters of Photography Series


Paul Strand - 1987
    Purity, elegance, and passion are the hallmarks of Strand's imagery. This inaugural volume of Aperture's "Masters of Photography" series presents 41 of Strand's greatest photographs, drawn from a career that spanned six decades. Included are his earliest experimental efforts, created from 1915 to 1917, which Alfred Stieglitz declared had begun to redefine the medium. Subsequent photographs reveal the artist's impeccable vision in locales as diverse as New England and the Outer Hebrides, France and Ghana. During Strand's last years, he concentrated on still lifes and the poignant beauty of his own garden at Orgeval, France.In an introductory essay, Mark Haworth-Booth, Curator of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, provides an overview of the artist's life and his enduring contribution to photography.

Our Vanishing Landscape


Eric Sloane - 1955
    Leading us along rustic winding roads bordering fields and farmhouses, Eric Sloane captures our imaginations as he offers us a guided tour that evokes the America of pioneer times.This fascinating narrative describes networks of canals, corduroy roads, and turnpikes; tollgates, waterwheels, and icehouses; country inns and churches; ingenious and colorful road signs; and massive snow-rollers that packed snow into hard surfaces for great sleds. Here also are engrossing accounts of toll-road owners, sign painters, circus folk, and other entertainers of the period.Brimming with anecdotes about people and the times, this delightful, warmly written book remains a genuine and permanent contribution to the field of Americana.

Fashionable Selby


Todd Selby - 2014
    The subjects include a mix of the avant-garde, the traditional, the must-haves, and the totally unexpected. Chapters on individual artists bring readers inside their studios, workshops, and homes, and include Selby’s signature photographs and watercolors of not only the artists and their environments, but also the things that inspire them, the materials they use, their creative process, the people who work alongside them, and the final pieces. From the showroom of one of the Antwerp Six to the studios of Central St. Martins in London to a punk knitter in Brooklyn, Selby captures some of fashion’s biggest names, rising stars, and best-kept secrets.

FOUND Magazine #1


Davy Rothbart
    Check out a list of teacher-stalking license plates (maybe yours is in there). Look to found resumes for inspiration in your own job hunt. Learn all about Hawaii from one woman's vacation log. Read the inaugural FOUND interview with Lynda Barry. And of course, the find that started it all: Page Me Later. All that, plus loads of found photos, notes, drawings, and more!

The House Party: A Short History of Leisure, Pleasure and the Country House Weekend


Adrian Tinniswood - 2019
    Parlour games. Cocktails. Welcome to a glorious journey through the golden age of the country house party - and you are invited. Our host, celebrated historian Adrian Tinniswood, traces the evolution of this quintessentially British pastime from debauched royal tours to the flamboyant excess of the Bright Young Things. With cameos by the Jazz Age industrialist, the bibulous earl and the off-duty politician - whether in moated manor houses or ornate Palladian villas - Tinniswood gives a vivid insight into weekending etiquette and reveals the hidden lives of celebrity guests, from Nancy Astor to Winston Churchill, in all their drinking, feasting, gambling and fornicating. The result is a deliciously entertaining, star-studded, yet surprisingly moving portrait of a time when social conventions were being radically overhauled through the escapism of a generation haunted by war - and a uniquely fast-living period of English history. Praise for The Long Weekend:'Delicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that Downton Abbey never was. It is as if Tinniswood is at the biggest, wildest, most luxuriantly decadent party ever thrown, and he knows everyone.' Observer 'A deliciously jaunty and wonderfully knowledgeable book. Tinniswood displays a terrific insider's grasp of gossip . A meticulous, irresistible story.' Spectator 'Elegant, encyclopedic and entertaining . A confident and skilled historian who understands the mores of his era and wears his learning lightly . Deserves to be on every costume drama producer's bookshelf.' Times

Photographers on Photography: How the Masters See, Think, and Shoot (History of Photography, Pocket Guide, Art History)


Henry Carroll - 2018
    Through a carefully curated selection of quotes and images, this book reveals what matters most to the masters of photography. With accompanying text by Henry Carroll, author of the internationally bestselling Read This If You Want To Take Great Photographs series, you’ll learn what photography actually means to the giants of the genres and how they developed their distinctive visual styles.