Subtext invites and encourages personal and blatantly subjective responses to photographs and analyzes the drivers behind them. During decades of participating in critiques as both student and teacher, Andre Ruesch has become convinced that it is the personal response to work that connects us in the most visceral and meaningful way. This book aims to encourage and educate viewers how to read and understand photographs on a deeper level, honoring and validating their responses to photographs. This book seeks to vitalize students in the photography classroom. Rather than a dense tome of theory, this is an accessible guide to taking individual ownership of-and enjoying-the visual experience. To be visually literate is comparable to being linguistically literate. Such literacy is necessary to engender a deeper understanding and valuation of culture: both types of literacy create, enrich, define and historically document the expression of one individual to be shared by all.

Did you know that Oslo is the only capital city in Europe where you can go cross-country skiing? Just take your skis on the metro to the suburbs and ski off from the platform across the frozen, snowy landscape. Stretching so far from north to south, and from west to east - the country reaches further east than St Petersburg - Norway has a larger number of different habitats than almost any other European country. It has Scandinavia's most spectacular fjords, steep mountains, pretty fishing villages, beautiful beaches - and continental Europe's largest glacier. From remote settlements within the Arctic Circle to Oslo's lively city life, from the northern lights to white nights when the sun never sets, from sculpture gardens to immense bridges linking the country's many islands, Norway is a fascinating exploration of this increasingly popular tourist destination. Presented in a handy pocket-sized landscape format and with captions explaining the story behind each entry, Norway is a stunning collection of images celebrating this striking country.

Embark on a visually stunning journey through Cape Town and experience the spirit of the Mother City first-hand! Cape Town rates as one of the most beautiful cities worldwide - and rightly so. Situated between two oceans and a massive mountain, the Mother City close to the Cape of Good Hope unites urban flair and countryside idyll. But it's not just Cape Town's location that is unique: the potpourri of cultures and a fascinating melange of old and new make the metropolis at Africa's southern tip so special. This illustrated book captures the diversity in exciting pairs and takes you directly to Cape Town's sights and most interesting places. Expert texts and large-format photos arouse wanderlust and curiosity about the city at the foot of the Table Mountain and inspire even locals to go on discovery tours. Like no other, Alain Proust portrays the different faces of his home of choice. With impressive landscape photos and panoramas he shows the beauty of nature, takes a look at the streets, the alleys and the people of Cape Town. With artistic sensitivity and an extraordinary sense for detail he captures social differences as well as the colours and flavours of South African cuisine. Text in English and German.

Drawing on the work of Barthes, Eco, Foucault, Baudrillard, Burgin and Tagg, and on the historians of mentalities, War and Photography presents a theoretical approach to the understanding of press photography in its historical and contemporary context. Brothers applies her argument with special reference to French and British newspaper images of the Spanish Civil War, a selection of which is presented in the book. Rejecting analyses based upon the content of the images alone, she argues that photographic meaning is largely predetermined by its institutional and cultural context. Acting as witnesses despite themselves, photographs convey a wealth of information not about any objective reality, but about the collective attitudes and beliefs particular to the culture in which they operate.

Vanity Fair 100 Years showcases a century of personality and power, art and commerce, crisis and culture—both highbrow and low. In the sumptuous 384-page coffee table book, the editors of Vanity Fair have created the definitive history of the most talked-about magazine of our day. From its inception in 1913, through the Jazz Age and the Depression, to its reincarnation in the boom-boom Reagan years (after a 47-year hiatus), to the image-saturated Information Age, Vanity Fair has presented the modern era as it has unfolded—using wit, imagination, peerless literary narrative and bold, groundbreaking imagery. The most innovative voices in popular culture are all compiled within these pages (from Robert Benchley, Jacques Cocteau and Dorothy Parker, to William Styron, Christopher Hitchens and Dominick Dunne) along with the greatest magazine illustrators, artists and photographers of all time—most notably Edward Steichen and Annie Leibovitz, who, through Vanity Fair, virtually invented the modern celebrity portrait. Writers Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger contribute an essay on the incomparable Frank Crowninshield and the birth of the Jazz Age Vanity Fair, Jim Windolf chronicles the magazine’s rebirth in 1983, and Frank DiGiacomo gives the history of the glamorous Vanity Fair Oscar Party.

Any examination of the history of the photographic portrait uncovers two very different traditions, shaped by the place where they were made - in the street or in the studio. Both are essentially urban. The street has been the place where small and easily concealed cameras allowed photographers to capture subjects unaware or at least in informal settings. In contrast, the studio offered both photographer and subjects the opportunity to present carefully composed images to the world, making use of all the elaborate staging and technical tricks at their disposal. Both these practices have since been subverted, with celebrities becoming used to posing in the street and the studio being used for informal and intimate shots. For the first time this book examines the contrasts and tensions between these two traditions, revealing much about the history of photography itself and providing fascinating insights into the changing face of societies across the globe.The book will include many of the greatest names in the history of photography. Among those who have famously photographed in the street, it will feature work by Atget, Brassai, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Araki, Boris Mikhailov and Wolfgang Tillmans. Studio-based photographers include Carlo Ponti, Edward Steichen, Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Annie Leibovitz, Jurgen Teller, and Rineke Dijkstra. Essays by leading critics examine the history of street and studio photography and how the images these photographers have produced has conditioned the way we see both the modern city and ourselves.

"I had access to what felt like a secret world. It was a subject that had been written about and dramatised but I don't think any photographers had ever tackled before. There was a change going on. Someone described it as a 'last hurrah' of the upper classes." - Dafydd Jones Oxford University at the start of the eighties, rife with black ties and ballgowns. A change was on its way - best described by a newspaper as 'the Return of the Bright Young Things'. At this time, Oxford University was synonymous with the wealthy, the powerful and the privileged. Many of the young people in these pictures moved on to have careers in the establishment including Boris Johnson and David Cameron. In these photographs, however, their youth is undeniable: teenagers in full suits celebrate the rise of Thatcher in England and Reagan in America, in between punting on the river, chasing romance and partying through the night. "It was Thatcher's Britain, a period of celebration for those that had money" - Dafydd Jones Oxford: The Last Hurrah shows a world that has been written about and dramatised, yet never photographed. Affectionate and critical, it pokes affectionate fun at its subjects while celebrating English eccentricity. From the architectural marvels of the colleges to misty mornings along the river at dawn, this is Oxford at its most beautiful - and the students of the 1980s at their most raw and honest.

Robb Helfrick brings us a photographic portfolio of the oldest permanent European settlement in North America?and the alluring city it has become today. Spaniards first settled here on the north coast of Atlantic Florida in 1565, and for centuries after the fortressed city of St. Augustine was a focal point of wars between cultures and equally challenging engagements between people and the tropical environment. By the end of the 19th century, St. Augustine was also a tourist destination, adding another layer of architectural style to the dramatic visual history that abounds in the city today.

"Photography Changes Everything" offers a provocative rethinking of photography's impact on our culture and our daily lives. Compiling hundreds of images and responses from leading authorities on photography, it offers a brilliant, reader-friendly exploration of the many ways in which photographs package information and values, demand and hold attention, and shape our knowledge of and experience in the world. The volume draws on the extraordinary visual assets of the Smithsonian Institution's museums, science centers and archives to launch an unprecedented interdisciplinary dialogue on photography's capacity to shape and change our experience of the world. "Photography Changes Everything" features over 300 images and nearly 100 engaging short texts commissioned from experts, writers, inventors, public figures and others--from Hugh Hefner to John Baldessari, John Waters, Robert Adams, Sandra Phillips and many others. Each story responds to images selected by project contributors. Together they engage readers in a timely exploration of the extent to which our lives have been transformed through our interactions with photographic imagery. Edited by leading photography curator and author Marvin Heiferman, "Photography Changes Everything" provides a unique opportunity to better understand the history, practice and power of photography at this transitional moment in visual culture.

More than any other artist, Walker Evans invented the images of essential America that we have long since accepted as fact, and his work has influenced not only modern photography but also literature, film and visual arts in other mediums. The original edition of "American Photographs" was a carefully prepared letterpress production, published by The Museum of Modern Art in 1938 to accompany an exhibition of photographs by Evans that captured scenes of America in the early 1930s. As noted on the jacket of the first edition, Evans, "photographing in New England or Louisiana, watching a Cuban political funeral or a Mississippi flood, working cautiously so as to disturb nothing in the normal atmosphere of the average place, can be considered a kind of disembodied, burrowing eye, a conspirator against time and its hammers." This seventy-fifth anniversary edition of "American Photographs," made with new reproductions, recreates the original 1938 edition as closely as possible to make the landmark publication available for a new generation. "American Photographs" has fallen out of print for long periods of time since it was first published, and even subsequent editions--two of which altered the design and typography of the book in small but significant ways--are often available only at libraries and rare bookstores. This version, like the fiftieth-anniversary edition produced by the Museum in 1988, captures the look and feel of the very first edition with the aid of new digital technologies.
Walker Evans (1903-1975) took up photography upon his return to New York in 1927, following a year in Paris when his aspiration to become a writer withered in the shadow of Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Joyce. In 1935, Evans was commissioned by the Farm Security Administration to photograph the effects of the Great Depression in the Southeast. During this time he took many of the photographs that appeared in his collaboration with James Agee, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men "(1941), a book which has become a defining document of that era. Evans joined the staff of "Time "magazine in 1945 and shortly thereafter became an editor at "Fortune," where he stayed for the next two decades. In 1964, he became a professor at the Yale University School of Art, where he taught until his death in 1975.

Sportive gentlemen, lascivious ladies: Since the earliest days of photography, people have been getting up to all manner of rannygazoo in front of the lens. This collection presents the finest highlights from the collection of New Yorker Mark Rotenberg, who began collecting antique smut after finding a stash of vintage erotic pictures in a Brooklyn dumpster and now owns a 95,000 strong collection of archive pornography dating from between 1860 and 1960. Flick through these pages and witness the fitness of our forebears as they romp, cavort, and frolic with unabashed energy and glee. From early monochromes of daringly dropped drawers and seductively waxed handlebar mustaches, to Kodachromes of cheery, twin-peaked pin-up beauties in the 1950s, this fine collection spans the sublimely sensual and the ridiculous. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

American railroad history is filled with accounts of misadventure. Steam boilers blew up. Bridges collapsed under the weight of heavy engines. Locomotives crashed head-on because of signal failures. Passenger cars derailed, often with dire results. Lightly built wooden coaches splintered on impact, and the debris often ignited from the coals in the iron stoves used for heating. In the mid-nineteenth century American railroading was burgeoning--a growth too fast for safe operations. Despite the grim statistics of 19th and early 20th century train wrecks that resulted, one cannot help but find the photographs and public prints of the day interesting. When you pick up this wonderous book, you will have a hard time putting it down

Roy Kemp's previously unpublished burlesque portfolio presents thirty-nine dancers performing in authentic clubs and backstage settings in 1950s New York. This nostalgic collection includes nearly 250 never-before-seen black and white and color photographs of well-known dancers, including Tempest Storm, Liz O'Leyar, Murine, Rita Gable, and Princess Domay, as well as other sultry performers, quite famous in their heyday. Kemp's talents as a photojournalist provide a fresh perspective on the lives of burlesque performers in this golden era. An artist as well as an investigator, Kemp created striptease photo montages and composed biographies for several dancers, giving the reader an intimate feel for the campy burlesque culture. This time capsule depicts live performances and peeps into club dressing rooms, and offers unedited material from pin-up photo sessions. It is a must-have for aspiring dancers, aficionados, or any modern-day guy or gal who appreciates the style and grit of this fabulous art form.

Home to many rare and endangered flora and fauna and a 17 trillion-gallon aquifer, the Pinelands National Reserve is New Jerseys largest natural resource and needs to be preserved for future generations. This monograph is the product of a nine-year journey though the Pinelands, a.k.a. the Pine Barrens, undertaken to visually record its beauty and uniqueness. These high-quality art photographs show the lowlands, cedar swamps, rivers, forest, and bogs, and expose the Pinelands singular beauty. Most of the locations were scouted well in advancesometimes yearsto ensure the photographs would be taken under optimal conditions.

Award-winning photographer John Werry draws upon his 40-year love affair with the Chesapeake Bay to inspire a book with more than 200 stunning photographs. His patient eye enables him to capture iconic imagery in a timeless record of the region. Included in this visual tour are images of spectacular wildlife, watermen making their living, working boats, and classic boats on the Bay. This photogenic estuary is celebrated with the romance of sunset views on the water, the drama of approaching storm clouds, the majesty of its bird life, and much more.

Adams began to photograph in colour in the mid-1930s. He did significant personal or 'creative' photography in colour and his distinctive visualisation of a scene and technical mastery is immediately evident in these photographs. Overall, he made nearly 3,500 colour images, but only a small fraction have ever been published. Adams thought seriously about publishing his colour images but the task was not accomplished during his lifetime. The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust - with advice and counsel from John Szarkowski, former Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art; David Travis, Curator of Photographs at the Art Institute of Chicago and James Enyeart, former Director of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House--asked the distinguished master photographer Harry Callahan to select the best of Adams' colour work for publication in this book.

Wellness in mind and body, as well as spiritual wellness is becoming an essential awareness in society. India is well known for its studies in the art of meditation, yoga and natural medicines. Delving into India's rich history and culture of natural medicine, beauty and wellness, The Indian Spa is a must have guide to India's luxury spas and spa treatments. The Indian Spa is the first book of its kind to cover the plethora of wellness therapies that originated in the Indian subcontinent. The country's four healing systems -Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Tibetan traditional medicine are covered, along with yoga, meditation and more. A comprehensive chapter also highlights the exotic places where you can try the treatments, including luxury spas, resorts, Ayurvedic institutions, yoga retreats and more.

A side effect of the rise of photography as a popular art form has been the accumulation of a huge body of images whose photographers and subjects remain unknown. Among these are many fascinating photographs - some almost masterpieces - that could easily have been lost forever, were it not for their chance rediscovery in libraries and archives, homes and institutions. This book presents a selection of these mysterious and highly collectable images. They portray a striking range of people, animals and objects, captured in scenes that may be witty, touching, sinister or surreal. As viewers, our imaginations are immediately engaged as we try to reconstruct the story behind each picture, and the collection as a whole forms a quirky, alternative history of photography as a medium and its endless power to surprise.

London's Heathrow Airport has seen dramatic changes since it opened in 1946, from canvas tents as terminal buildings serving converted military piston-engined airliners to the latest Airbus and Boeing jet airliners operating from five modern, sophisticated terminals. As air travel became more affordable, Heathrow expanded to accommodate the increase in airline traffic. This pictorial timeline records these changes in air transport and infrastructure to capture the interest of the aviation enthusiast, the Heathrow visitor or just someone who is fascinated by nostalgia in an ever-changing world.

Ghost towns, empty streets, crumbling ruins and lost empires this book reveals these and other deserted places. Many places featured were once populated and now sit unoccupied, modern day ruins, sitting in decay. Stories, facts and photographs of 60 beautiful and eerie abandoned places from throughout the world. Time has stopped and nature is taking resident in these places mainly due to natural disasters, war or economic reasons. Places include: Severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, Six Flags Jazzland has been abandoned since. Several of the rides still stand, a testimony to the resilience of New Orleans. Shicheng in China has been under water for 53 years since the Xin'an River Hydro Plant flooded the area. The city was founded 1,300 years ago. Chernobyl was totally abandoned after the nearby nuclear disaster in 1986. Due to radiation, it has been left untouched ever since the incident and will be for many thousands of years into the future. Nature now rules the city in what resembles an apocalyptic movie. Poveglia is an island in the Venetian Lagoon which under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte became a dumping ground for plague victims and later an asylum for the mentally ill. Plymouth was the capital of the island of Montserrat. The town was overwhelmed by volcanic eruptions starting in 1995 and was abandoned. St Kilda a remote Scottish Island may have been permanently inhabited for at least two millennia, the population probably never exceeding 180. The entire population was evacuated in 1930.

Take a piece of Chicago home with you with this beautiful photographic portrait of the best places to visit in the Windy City!