Camo, by photographer Thandiwe Muriu, is the first publication to chronicle the work of this international artist, celebrating the vibrant portraits she creates that combine cultural textiles and beauty ideologies. Muriu takes us on a colorful, reflective journey through her world as a woman living in modern Kenya as she reinterprets contemporary African portraiture.

As the sole woman operating in the male-dominated advertising photography industry in Kenya, Thandiwe Muriu has repeatedly confronted questions around the role of women in society, the place of tradition, and her own self-perception. These experiences inspired her personal project of cultural reflection: the Camo series. Camo was the catalyst for her to push new boundaries in her photography, leading her into a deeply personal artistic journey.

The compelling, fully saturated photographs in this collection confront issues surrounding identity while seeking to redefine female empowerment through Muriu's choice of materials. These constructed images are not digital manipulations but physical sets that incorporate African Ankara wax textiles as backdrops and custom-tailored clothing and headdresses. At the forefront of her practice is using textiles to make her subjects disappear and serve as a canvas for reflection on the questionof identity and its evolution over time. Muriu also consistently reimagines common objects associated with the daily lives of Kenyans into bold accessories donned by her subjects. These objects range from hairpins to the mosquito-repellent coils she grew up using. In Kenya, an object can have multiple uses beyond its original purpose; as Muriu explains, When you have little, you transform and reuse it."

Throughout the book, each image is paired with an inspirational African proverb in both English and Swahili, expressing the collected wisdom of generations that continue to inspire. Proverbs such as "With a little seed of imagination, you can grow a field of hope" convey the uplifting spirit of Muriu's work that empowers women, preserves tradition, and celebrates African beauty and culture.

A visually stunning art book and cultural touchstone, Camo is a collectible treasure as the first book to showcase the work of a rising star in the worlds of photography and art.

Katie Hall's poems are of the rare kind that pierce right into your soul, leaving a tingling feeling under your skin, matched only by the speechless silence enveloping the roaring storms in your mind. In other words: They touch you. Not as soapy pathos - on contrary, they touch your deepest, poorly-lit spots because they are so real and relevant. No matter if you have lived situations similar to what the poems get into, you feel that you are right there, right in it. You empathise not with 'the author' or 'a narrator' ...but with yourself. What makes Katie Hall's poetry lie so close to our own struggles and doubts are their way of spinning around the swirl formed by the eternal dilemma between needing and resisting, between shame and desire. Ultimately, between honesty and pretence. To be read one by one, reflected upon, and then re-read. If you are up to it. 'Cause you will discover sides of yourself that you had forgotten about or stowed away. Now, with Katie Hall, it is time to find it back. -Bj rn Clasen-

The eagerly anticipated follow-up to The Atlas of Beauty – showcases inspiring stories alongside a stunning new collection of photographs of women from around the world

‘True beauty lies in the sum of our qualities, used for positive purposes. In other words, using your power for the good’

This new book delves deeper into the stories behind the captivating images that have made Mihaela Noroc an online sensation. With 500 portraits from over 60 countries, including Japan, India, Peru, Namibia and the United States, The Power of Women is a celebration of courage, resilience and beauty in all its forms.

Throughout the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, video art as vehicles for social, cultural, and political analysis were prominent within global museum based contemporary art exhibitions. For many, video art during this period stood for contemporary art. Yet from the outset, video art's incorporation into art museums has brought about specific problems in relation to its acquisition and exhibition. This book analyses, discusses, and evaluates the problematic nature and form of video art within four major contemporary art museums--the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Georges Pompidou National Centre of Art and Culture in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) in Sydney. In this book, the author discusses how museum structures were redefined over a twenty-two year period in specific relation to the impetus of video art and contends that analogue video art would be instrumental in the evolution of the contemporary art museum. By addressing some of the problems that analogue video art presented to those museums under discussion, this study penetratingly reveals how video art challenged institutional structures and had demanded more flexible viewing environments from those structures. It first defines the classical museum structure established by the Louvre Museum in Paris during the 19th century and then examines the transformation from this museum structure to the modern model through the initiatives of the New York Metropolitan Museum to MoMA in New York. MoMA was the first major museum to exhibit analogue video art in a concerted fashion, and this would establish a pattern of acquisition and exhibition that became influential for other global institutions to replicate. In this book, MoMA's exhibition and acquisition activities are analysed and contrasted with the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Gallery, and the AGNSW in order to define a lineage of development in relation to video art. Extremely well researched and well written, this book covers an exhaustive, substantive, and relevant range of issues. These issues include video art (its origin, significance, significant movements, institutional challenges, and relationship to television), the establishment of the museum (its patronage and curatorial strategy) from the Louvre to MoMA, the relationship of MoMA to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a comparative analysis of three museums in three countries on three continents, a close examination of video art exhibition, a closer look at three seminal video artists, and, finally, a critical overview of video art and its future exhibition. This unique book also covers an important period in the genesis of video art and its presentation within significant national and global cultural institutions. Those cultural institutions not only influence a meaningful part of the cultural life of four unique countries but also represent the cultural forces emerging in capital cities on three continents. By itself, this sort of geographic and institutional breadth challenges any previous study on the subject. This book successfully provides a historical explanation for the museum/gallery's relationship to video art from its emergence in the gallery to the beginnings of its acceptance as a global art phenomenon. Several prominent video artists are examined in relation to the challenges they would present to the institutionalised framework of the modern art museum and the discursive field surrounding their practice. In addition, the book contains a theoretical discussion of the problems related to video art imagery with the period of High Modernism; it examines the patterns of acquisition and exhibition, and presents an analysis of global exchange between four distinct major contemporary art institutions. The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum, 1968-1990 is an important book for all art history and museum collections.

Focusing on fine art and documentary photography, this book provides a diverse and inclusive version of photography history and its contemporary manifestations. Through 40 interviews with and profiles of photographers from underrepresented communities—those of African, Asian, Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander and Aleutian heritage, and other indigenous communities—this collection turns on its head homogenous visual culture. Essential reading for photography students and practitioners, this book celebrates the diversity of the real world with fascinating accounts of artists and the broad range of their challenges and successes: aspirations, photo series and photobooks, earning a living, discrimination, photography education, photographic practice, technical conversations, and more.

Throughout the United States, businesses compete for the attention of buyers by presenting their products in striking, often outrageous, ways at trade shows. In Show Business, ex-trade show photographer Ron Schramm presents a collection of black-and-white photographs displaying the theatrical ways in which these products are marketed to American businesses, and to America.

The images in this volume include selected exhibits and photographic editorials that visually reported the shows for trade newspapers and show organizers. Because trade shows are an integral opportunity for businesses to sell their goods and services, businesses are willing to do just about anything to get people's attention. Sometimes quirky but always interesting, Schramm's images present the spectacles that come with the trade show experience, from twenty-foot-tall cola bottles to a van display surrounded by women dressed in spacesuits.

Show Business is a distinctive compilation of images that offers an insider's look at business-and creativity-at work.

The groundbreaking survey, showcasing 500 of the greatest American artists, now updated in an essential new edition

‘A lavish glimpse not only into American Art, but into the history of the century as well.’ – The Times

Fully revised and updated, this new edition of Phaidon’s seminal volume The American Art Book provides an unparalleled look into the richness and diversity of American art. Covering more than three centuries, this stunning survey tells the history of a country through its most vital artists, each of whom has been thoughtfully selected for inclusion by an advisory team of leading curators, historians, and institutional directors.

From the earliest colonial portraitists, Impressionist luminaries, the giants of Modernism, earthwork innovators, and Pop Art icons to today’s contemporary visionaries, each artist is represented by a key work, an introductory text written by an expert in the field, and cross-references to other artists, inspiring new connections through art history.

Featured artists include: Ansel Adams, Josef Albers, Diane Arbus, Ruth Asawa, Richard Avedon, Matthew Barney, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Alexander Calder, Vija Celmins, Frederic Edwin Church, John Singleton Copley, Gregory Crewdson, Helen Frankenthaler, Jared French, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Gwathmey, Keith Haring, Barkley L. Hendricks, Jenny Holzer, Arthur Jafa, Joshua Johnson, Henrietta Johnston, Alex Katz, Gaston Lachaise, Jacob Lawrence, Edmonia Lewis, Maya Lin, Man Ray, Ana Mendieta, Senga Nengudi, Nam June Paik, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Andy Warhol, and Carrie Mae Weems

Advisors include: Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander, Kathleen Ash-Milby, Horace D. Ballard, David Breslin, Mel Buchanan, JR Henneman, Rujeko Hockley, Jonathan D. Katz, Franklin Kelly, Harper Montgomery, Lowery Stokes Sims, Juliet Sperling, Bradley Sumrall, and Leslie Umberger

Art & Fear is about the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. Drawing on the authors' own experiences as two working artists, the book delves into the internal and external challenges to making art in the real world, and shows how they can be overcome every day. First published in 1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic, and word-of-mouth has placed it among the best-selling books on artmaking and creativity. Written by artists for artists, it offers generous and wise insight into what it feels like to sit down at your easel or keyboard, in your studio or performance space, trying to do the work you need to do. Every artist, whether a beginner or a prizewinner, a student or a teacher, faces the same fears - and this book illuminates the way through them.

The highly anticipated second volume to the widely acclaimed and celebrated self-portrait series, Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness

In Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II, Zanele Muholi explores and expands upon new personas and poetic interpretations of personhood, queerness, Blackness, and the possibilities of self. Since the publication of the first volume in 2018, Muholi has continued to photograph themself in a range of new international locations. Drawing on material props found in each environment, Muholi boldly explores their own image and innate possibilities as a Black individual in today’s global society, and—most important—speaks emphatically in response to contemporary and historical racisms. Renée Mussai, curator and historian, brings together written contributions from more than ten curators, poets, and authors, building a poetic and experimental framework that extends the idea of speculative futures and the potentiality of multivalent selves. Powerfully arresting, this collection further amplifies Muholi’s expressive and radical manifesto. As they state in the first volume, “My practice as a visual activist looks at Black resistance—existence as well as insistence.”

Mere clothing is transformed into desirable fashion by the way it is represented in imagery. Fashion's Double examines how meanings are projected onto garments through their representation, whether in painting, photography, cinema or online fashion film, conveying identity and status, eliciting fascination and desire. With in-depth case studies including the work of Nick Knight and Helmut Newton, film examples such as The Hunger Games, music video Girl Panic by Duran Duran, and much more, this book analyses the interrelationship between clothing, identity, embodiment, representation and self-representation. Written for students and scholars alike, Fashion's Double will appeal to anyone studying fashion, cultural studies, art theory and history, photography, sociology, and film.

Cleveland, 1910: For a poor girl whose father has abandoned her, the prospect of becoming an artist is almost non-existent. But Bernice Abbott is resourceful and will happily challenge convention in order to succeed. Setting out to fulfill her dream, she embarks on a journey that will take her from bohemian Greenwich Village to the giddy cafes of 1920s Paris to a New York rising from the ashes of the Great Depression. On the way, illness and a tragic romance test her mettle, but a lucky coincidence leads her to the emerging art form of photography. Transforming herself from `dull' Bernice to cosmopolitan Berenice, she sets the tone for life as a portrait photographer in the Paris of Hemingway and Picasso, and prepares to take on the men who are threatened by her vision and strength.

Dinosaur skeletons, eggs, bones, and fossils have become increasingly coveted objects for collectors. Dinosaurs are Collectible explores the reasons for their popularity and tells the stories behind the many illustrious finds from the past. This beautifully illustrated and printed publication by the author of Wonders are Collectible and Wunderkammer includes a chapter devoted to dinosaurs in both high and popular culture, and features an exceptional collection of prints, photos, drawings, and micrograph scans.