Photographic realism: Late twentieth-century aesthetics provides an accessible and useful introduction to uses of photography in art practice, and relates them to wider cultural ideas. Focusing on conceptual and political projects between 1970 and the turn of the century, it draws parallels between issues discussed in theory and those displayed visually in practice. Tormey discusses a dynamic era in photography's history, which follows the influences of conceptual art and shifts in thinking about representation and subjectivity. The author moves away from the preoccupations of modernist photography to outline a photographic aesthetic that signals a direction for development in the twenty-first century, exampled here by the complex practices of Chinese photography. This book emphasises how photographs construct ideas, make comments and promote thought - philosophically, culturally and politically. It will be particularly useful in post-graduate courses on fine art and photography, but it will also appeal to students and lecturers of art history, visual culture and media studies. -- .

Launched in April 1912, the Vest Pocket Kodak was one of the world's first compact cameras. About the height and width of today's iPhone, it was small enough to fit into the pocket of a waistcoat (the American Vest) and allowed the soldiers to record their experiences of the trenches. The images they preserved offer us a remarkably personal viewpoint, and create a fascinating link between the camera and the conflict. The first half of the book sets the technology and timeline of the camera against those of the war. The second half presents a commemorative album of images taken with the camera, a remarkable record of a lost generation, and a tragic reflection of the manufacturer's advertising by-line: Kodak pictures never let you forget.

For over four years, award-winning Ukranian photographer Mila Teshaieva has documented the transformation of the three former Soviet republics on the shores of the Caspian Sea: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. The battle for control of the region's vast oil and gas reserves and the search for a national identity have led to far-reaching changes for the population, the environment, and general social values. Teshaieva's images reveal an atmosphere of insecurity, where people pin their hopes and expectations on a transformation whose direction remains uncertain.

This series was the winner of the Photolucida's Critical Mass Book Award 2012.

At this transitional moment in the field of photography, how should we consider what is to come for the medium? Can its past and present practitioners help guide us, both as creators and as observers? David Levi Strauss-eminent author, critic, and teacher-rises to the challenge of these questions and more in Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow: Essays on the Present and Future of Photographs. In the course of twenty-five essays, Strauss discusses the work of artists who provoke us with revealing, clear-eyed investigations of the ostensibly patent world in front of us, and others who transport us to new realms, poetic and unreal-creative minds ranging from Frederick Sommer, Helen Levitt, Daido Moriyama, and Joseph Beuys, to contemporary photographers Sally Mann, James Nachtwey, Susan Meiselas, Robert Bergman, Tim Davis, and many others. Also considered are the groundbreaking theoretical writings of Susan Sontag and Jean-Luc Nancy, the films of Chris Marker and Stan Brakhage, and issues and events that have irrevocably altered the way we consider the medium of photography and how it communicates: 9/11, Abu Ghraib, the death of Osama bin Laden, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street. Words Not Spent Today is an incisive exploration of photography's changing role as a tool of evidence and conscience as we move forward into-can we say it?-a post-photographic era.

Taken in the "forgotten borough" of Staten Island between 1983 and 1984, the photographs in Christine Osinski's (born 1948) Summer Days Staten Island create a portrait of working-class culture in an often overlooked section of New York City. Captured on Osinski's large format 4x5 camera as she wandered the island, her candid portraits of strangers, vernacular architecture and quotidian scenes reveal an invisible landscape within reach of the thriving metropolis of Manhattan. The neighborhoods that Osinski captured are devoid of the skyscrapers, swarms of pedestrians and choking masses of traffic that are a short ferry ride away. Instead, she captures kids riding bikes on open, empty streets, suburban homes with neatly tended yards and the small-town feel of New York's least populous borough. Accompanying the series of images is an essay by Paul Moakley, Time magazine's Deputy Director of Photography and Visual Enterprise.

Bill Hayes's critically acclaimed memoir Insomniac City provided a first look at his unique street photography. Now he presents an exquisite collection that captures the full range of his work and the magic of chance encounters in New York City.

Hayes's "frank, beautiful, bewitching" street photographs "unmask their subjects' best and truest selves" (Jennifer Senior, New York Times): A policeman pauses at the end of a day. Cooks sneak in cigarette breaks. A pair of movers plays cards on the back of a truck. Friends claim the sidewalk. Lovers embrace. A flame-haired girl gazes mysteriously into the lens. And park benches provide a setting for a couple of hunks, a mom and her baby, a stylish nonagenarian . . .

How New York Breaks Your Heart reveals ordinary New Yorkers at their most peaceful, joyful, distracted, anxious, expressive, and at their most fleeting--bringing the texture of the city to vivid life. Woven through with Hayes's lyric reflections, these photos will, like the city itself, break your heart by asking you to fall in love.

Moholy-Nagy's efforts to have photography and filmmaking recognized as means of artistic design on the same level as painting are propounded and explained at length. The use of artistic instruments is thus radically reformed. The Hungarian artist makes the case for a functional transformation within the visual arts and for the further development of photographic design options. Alongside theoretical and technical approaches as well as detailed forays into the broad field of the medium of photography, Moholy-Nagy uses an extensive appendix of illustrations to provide a thorough survey of the numerous possibilities that photographic and cinematic work had in store as early as 1925. This English edition appears in original design and with separate commentary.

240cm is the standard distance between floor and ceiling in residential buildings: the height of the void we inhabit. In its precision, and its emptiness, the number reflects contemporary interior architecture's condition. In a series of essays, House Tour explores an interior that is both familiar and seemingly uninhabited, critically celebrating a peculiar genre of representation, the architectural photography of an unfurnished interior. The authors - including anthropologists, architecture theorists and art historians - consider the ubiquitous contemporary apartment from an eye-level view, foregrounding the appearance and material presence of the architectural shell. They start out from photographs of unfurnished interiors found on the websites of leading Swiss architecture firms. They have a blank, labyrinthine appearance, with walls intersecting at oblique angles and exits seemingly leading nowhere, and show featureless rooms with seamless transitions between surfaces. House Tour offers answers to the quest for a new language that adequately describes this architecture.

The River Shannon is both a visitor's and a photographer's delight. This stunning waterway is a feast for the eyes in every season and every time of the day and night. Discover miles and miles of beauty along the back of this mighty river. From lively towns to tranquil lakes, it is a varied and fulfilling journey along the Shannon.

Europe has over 40,000 miles of coastline, stretching from the icy black waters of the Baltic to the deceptively serene Mediterranean. With many of Europe's countries bordering a sea, the need for lighthouses has spanned much of the continent for centuries. Lighthouses hold a perennial fascination for many of us - an indicator of danger, a beacon of the sea, laced with history and romance and a magnet for coastal walkers and visitors. Photographer Thomas Ebelt was charged with capturing beautiful imagery of the most stunning lighthouses for a lavish calendar, but on his journeys along Europe's coasts he found enough outstanding structures and dramatic landscapes to fill a calendar every year for a decade or more. This book is a collection of his finest photographs, from Poland and Estonia, via Iceland, around Scotland and England, and towards Malta and Sicily. Each lighthouse is accompanied by illuminating text about their history and construction. Specifications boxes provide information on position, identification features, height of the tower, height of the light, range and year of construction.

Photography and Literature in the Twentieth-Century offers an accessible and fresh approach to an object of interdisciplinary research that is currently receiving increased international attention. Providing a broad historical schema, and examining pivotal moments within it, the collection brings together a range of writers and practitioners who help to guide the reader through a historical cross-section of current work in this area. Unlike most existing studies, this volume considers both key literary figures, from Proust to Sebald, and photographic practitioners, from Heartfield to Sekula, in order to give a commanding overview of its subject that is both well-informed and often ground-breaking. With original and accessible essays by acknowledged experts in the field, this is a book that should be of interest not only to students and teachers in departments of literature and photography, but also to those in cultural studies and art history, as well as photographic artists.

In the digital age, photography confronts its future under the competing signs of ubiquity and obsolescence. While technology allows amateurs and experts alike to create high-quality photographs, new electronic formats have severed the photochemical link between image and subject. At the same time, cinematic, staged, or digitally enhanced art styles stretch the concept of photography and raise questions about its truth value. Despite this ambiguity, photography remains a stubbornly substantive form of evidence. Referenced by artists, filmmakers, and writers as a powerful emblem of truth, photography has found its home in other media at the moment of its own material demise. By examining the medium as articulated in literature, film, and the graphic novel, Daguerreotypes demonstrates how photography secures identity for figures with an unstable sense of self. From Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz to Alison Bechdel's Fun Home - we find traces of these "fugitive subjects" throughout contemporary culture. Ultimately, Daguerreotypes reveals how the photograph has inspired a range of modern artistic and critical practices.

Last season, Seagull Books published the first three volumes in a new series collecting essays and interviews by the late French thinker Roland Barthes. This season they'll bring the five-volume set to completion with the publication of "Masculine, Feminine, Neuter" and Signs and Images. Signs and Images gathers pieces related to Barthes' central concerns: semiotics, visual culture, art, cinema, and photography. It is a rare compilation of his articles on film criticism and reviews on art exhibitions. The volume features essays on Marthe Arnould, Lucien Clergue, Daniel Boudinet, Richard Avedon, Bernard Faucon, and many more. Taken together, the five volumes in this series are a gift to Barthes' many fans, helping to round out our understanding of this restless, protean thinker and his legacy.

In this interdisciplinary anthology, essays study the relationship between the imagination and images both material and mental. Through case studies on a diverse array of topics including photography, film, sports, theater, and anthropology, contributors focus on the role of the creative imagination in seeing and producing images and the imaginary.

To photograph avant-garde architecture is its own particular art, requiring careful attention to geometry, composition, lighting, and the ineluctable feel of a created space. In his famous photographs of modern architectural marvels, Marcel Chassot doesn't merely capture a building's appearance; he transports us to the space, recreating both its ambience and its grandeur. This volume assembles buildings designed by the giants of modern architecture--from Frank Gehry's surrealist twists and stacks to Zaha Hadid's formal speed and fluidity, from Beijing National Stadium to the Sony Center in Berlin and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York--offering a wealth of scenes from international contemporary architecture. Wolfgang Meisenheimer sheds light on the fundamental principles of Chassot's photographic worldview and distinguishes between three layers of thought in which the work is rooted: the Euclidean orders, echoes of the modern philosophy of the lived body, and the legacy of Cubism from the beginnings of modern painting. With its felicitous interplay of brilliant architectural photography, exquisite design, and thoughtfully researched essays, this book is a total work of art.

Rome is `the eternal city' and was a stopping-off place on the Grand Tour long before the days of photography. Despite the preservation of so many classic ruins across the city, there has been significant change. Over hundreds of years of flooding, the river Tiber deposited silt across the Forum and low-lying sites. Many archive images show a completely different ground level to the 21st century view, after excavation revealed their true height. When Mussoilini came to the power in 1922 he set about creating wider avenues and removing some of the older buildings, as can been from the changes to via della Conciliazione. Rome Then and Now visits all the major tourist locations in the city and shows pictures of how they once were, sometimes unfenced with goats grazing amongst the ruins! Sites include: St Peter's Square, Colosseum, Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Piazza del Popolo, the Forum, Trajan's Column, Trevi Fountain, Arch of Titus, Arch of Conatantine, Piazza Venezia, Piazza Navona, Quirinal Palace, Vittoriano, Tarpeian Hill, Palatine Hill, Circus Maximus.

A child enters a dream machine and encounters hidden picture puzzles intended for the reader to solve.