The winner of the 2017 Ernest Cole Award is Daylin Paul for his project, Broken Land. The project explores the other side of power. Set in Mpumalanga, home of 46% of South Africa’s arable soil, it is also the area where nine power-burning coal stations are active.

Paul’s work explores the direct impact of fuel-burning coal stations on the local economy, population, farming community and, more broadly, climate change. As Paul says, “These power stations, while providing electricity for an energy-desperate South Africa, also have a devastating and lasting impact on the environment and the health of local people. Mining licences granted conditionally by the South African government are meant to safeguard the ecology and allow local people to benefit from the mineral wealth of the land.

But it is clear that these conditions are not being followed and that the health and economic well-being of both the land and its people are being jeopardised. Vast tracts of fertile, arable land are being ripped up, the landscape scarred with the black pits of coal mines while coal-burning power stations are one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the world.”

The polluting power stations not only contribute to global climate change but, through toxic sulphur effluents, also to the poisoning of scarce water supplies for a range of communities who are dependent on these for their survival. The area has in recent years also been hit by devastating droughts.

The power dynamics in the area have in recent times been drawn into the national political arena. The former Glencore coal mines, taken over by Optimum Coal Holdings Limited, a conglomerate owned by the Gupta family, are embroiled in corruption and nepotism scandals that are affecting the very highest levels of the South African government.

The aim of Paul’s project as he says is “to look at both the macro issues like pollution, poverty and climate change while also personalising the experience of the local people who are on the front lines of this crisis and provide us with a glimpse of what the future could be like for the country and indeed the SADC region.”

What a discovery! In 2014, several years after he moved to Australia, John Coetzee sold his house in Cape Town, unaware that he was leaving behind unique documents from his teenage years. In the attic of his former home, the new owners discovered a forgotten brown suitcase and a large cardboard box, containing a complete photographic archive of old prints and negatives from Coetzee?s childhood never seen before.

The photographs in this photobook (taken with what John Coetzee refers to as his ?spy camera?) date back to John?s first two years of high school when the Coetzee family moved from Worcester to Cape Town. The images provide insight into his childhood through his own lens. He shows us his world and the things that interested him most: friends and teachers at school, cricket matches, the surroundings of Cape Town, the family Karoo farm and his home life. His mother Vera, especially, was a favourite subject.

The photographs are fascinating due to their imperfections, and because they show young Coetzee?s interest in documenting time and movement in order to capture life itself. At first glance, the photographs appear to depict scenes from everyday rural life in the 1950s, but their playfulness, straightforwardness, and self-awareness ensure that the photos are not merely nostalgic. Every now and then we catch a glimpse of the social reality of Cape Town during the apartheid years.

And for the readers of Boyhood the photographs are an intriguing visual chronicle of Coetzee?s life. Although many know him as a serious and philosophical writer, here we also see his playful, boyish side and the search for his own identity. Through Coetzee?s lens we see the fleeting moments from a past which is now captured in the emulsions of his negatives.

The book also has an exclusive interview with John Coetzee about his boyhood and photo experiments.

Photographer Dominic Greyer has spent the last twenty years roaming the British landscape in search of the country's most unusual placenames. He has an eye for quirky, rude and downright ridiculous name signs, and has photographed them all. But this is not merely a book of silly placenames - Dominic's exquisite, atmospheric photography, featuring the landscapes in which the signs sit, makes the images really special, and this book into a beautiful gift package. Placenames include the famous Twice Brewed (Northumberland), Fryup (North Yorkshire), Long Length (Kent) and Camptown (Borders). There will be a few rude street names too (Lady Gardens, Great Gays, Bell End and Giant's Ring, for example). The author runs a successful gift business featuring his photography on mugs, coasters, placemats, fridge magnets ... anything you'd want to see a photograph of a funny signpost on, really. This book makes the perfect gift for anyone who loves the quirky side of the country.

Toscani's photography often depicts what no one has ever dared to explore before in advertising, such as homosexuality, racism and anorexia. This magnificent volume explores the creative force behind brands and advertising campaigns, focusing on the finest examples of his work. Interspersed throughout are collected stories of the life of the man behind the lens from some of the major personalities in the creative industries. Contributors include the photographers, David Bailey and Rankin, fashion designer Issey Miyake, designers Philippe Starck and Kenzo Takada, the musician Peter Gabriel and film director and actor, Mathieu Kassovitz, and the entrepreneur Luciano Benetton. The book features Toscani's advertising campaigns, particularly his work with Benetton from 1982 to 2000, which was some of the most shocking advertising ever seen: in some cases provoking lawsuits and the removal of Benetton clothing from stores. However, Toscani worked wonders for the company, making it into one of the world's most recognised clothing brands - despite no items of clothing appearing in the campaigns between 1990 and 2000. Throughout the years he has also created corporate images and campaigns for companies such as Esprit, Chanel, Fiorucci, Prenatal and many more. He has collaborated as fashion photographer for international magazines such as Elle, Vogue, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, and Liberation.

Spell Songs is a musical companion piece to The Lost Words: A Spell Book by author Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris. This mixed media CD is accompanied by sumptuous illustrations from Jackie Morris, new 'spells' by Robert Macfarlane, enlightening thoughts by Robert, Jackie and Spell Singer Karine Polwart and stunning photography by Elly Lucas. In 2018 Folk by the Oak Festival commissioned Spell Songs because of their love of The Lost Words book. Spell Songs comprises eight remarkable musicians whose music engages deeply with landscape and nature; musicians who are perfectly placed to respond to the creatures, art and language of The Lost Words. They spent a week in Herefordshire bringing this music together in the company of Jackie Morris. Art inspired music and music inspired art. Jackie Morris immersed herself in the musical residency where she generously created new iconesque artwork of each musician and their instruments portrayed in an unexpected and enchanting way. These stunning new artworks accompany the CD. Spell Songs allowed these acclaimed and diverse musicians to weave together elements of British folk music, Senegalese folk traditions, and experimental and classical music to create an inspiring new body of work. Here are 14 songs which capture the essence of The Lost Words book. Spoken voice, whispers, accents, dialects, native languages, proverbs, sayings, birdsong, river chatter and insect hum all increase the intimacy of the musical world conjured by the songs. Inspired by the words, art and ethos of The Lost Words book, each musician brings new imaginings, embellishments and diversions which are rooted in personal experience, a deep respect for the natural world, protest at the loss of nature and its language and an appreciation for wildness and beauty. In February 2019 Spell Songs enjoyed standing ovations at sell-out performances in major venues across the UK culminating at The Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre, London. Spell Songs was a highlight of The Hay International Literary Festival 2019 and in August 2019 they were invited to perform at the BBC's Lost Words Prom in the Royal Albert Hall. They will continue to tour each year. "There are songs here that would live with me for the rest of my years, even if I'd had no part in their making". Robert Macfarlane

Richard S. Buswell has been photographing Montana's ghost towns and homesteads for five decades. The photographs in Richard S. Buswell: Fifty Years of Photography illustrate the range and variety of his work from his earliest days to his most recent projects. Beautifully crafted, sometimes unnerving, and always thought-provoking, Buswell's photographs showcase his love for Montana and the American West. From panoramic sweeps of abandoned buildings to tightly framed depictions of natural and man-made objects, this book celebrates wide-open skies and a landscape that moves forward in time even when places and objects are forgotten. This stunning collection features seventy-two duotone photographs, a reflective essay by Buswell, and a foreword by Barbara Koostra, the former director of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture.

At nearly 1.4 million acres, the Atchafalaya Basin in south central Louisiana comprises America's largest swamp wilderness. Award-winning nature photographer C. C. Lockwood is the foremost chronicler of this natural treasure. What began as a curious side-trip in 1973 became a decades-long love affair, and for more than thirty years, Lockwood has explored the Atchafalaya's waters and captured its haunting beauty on film. Now, twenty-five years after the publication of his first book, he returns to his favorite subject in C. C. Lockwood's Atchafalaya. His passion for the Atchafalaya as expressed in his photographs can be compared to John James Audubon's exuberant appreciation for the state's abundant bird life as depicted in his prints more than 150 years ago. The art of both exalts Louisiana's wildlife -- and cautions against taking it for granted.

Lockwood revisits and reflects on the places he has frequented most in the swamp, recalling his escapades both long past and recent among gators and skeeters. He shares the thoughts of basin residents about how the Atchafalaya has changed over time, for better and for worse. Increases and decreases in various bird and other animal populations, changes in water levels and consistency, flora mainstays and trees gone missing, burgeoning aquatic vegetation -- all are keenly observed by this explorer. Lockwood finds undiminished the seductive seasonal and diurnal moods of the swamp: autumn and spring, sunset and moonrise, as breathtaking now as in the past.

In nearly one-hundred dazzling color photographs, Lockwood brilliantly documents the Atchafalaya's timeless beauty. He shows amazingly diverse and abundant wildlife, rookeries with thousands of egrets and herons, waters with billions of crawfish, and ridges with deer, squirrel, and woodcock. Waters run deep in Lockwood's soul, as evidenced in his intimate treatment of the meandering bayous fringed with bald cypress trees, the many glassy lakes reflecting vegetation into double images, and the mighty Atchafalaya River -- the lifeline of the swamp.

"No place in the world gives me such a feeling of peace as America's largest river basin swamp," writes Lockwood. In these pages, he pays homage to the queen of U.S. wetlands.

"The photographs of William Claxton define the essence of cool." - Jason Ankeny (AllMusic) "Claxton's innovative choices and airy style, which he called 'jazz for your eyes', worked sublimely to document and promote the rise of trumpeter and singer Chet Baker, especially." - Howard Mandel Born in Pasadena, California, photographer William Claxton (1927-2008) is best known for his dozens of splendid portraits of jazz stars (especially those of Chet Baker, of whom he made the first professional photos) and Hollywood stars (such as his friend Steve McQueen). In 1952, while shooting Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker at the Haig Club, he met Richard Bock, founder of Pacific Jazz, who quickly hired him as art director and house photographer. During his time at the label, Claxton snapped and designed album covers at a rate of roughly one per week, in the process establishing the visual identity of the West Coast jazz movement. Where previous jazz photographers captured their subjects in the dark, smoky environs of nightclubs, Claxton capitalised on the sun and surf of southern California, posing artists in unorthodox outdoor settings to represent a new era in the music's continued evolution. Claxton's images graced the covers of numerous music albums, and his work regularly appeared in such magazines as Life, Paris Match and Vogue. Claxton wrote 13 books, held dozens of exhibitions of his photographs around the world, and won numerous photography awards. This book presents a selection of more than 150 superb images by the great photographer. Among the multiple artists portrayed are Louis Armstrong, Chet Baker, Art Blakey, Clifford Brown, Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Billie Holiday, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Lee Morgan, Art Pepper, Sonny Rollins, Dinah Washington, and Muddy Waters. Text in English, with an introduction in English, French and Spanish.

Buite die hekke van Eden bevat dagboekfoto’s wat die bekende Suid-Afrikaanse fotograaf Paul Alberts oor ’n hele aantal jare in verskillende dele van Suid-Afrika geneem het. Die teks by die foto’s het Alberts self tydens sy fotografie-reise geskryf. Woord en beeld lewer kommentaar op sosiale en omgewingstoestande in die land. Met hierdie foto’s vang Alberts iets vas van die wese van lyding, verval en swaarkry, maar ook van die krag van die menslike gees. Die foto’s is by geleentheid van Alberts se 60ste verjaardag in die Oliewenhout-kunsmuseum in Bloemfontein uitgestal, saam met ’n aantal kwatryne wat Hennie Aucamp spesiaal vir die foto’s geskryf het. Buite die hekke van Eden is ’n publikasie met ’n besondere kultuurhistoriese en artistieke waarde.

Award-winning photographer Craig Varjabedian has spent decades photographing the many moods of the magnificent and ever-changing landscape of New Mexico's White Sands National Monument. His photographs reveal snow-white dunes of gypsum, striking landforms, storms and stillness, panoramic vistas and breathtaking sunsets, intricate wind-blown patterns in the sand, ancient animal tracks, exquisite desert plants, and also the people who come to experience this place that is at once spectacular yet subtle. Varjabedian's evocative color images provide the reader with an almost palpable sense of this extraordinary place. These photographs are enriched by several essays written by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, noted poet and author; Dennis Ditmanson, retired White Sands National Monument superintendent; Jim Eckles, retired Missile Range public affairs officer; and Craig Varjabedian, the photographer who shares his insights and experiences of photographing this inspiring landscape and offers tips on making better pictures of White Sands.

Hugh Morton has seldom been seen in his adult life without a camera around his neck. Much to the benefit of his beloved home state, he has crisscrossed North Carolina, from highlands to lowlands, recording nearly every step along the way. While many of his photographs of the state's people, places, and events were collected in Hugh Morton's ""North Carolina"", this new book showcases a generous collection of his signature wildlife and nature photography and includes a few of the photographer's favorite pictures of people and events that were not included in the first volume. The scenic and nature photographs are organized geographically, from the mountains to the coast. Revealing Morton's curiosity about and love of the natural world, photographs feature woodland creatures, waterfalls, beaches, and more. Some images will be familiar to those who live or travel in North Carolina. Many of the photographs here have been recovered from deep within Morton's personal archive, bringing to print some long-hidden treasures. Consisting of 162 photographs, this collection is a rich and rewarding display of North Carolina's natural bounty as it has evolved before the eyes of one of the state's most popular photographers.

This remarkable book, first published twenty years ago, continues to offer a singular window into the customs, politics, and places of twentieth-century Louisiana. This dazzling collection of landscapes and portraits drawn from the lifework of internationally renowned photographer Fonville Winans (1911- 1992) grants readers the opportunity to see his memorable photographs of the people- from oystermen to beauty queens- and the places- from salt mines to cane fields- that exemplify the Pelican State's enchanting culture and ecology. Featuring more than 100 black-and-white photographs spanning Winans' career, this book showcases his eye for authenticity as he captures a wide array of subjects, from politicians to ordinary citizens, and exotic locales to classic Louisiana landscapes. Providing commentary and historical background, Cyril E. Vetter contextualizes Winans' popular images of the state's icons, including Huey P. Long and Edwin Edwards; depictions of festival revelers and fishing rodeos; and glimpses into the Creole and Cajun communities that skirted the Gulf Coast. Yet the photographer's most critical legacy, as Vetter contends in a new introduction, may lie in his scenes of swamps and seascapes that either no longer exist or are currently threatened with extinction. Both nostalgic and refreshing, the perceptive and intriguing images found in Fonville Winans' Louisiana feature the state at its best, as a place of diversity and distinction.

For more than 30 years now, American photographer Roger Ballen (born 1950) has been shooting portraits of the impoverished white population of rural South Africa. Likened to the work of master documentarians Walker Evans and Diane Arbus, Ballen's controversial photographs can be brutal, funny, tender and appalling. His day laborers and transients eek out a seemingly wretched existence in the country's so-called Platteland--a hermetically sealed world rarely captured on film. Ballen shoots exclusively in black and white, and portrays his subjects against the backdrop of their own living spaces, whose spartan interiors he transforms into claustrophobic, almost surrealistic stage sets, creating sculptural tableaux with wire, dilapidated furniture, animals and drawings. Published on the occasion of a retrospective at the M xFC;nchner Stadtmuseum, this monograph explores Ballen's extraordinarily expressive brand of photographic mythmaking.

On the morning of July 30, 1883, President Chester A. Arthur embarked on a trip of historic proportions. His destination was Yellowstone National Park, established by an act of Congress only eleven years earlier. No sitting president had ever traveled this far west. Arthur's host and primary guide would be Philip H. Sheridan, the famed Union general. Also slated to join the expedition was a young photographer, Frank Jay Haynes. This elegant--and fascinating--book showcases Haynes's remarkable photographic album from their six-week journey.

A premier nineteenth-century landscape photographer, F. Jay Haynes, as he was known professionally, originally compiled the leather-bound album as a commemorative piece. As only six copies are known to exist, it has rarely been seen. The album's 104 images are accompanied by captions written by General Sheridan's brother, Colonel Michael V. Sheridan, who wrote daily dispatches that were distributed by the Associated Press.

In his informative introduction, historian Frank H. Goodyear III provides background about the excursion and explains the historic and aesthetic significance of Haynes's photographs. He then re-creates Arthur's journey by reintroducing Haynes's stunning images--along with Sheridan's original captions--including views of the Tetons and other landmarks; portraits of President Arthur, General Sheridan, and fellow travelers engaged in activities along the route; and images of the Shoshone and Arapaho leaders who gathered to greet the visiting party.

Published on the occasion of the reopening of the Haynes Photography Shop in Yellowstone, "A President in Yellowstone" offers a unique entry into the park's storied past.

A magisterial study of celebrated photographer Walker Evans Walker Evans (1903-75) was a great American artist photographing people and places in the United States in unforgettable ways. He is known for his work for the Farm Security Administration, addressing the Great Depression, but what he actually saw was the diversity of people and the damage of the long Civil War. In Walker Evans, renowned art historian Svetlana Alpers explores how Evans made his distinctive photographs. Delving into a lavish selection of Evans's work, Alpers uncovers rich parallels between his creative approach and those of numerous literary and cultural figures, locating Evans within the wide context of a truly international circle. Alpers demonstrates that Evans's practice relied on his camera choices and willingness to edit multiple versions of a shot, as well as his keen eye and his distant straight-on view of visual objects. Illustrating the vital role of Evans's dual love of text and images, Alpers places his writings in conversation with his photographs. She brings his techniques into dialogue with the work of a global cast of important artists-from Flaubert and Baudelaire to Elizabeth Bishop and William Faulkner-underscoring how Evans's travels abroad in such places as France and Cuba, along with his expansive literary and artistic tastes, informed his quintessentially American photographic style. A magisterial account of a great twentieth-century artist, Walker Evans urges us to look anew at the act of seeing the world-to reconsider how Evans saw his subjects, how he saw his photographs, and how we can see his images as if for the first time.

When Ziggy played The Marquee Club in Soho, London, in October 1973, most of those invited to the small venue did not realise that this would be the last performance David Bowie would ever give as Ziggy Stardust. Terry O'Neill, celebrated photographer, was given unprecedented access to document the event. O'Neill captured Bowie and his crew backstage as they went through costume changes, and Bowie transformed into the character he'd soon put to rest. On stage, dodging television cameras and lights, O'Neill snapped the incredible stage presence for which Bowie and his crew had become renowned. O'Neill remembers of Bowie: "He became a character on stage. As much as a person takes a role in a play for the West End or on Broadway, learning the lines, putting on the costumes - this was, I think, the way Bowie treated his stage. This night at the Marquee, I witnessed a modern-day Hamlet - and it was Ziggy Stardust". Award-winning music writer Daniel Rachel interviews key contributors of the day, including O Neill, Ava Cherry, Amanda Lear and Geoff MacCormack along with new insights and memories from fans who were in the audience who played witness to this incredible moment.

The remarkable photographs in Peoples of the Plateau capture the lives of Pacific Northwest Indians at the turn of the twentieth century - and at a turning point in their own history.The Columbia River Plateau, in the interior Pacific Northwest, was populated for centuries by the Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Cayuse Indians. By the late nineteenth century, after the U.S. government had confined these peoples to a single reservation, their lives began to change irrevocably. Major Lee Moorhouse, a businessman and former militia officer, served as an Indian agent during this period. Believing that the Indians he encountered were a ""dying race,"" Moorhouse was driven to collect their artifacts and, for posterity, take their photographs. Although he was not a professional photographer, Moorhouse produced more than 9,000 glass-plate negatives, one-third with Indians as his subjects. Although his works to some degree reflect a stereotypical view, they are an invaluable aid for tribal researchers and historians because they identify their subjects by name. This book marks the first major examination of Moorhouse and his work. Featuring eighty exquisite plates, it not only showcases Moorhouse's extensive photographs but also tells the story of the man - about whom little is known - and of the world in which he lived and worked.

In 1879 two Englishmen, writer Samuel Nugent Townshend and photographer John George Hyde, set out for a pleasant Indian summer on a tour of the American West. The duo documented their travels by steamship and train, through Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago, across the Missouri to the ""new state of Kansas"" and the beginning of the western lands and business opportunities that were to become the focus of their narrative. Reprinted here with critical notes and introduction, Our Indian Summer in the Far West offers an enlightening - and often entertaining - perspective on an early moment in the growth of capitalism and industry in the American West. Originally published as a photographic travelogue and guide to British investment in the American West, Townshend and Hyde's account is both idiosyncratic and emblematic of its time. Interested in the West's economic and environmental potential, the two men focused on farming in Kansas, railroads and mining in Colorado, a bear hunt in New Mexico, and ranching in Texas. The sojourners' own foibles also enter the narrative: alerted to the difficulty of finding a hotel with a bath, the two Victorians took along a portable bathtub made of India rubber. Their words and pictures speak volumes about contemporary attitudes toward race, empire, and the future of civilization. An introduction by coeditor Alex Hunt provides background on the creators and the travelogue genre. The recovery and republication of this extremely rare volume, an artifact of the Victorian American West, make available an important primary document of a brief but pivotal historical moment connecting the American West and the British Empire.

In 1965, photographer Jerry Schatzberg, already well-established in the field due to his fashion and portrait photography for various publications, such as Vogue, Esquire and Life, listened to Bob Dylan for the first time. He had been hearing about the singer for close to three years; two friends were especially dogged and would ask him every time they spoke if he had heard the music yet. Finally, feeling obligated to them for their persistency, he listened and understood immediately why Dylan was inspiring such passionate excitement. Shortly thereafter, Schatzberg was photographing a job in his studio and had some fortuitous company. Famed music journalist Al Aronowitz and disc jockey Scott Ross were discussing Dylan and a recent performance they had seen of his. Half listening to their conversation, he volunteered that he'd like to photograph the singer if given the chance. Dylan's new wife (one of the friends mentioned above) called the following day and gave him an open invitation to the studio where he was currently recording 'Highway 61 Revisited'. Excited and curious, Schatzberg set off the very next day for the studio, exactly six days after the seminal Newport Folk Festival set where Dylan went electric and was collectively booed. Schatzberg received a warm welcome from the singer, who immediately sat him down to listen to what he had been recording that day. Dylan gave him free rein of the studio once he started shooting and the images that emerged from that day make obvious the comfortable and relaxed atmosphere that was already brewing between photographer and subject. Considering Dylan's almost-universal dislike of journalists (and by extension photographers), this was a completely unprecedented situation, one that Schatzberg took seriously. That almost-instant trust and rapport quickly grew into a friendship and they are part of the reason Schatzberg's sittings with Dylan work so successfully and are so important. Dylan is relaxed, he's funny, he takes the props that the photographer gives him and has fun with them - he's obviously not taking himself too seriously. Working and socialising together, Schatzberg would eventually do nine more photo shoots with Dylan from 1965-6, arguably the singer's most creative period, and capture the (now) Nobel laureate during one of the most pivotal moments in music history. Part of their uniqueness is their basic broad range of intimate and public locations: music and photography studios, live performances and street portraits. But more than that, each session (including the one for possibly his greatest album, 'Blonde on Blonde') says something different about Dylan, the man and the musician, and manages to perfectly capture the many facets of one of the most unique, complex and mysterious individuals of all time.

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.

Obie encompasses a decades-long sweep of his life’s work and covers the globe. It is part coffee-table book, part travelogue, part autobiography and part storybook, with a bit of philosophy thrown in for good measure. It’s a great photographer, documenter and character looking back through his ever-increasing archive (built up over 60 years) and choosing the images that resonate the most, and which have a story to tell. Obie captures the rare, the human, the wonderful, the cosmic even. And he doesn’t just take pictures; he also meticulously records it all in words. His descriptions are often as intriguing, as beautiful or as crazy as his photographs.

Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer (1851-1934) was one of the premier figures in landscape writing and design at the turn of the twentieth century, a moment when the amateur pursuit of gardening and the increasingly professionalized landscape design field were beginning to diverge. This intellectual biography--the first in-depth study of the versatile critic and author--reveals Van Rensselaer's vital role in this moment in the history of landscape architecture.

Van Rensselaer was one of the new breed of American art and architecture critics, closely examining the nature of her profession and bringing a disciplined scholarship to the craft. She considered herself a professional, leading the effort among women in the Gilded Age to claim the titles of artist, architect, critic, historian, and journalist. Thanks to the resources of her wealthy mercantile family, she had been given a sophisticated European education almost unheard of for a woman of her time. Her close relationship with Frederick Law Olmsted influenced her ideas on landscape gardening, and her interest in botany and geology shaped the ideas upon which her philosophy and art criticism were based. She also studied the works of Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, Henry David Thoreau, and many other nineteenth-century scientists and nature writers, which influenced her general belief in the relationship between science and the imagination.

Her cosmopolitan education and elevated social status gave her, much like her contemporary Edith Wharton, access to the homes and gardens of the upper classes. This allowed her to mingle with authors, artists, and affluent patrons of the arts and enabled her to write with familiarity about architecture and landscape design. Identifying over 330 previously unattributed editorials and unsigned articles authored by Van Rensselaer in the influential journal "Garden and Forest"--for which she was the sole female editorial voice--Judith Major offers insight into her ideas about the importance of botanical nomenclature, the similarities between landscape gardening and idealist painting, design in nature, and many other significant topics. Major's critical examination of Van Rensselaer's life and writings--which also includes selections from her correspondence--details not only her influential role in the creation of landscape architecture as a discipline but also her contribution to a broader public understanding of the arts in America.

In this heartfelt tribute to the spirit and people of Oklahoma, one of the state's most distinguished photojournalists shows that he is equally talented as a photographer and writer. Showcasing black-and-white photographs and fifty short essays, "Shooting from the Hip "portrays Oklahoma's people, animals, lifestyles, landscapes, and weather in all their diversity. Cowboys, kids, tornados, trucks, rattlesnakes, fiddlers--J. Don Cook has seen them all, and through his poignant essays, he allows us not only to see them but to understand them as he does.

After a hardscrabble boyhood, Cook became a photographer at the age of twenty when he took a job with the "Ada Evening News" in southern Oklahoma. His first assignment was to photograph six abandoned puppies at the city dump--an apt foreshadowing of his career, for he has always been drawn to the poor, the disenfranchised, and the downtrodden.

In addition to the brief essays that accompany his photographs, Cook shares some of his own life experiences in a moving introduction and epilogue. His unsparing account of some of the worst moments of his difficult youth and his meditations on how he used these hardships to become an artist can only be called inspirational. "At seven I didn't know any better," he writes, "and believed I had few choices. But I quickly learned to cope--to feint, to dodge, to hide, to read, to run, to survive, to make art--and I did it all, shooting from the hip."

J. Don Cook, a resident of Oklahoma City, is an award-winning photojournalist, artist, poet, and business entrepreneur. Nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize and named News Photographer of the Year seven times by the Oklahoma Press Association, his photographs have appeared in such magazines as National Geographic and Time. James Garner, the acclaimed film and television actor, is best known for his leading roles in the television series Maverick and the The Rockford Files. He is a native of Norman, Oklahoma.