At the turn of the twentieth century, the photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky undertook a quest to document an empire that was undergoing rapid change due to industrialization and the building of railroads. Between 1903 and 1916 Prokudin-Gorsky, who developed a pioneering method of capturing color images on glass plates, scoured the Russian Empire with the patronage of Nicholas II. Intrepidly carrying his cumbersome and awkward camera from the western borderlands over the Volga River to Siberia and central Asia, he created a singular record of Imperial Russia. In 1918 Prokudin-Gorsky escaped an increasingly chaotic, violent Russia and regained nearly 2,000 of his bulky glass negatives. His subsequent peripatetic existence before settling in Paris makes his collection's survival all the more miraculous. The U.S. Library of Congress acquired Prokudin-Gorsky's collection in 1948, and since then it has become a touchstone for understanding pre-revolutionary Russia. Now digitized and publicly available, his images are a sensation in Russia, where people visit websites dedicated to them. William Craft Brumfield-photographer, scholar, and the leading authority on Russian architecture in the West-began working with Prokudin-Gorsky's photographs in 1985. He curated the first public exhibition of them in the United States and has annotated the entire collection. In Journeys through the Russian Empire, Brumfield-who has spent decades traversing Russia and photographing buildings and landscapes in their various stages of disintegration or restoration-juxtaposes Prokudin-Gorsky's images against those he took of the same buildings and areas. In examining the intersections between his own photography and that of Prokudin-Gorsky, Brumfield assesses the state of preservation of Russia's architectural heritage and calls into question the nostalgic assumptions of those who see Prokudin-Gorsky's images as the recovery of the lost past of an idyllic, pre-Soviet Russia. This lavishly illustrated volume-which features some 400 stunning full-color images of ancient churches and mosques, railways and monasteries, towns and remote natural landscapes-is a testament to two brilliant photographers whose work prompts and illuminates, monument by monument, questions of conservation, restoration, and cultural identity and memory.

The photographer Achim Lippoth (*1968 in Ilshofen) discovered his subject-childhood- while studying art. Geschichten uber das Kindsein / Storytelling presents a comprehensive view of Lippoth's practice. The sensitivity of his photographs make it possible to understand the world of children, and their naturalness is touching, taking viewers back to their own childhood experiences. With great respect for their emotions, their frankness, and their dreams, Lippoth shifts the focus to his young protagonists. Here, adults take on the roles of extras, at most. Lippoth's visual vocabulary does not include staging his photographs, nevertheless, the children's poses anticipate their eventual arrival into the world of adulthood. Far from reinforcing cliched roles or being patronizing, Lippoth's photographs, through their careful use of light and captivating closeups, tell stories of feeling carefree in childhood as well as the stories of the families and of belonging.Exhibition: 19.3.-11.6.2017, Erholungshaus Leverkusen

Underage is an award-winning photographic documentation aimed at understanding the minds of underage male prostitutes in Thailand in a most candid and visceral way. Photographer Ohm Phanphiroj uncovers the life, choice, and consequences that these young boys are experiencing. Underage prostitution results from several reasons, from being molested by family members and/or relatives, poverty, being a runaway, and drug addiction.Underage has been exhibited worldwide, among others at Newspace Center for Photography (2011), Sommerblut International Art Festival (2011), Noordelicht Photo Festival (2012), The Kinsey Institute (2013), Tally Beck Contemporary (2014), Miami Art Festival (2014), and Documentary Arts Asia (2014).The photographic project received multiple awards, i.e. Lightwork (2012), Newspace Center for Photography (2012), Documentary Arts Asia (2014), Columbia College fellowship (2015), Noor-Nikon (2015), Society for Photographic Education (2015).

Where jetliners used to take off every few minutes, nearly everything has ground to a halt. The bright blue sky above the tarmac is serene, the contrails have disappeared, the endless corridors are eerily deserted. In April 2020, at the height of the first lockdown of the coronavirus pandemic, the photographer Marc Krause explored Frankfurt Airport with his analogue camera to capture the strange calm of this "non-place." Without the hectic hustle and bustle of pre-pandemic times, he noticed things that are usually drowned out by the rushing crowds: the geometric lines of the constructivist architecture, the changing patterns of light and shade, the junk left behind by travellers in vast halls that would be teeming with thousands of people on a normal day. Offering a fascinating glimpse of a seemingly surreal world, this publication is an unsettling testimony to a historic moment in time and a powerful photo book that leaves viewers torn between melancholy and hopeful longing. Text in English and German.

In 2009 Karolina Gembara moved to Delhi to learn photography and stayed for seven years. When we lie down, grasses grow from us, comprises photographs taken during this period, as Gembara developed a love/hate relationship with the city, borne out of a combination of fascination, homesickness and a feeling of transience. During her time in the city, Gembara moved around frequently and found it difficult to establish a home, or a place where she felt truly comfortable. She met many in a similar position - housing was temporary and even romantic relationships were somehow superficial and makeshift.

Noel Kerns is a Texas-based photographer who specializes in capturing ghost towns, decommissioned military bases, and industrial abandonments by night. His images incorporate two distinct photographic techniques: time-exposure by the natural light of a full moon, and the artful application of artificial light, vividly painted into the scene while the cameras shutter is open. Light-painting is all about vision, says Kerns. Or more accurately, pre-vision. Its the ability to imagine the scene you want to emerge from the darkness, and then to execute it in such a way as to match or surpass what you imagined. NIGHTWATCH: PAINTING WITH LIGHT is the first book from Kerns, one of the worlds foremost practitioners of the art of light-painting. Join him as he ventures into the darkness of the American Southwest, exploring remote desert ghost towns under a full moon, or prowling the abandoned, seemingly post-apocalyptic structures of Americas industrial wastelands. In his photographs, Kerns captures the world surreal: flowing cloud-streaks in a night sky, the laser-like light trails of cars racing by on a highway, a raging ocean shoreline rendered eerily calm through long exposure.

This is a stunning collection of photographs - many never before published - celebrating the remarkable talent of Herb Ritts. "Herb Ritts" traces the life and career of the iconic photographer through a compelling selection of both renowned and previously unpublished, photographs and two insightful essays. Herb Ritts (1952-2002) was a Los Angeles-based photographer who established an international reputation for distinctive images of fashion models, nudes, and celebrity portraits. During the 1980s and 1990s, Ritts was sought out by leading fashion designers such as Armani, Gianfranco Ferre, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Valentino, and Versace, as well as magazine editors from "GQ", "Rolling Stone", and "Vanity Fair", among others, to lend glamour to their products and layouts. Largely self-taught, Ritts developed his own style, one that often made use of the California light and landscape and helped to separate his work from his New York-based peers. From the late 1970s until his untimely death from AIDS in 2002, Ritts' ability to create photographs that successfully bridged the gap between art and commerce was not only a testament to the power of his imagination and technical skill, but also marked the synergistic union between art, popular culture, and business that followed in the wake of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

This adorable and hilarious collection of dog photographs captures our furry best friends anticipating, catching -- some more successfully than others -- and enjoying a scrumptious tidbit. Photographer Christian Vieler caught dozens of eager dogs at one of their favorite moments -- treat time. From a tenacious terrier to a goofy golden retriever, these often hilarious and surprisingly beautiful photographs capture each dog's unique personality in a way any dog owner will recognize and that all dog lovers will enjoy!

Photographer, stylist and fashion editor Ferry van der Nat has worked for numerous fashion magazines and brands. Under the name Mr Polaroid, van der Nat began taking strong sculptural polaroids of male models. What started as a personal project evolved into a great collection of images and a celebration of male beauty. Mr Polaroid's first ever monograph contains over 200 of his best photographs. With contributions by Gert Jonkers (Fantastic Man) and Alan Prada (l'Uomo Vogue).

""In the Kitchen "explores family life, youth culture, and coming of age. . . . The kitchen is the place in the house where our daily dramas are enacted. It's where, together, we make a mess of things and do our best to clean it all up."--Dona Schwartz

"Brilliantly observed and captured vignettes of contemporary adolescence, organized around a single room."--Alison Nordstrom, curator of photography, George Eastman House

Dona Schwartz, based in Minneapolis, has shown her photographs at many international venues, including the National Portrait Gallery, London, England; Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, Oregon; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, Canada; the New Orleans Art Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana; and FotoFest 2010 Biennial, Houston, Texas.

With their warm feel of a family documentary, her images dislocate viewers, who find themselves suddenly trapped in the intimacy of others and required to take a stance on uncomfortable realities that remain veiled in society. Abril combines photography with other multimedia tools, such as video and graphic design, in a work in progress which La Fa brica attests to in its PHotoBolsillo collection.

Bologna Portraits is the portrait of one of the most charming and least well-known Italian cities portrayed through the faces of the people who live there today. It started during the artist's many stays in the town. Discovering Bologna little by little, Jacopo Benassi took pictures, like a sort of notebook, of the faces of the most interesting people he met during his time there. After a few months he already had a large portfolio of people which, like in a mosaic, built a bigger portrait of the whole city today. Bologna is probably the best-kept secret of the Italian cities with a great past. Large-scale tourism has never affected it, but in recent years it has been discovered by a growing group of sophisticated travellers passionate about art, culture, cinema and food. The portraits are a mix of young artists, writers, minor and great musicians, leading businessmen, famous bar tenders, tailors, professors at the local university (the oldest in the Western world), personalities and international artists such as Nino Migliori and Luigi Ontani. All of them born or living in Bologna. The whole book is a study of real faces that are able to be meaningful and to tell a story, and recall a tradition like the study of faces by Pier Paolo Pasolini in some of his films, or Andy Warhol's Screen Tests. But at the same time, they recall a masterpiece like Un Paese, the book produced by Paul Strand and Cesare Zavattini. The book includes a text by art critic Antonio Grulli.

The photographs in Cotton Rose were taken in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan. Hanzlova strongly resisted the long tradition of Japan travel journals showing a foreign and exotic Japan. She was aided in this by her own history of having left her village in the former Czech Republic for political reasons in 1983. The experience of having been a "foreigner" herself enabled her to step beyond cultural differences to make an intimate portrayal of a people and their own sense of home. Hanzlova's photographic voice has always been a muted and gentle mirror of her sympathetic approach, and in Japan she found a people and a landscape which perfectly suited her language."

A cultural geographer and an art historian offer fresh interpretations of Muybridge’s famous motion studies through the lenses of mobility and race. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed horses in motion, proving that all four hooves leave the ground at once for a split second during full gallop. This was the beginning of Muybridge’s decades-long investigation into instantaneous photography, culminating in his masterpiece Animal Locomotion. Muybridge became one of the most influential photographers of his time, and his stop-motion technique helped pave the way for the motion-picture industry, born a short decade later.   Coauthored by cultural geographer Tim Cresswell and art historian John Ott, this book reexamines the motion studies as historical forms of “mobility,� in which specific forms of motion are given extraordinary significance and accrued value. Through a lively, interdisciplinary exchange, the authors explore how mobility is contextualized within the transformations of movement that marked the nineteenth century and how mobility represents the possibilities of social movement for African Americans. Together, these complementary essays look to Muybridge’s works as interventions in knowledge and experience and as opportunities to investigate larger social ramifications and possibilities.  

Marking the occasion of Didier Vermeiren's eponymous solo exhibition at WIELS in Brussels, this book illuminates the recurrent strategies of repetition, reversal, doubling and inversion that the artist explores in his work Published to mark the occasion of Didier Vermeiren's (b. 1951) eponymous solo exhibition at WIELS in Brussels, Double Exposition takes its name from a photograph by Vermeiren that refers to its own double exposure ("exposition" in French, which also translates as "exhibition"). The title thus evokes the recurrent strategies of repetition, reversal, doubling, and inversion that Vermeiren explores in his work. Conceived by the artist and containing a rich array of his striking photographs, this book also features an in-depth analysis of Vermeiren's most recent sculptures written by long-term commentator on his practice, Michel Gauthier; an essay on the central role of photography in his studio practice by Susana Gallego-Cuesta; and a look at the shifts and continuities in his oeuvre over the past four decades by the exhibition's curator, Zoe Gray. Distributed for Mercatorfonds