The English illustrator Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was in every respect a modern woman. For the publication of her plant collections she used the latest technology, the recently invented cyanotype. In 1843 she used the process to create the first photo book in history, with images of breathtaking beauty and originality which often look like modern art. At first Anna Atkins worked for and with her father, the zoologist John George Children; later she chose the objects for her scientific compositions herself: algae and ferns. Atkins placed them on light-sensitive paper that turned dark blue in water after being developed, with the exception of the places that had been covered by the plants. Initially alone, and then with her friend Anne Dixon, she produced well over 10,000 copies of her photograms and assembled them in several books like albums. Today these rare copies are regarded as treasures and are preserved in museums and libraries.

The tension between social reform photography and photojournalism is examined through this study of the life and work of German emigre Hansel Mieth (1909-1998), who made an unlikely journey from migrant farm worker to Life photographer. She was the second woman in that role, after Margaret Bourke-White. Unlike her colleagues, Mieth was a working-class reformer with a deep disdain for Life's conservatism and commercialism. In fact, her work often subverted Life's typical representations of women, workers, and minorities. Some of her most compelling photo essays used skillful visual storytelling to offer fresh views on controversial topics: birth control, vivisection, labor unions, and Japanese American internment during the Second World War. Her dual role as reformer and photojournalist made her a desirable commodity at Life in the late 1930s and early 40s, but this role became untenable in Cold War America, when her career was cut short. Today Mieth's life and photographs stand as compelling reminders of the vital yet overlooked role of immigrant women in twentieth-century photojournalism. Women, Workers, and Race in LIFE Magazine draws upon a rich array of primary sources, including Mieth's unpublished memoir, oral histories, and labor archives. The book seeks to unravel and understand the multi-layered, often contested stories of the photographer's life and work. It will be of interest to scholars of photography history, women's studies, visual culture, and media history.

A festival of Indian folk rituals and costumes bursting with colour, captured by renowned photographer Charles Fréger, the creator of a distinctive and powerful new genre of portrait photography. Internationally renowned photographer Charles Fréger continues to explore global traditions and cultures, by celebrating the powerful visual aspects of Indian folk culture and religious ritual. India is the home to a myriad of local traditions, legends and religions, each with their own festivals, rites and rituals. Celebrations burst with vivid colours and often wildly exuberant costumes, some representing gods and goddesses, others legendary heroes from Sanskrit epics such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. In Charles Fréger’s photographs, those who honour local cultural traditions are represented in single or group portraits, represented against carefully chosen landscapes and backdrops, from the heart of festivals and celebrations. Fréger’s unmistakable style of portraiture allows us to admire the complexity of their adornments – masks and headdresses, costumes and body paint – and to consider the abundance of imagination that expresses India’s countless stories and characters, both human and divine. This spectacular gathering of warrior figures, deities, musicians, tigers, mahouts, epic characters and their avatars is accompanied by texts setting the huge variety of eclectic costumes in context, and describing the local festivals and rituals. This compelling sequence of new portraits will enthral those with an interest in folk traditions, as well as the followers of this internationally acclaimed photographer.

An introduction to the work of the celebrated fashion photographer. An experimenter and innovator, Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969) produced an extensive body of work including portraits and nudes, celebrity portraiture and advertising campaigns - but it is his fashion photography for which he is best known. Having fled Paris during World War II, Blumenfeld forged a stellar path in New York, where he worked for Harper's Bazaar, American Vogue, Helena Rubinstein, L'Oreal and Elizabeth Arden. Discover Blumenfeld's masterful work through sixty full-page reproductions in this title in the Photofile series. The curator Emmanuelle de l'Ecotais contributes an introduction.

"Local or visitor, London courses through your body as if its rainbow-coloured system of underground veins is somehow intrinsically linked to your own." ~ Chris Holmes Often waking before dawn, photographer Chris Holmes captures rare moments of solitude and calm as the city of London yawns, stretches and begins its day. His high-contrast scenes depict the miniature dramas unfolding all around us, obscured by the hectic pace of metropolitan life. Moving to London as an adult, Chris fell in love with the city in tandem with his development as a photographer and shoots his adopted home as both a romantic insider and an impartial admirer. Hidden in Chaos pairs Chris's cinematic images with the words of 18 poets of various backgrounds, adding more layers of texture and meaning to the complex but devoted relationship that London's residents and visitors have with the city's many faces. London's gray and glow, its daily ebb and flow, are celebrated, questioned and contemplated in this visual and poetic tribute. Includes poems by Elena Ashton, Shez Chung Blake, Troy Cabida, Laura Corns, Paul Cree, Caroline Druitt, George Duggan, Sam El-Bahja, Tom Gill, Bizhan Govindji, Imogen Hudson-Clayton, Danny Martin, Louise McStravick, Aaliyah Orridge, Astra Papachristodoulou, Abdul Patel, Ben See, and Janay Stephenson.

The title Present Perfect ambiguously relates to an “ideal present� on the one hand culminating in a “perfect� moment, and on the other hand to the English tense referring to a state or an action that began in the past and continues to the present. An allusion to the photography’s utopian attempt to enshrine the present moment, when it is only ever able to capture a moment in the past. Echoing a plethora of attentive everyday observations, Eidinger’s photographs capture oftentimes paradoxical scenes of mundane life including people’s ambivalent behaviour. In a society of singularities, reality has become a colossal photomontage. Behind it lies an abysmal world entangled in contradictions. Eidinger depicts the lonely emptiness of modern life’s non-places, provisionalities, garishly out-of-place oddities. His confrontations with insufferable incongruities turn into symbolic images of an era of exhaustion. Present Perfect assembles new images captured with his mobile phone, as well as images taken with a reflex camera, tracing Eidinger’s photographic self-explorations over the past 20 years.

To celebrate the acquisition of the archive of distinguished artist Tom Phillips, the Bodleian Library asked the artist to assemble and design a series of books drawing on his themed collection of over 50,000 photographic postcards. These encompass the first half of the twentieth century, a period in which, thanks to the ever cheaper medium of photography, ordinary people could afford to own portraits of themselves. Each of the books in the series contains two hundred images chosen from a visually rich vein of social history. Their covers also feature thematically linked paintings, specially created for each title, from Phillips's signature work, " A Humument."
"Women & Hats" explores the remarkable range found in the world of millinery, from outrageous Edwardian creations to the inventive austerities of World War II. Each of these unique and visually stunning books give a rich glimpse of forgotten times and will be greatly valued by art and history lovers alike.

Ernst Haas's color works reveal the photographer's remarkable genius and remind us on every page why we love New York. When Haas moved from Vienna to New York City in 1951, he left behind a war-torn continent and a career producing black-and-white images. For Haas, the new medium of color photography was the only way to capture a city pulsing with energy and humanity. These images demonstrate Haas's tremendous virtuosity and confidence with Kodachrome film and the technical challenges of color printing. Unparalleled in their depth and richness of color, brimming with lyricism and dramatic tension, these images reveal a photographer at the height of his career.

"These photos are stunning, bittersweet visions of a past shared by all of us." - Tom Hanks. "Brian Hamill is best known as a still photographer and a photojournalist. But I've always regarded him - first and foremost - as a master portraitist. And this book bears that out - capturing as it does, the many-faceted phenomenon that was John and Yoko - artists, lovers, cultural comrades and - most elusively - business partners. Behind his camera, Hamill is something of a phenomenon himself." - Richard Price John Lennon's life, death and music shaped the world. His reputation as a philanthropist, political activist and pacifist influenced millions worldwide. If Elvis was King, Lennon was his rightful successor - and fittingly, several images in this collection of both classic and unseen photos show him wearing a diamond-studded 'Elvis' pin over his heart, in homage to his forefather on the throne of Rock 'n' Roll. John Lennon is seen here in several sessions in New York, performing on stage, relaxed at home and walking on the street with Yoko Ono. Renowned celebrity photojournalist Brian Hamill delivers his own insider view of this Beatles icon, through intense, intimate photographic portraits and insightful text. Whether Lennon is dominating the stage, posing on the roof of the Dakota building, or relaxing with Yoko Ono, Hamill's photography takes this quasi-mythical figure from the world of Rock 'n' Roll and shows him as the man he really was. "Brian looked at the John Lennon who had become an icon and saw instead a familiar face. He saw a working-class hero like those that built the City of New York. And so when John Lennon came to live in New York, Brian captured him as a New Yorker, in the joyous images that you will find in this book." - Pete Hamill "Lennon, one of the most famous men in human history, wanted to live as one among many. Of course, he hit it off with Hamill. The guy that flew so high needed some oxygen. Hamill is fresh air. His folio of Lennon images shows Lennon focused, present, but edgy, never relaxed." - Alec Baldwin

Published to coincide with a career-defining retrospective at Hastings Museum and Gallery in January 2022, In Sussex: Bob Mazzer is a far-reaching collection showing Mazzer doing what he does best in the town he came to call home. Hastings, St Leonards-on-Sea and the stunning surrounding countryside are all on show in this carefully curated selection of images. With a foreword by Eamonn McCabe.

Contrasting ultramodernist photographs taken over a thirty-year period constitute the first book by one of the most celebrated photographers working today. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1963, and first coming into prominence in the early 1990s with his iconic photographs of Donald Judd's works and architecture, Todd Eberle's photographs document the disparate images that make up American architecture, landscapes, and society and are united by a minimalist aesthetic that runs through his work. Whether his approach to a particular subject is earnest (an unfurling flag) or kitsch (the Vegas strip), Eberle brings to his photographs a heightened sense of precision, symmetry, and proportion. The Empire of Space is a lavish look at Eberle's career and features many rare and never-before-published portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and interiors. In the spirit of Walker Evans, Eberle creates an enduring and poetic portrait of America, the arts, and architecture through thoughtfully contrasting and analogous photographs. This exciting and definitive book on Eberle's illustrious legacy is sure to rank among the most important publications to mix modernism, minimalism, and photography.

In her feminist inquiry into aesthetics and the sublime, Claire Raymond reinterprets the work of the American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958-1981). Placing Woodman in a lineage of women artists beginning with nineteenth-century photographers Julia Margaret Cameron and Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden, Raymond compels a reconsideration of Woodman's achievement in light of the gender dynamics of the sublime. Raymond argues that Woodman's photographs of decrepit architecture allegorically depict the dissolution of the frame, a dissolution Derrida links to theories of the sublime in Kant's Critique of Judgement. Woodman's self-portraits, Raymond contends, test the parameters of the gaze, a reading that departs from the many analyses of Woodman's work that emphasize her dramatic biography. Woodman is here revealed as a conceptually sophisticated artist whose deployment of allegory and allusion engages a broader debate about Enlightenment aesthetics, and the sublime.

In Instanton, photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn presents a series of images, most of which have never been published previously. Corbijn gained his fame and reputation with his portraits of famous figures including Nick Cave, Tom Waits, The Rolling Stones, Marlene Dumas, Gerhard Richter, Clint Eastwood, Kate Moss and a host of other influential musicians, artists, filmmakers, models and designers. But over the years, Corbijn has also captured a wealth of intriguing images on his mobile phone. Instanton brings together a wide selection of these snapshots from his private life, as well as shots taken whilst travelling, recording 'the profane and the profound'.

Treated for a rare tumor, the young photographer of Polish origin has transformed her illness and her body, scrutinized by science, into a remarkable work of art. In this work Izabela Jurcewicz deals with traumatic memories written in the body on a cellular level. She was an interorgan tumor patient, one of 300 cases worldwide, where science had few answers to the cause and how to proceed. This experience of a patient being 'on view', researched and scanned, coined her relationship with the camera and ways of seeing a human. These medical experiences, especially surgeries, live as a photographic negative in her body and life, which henceforth produce images, including the ones that form this book. In the act of return, Izabela replaces the invasive surgical instrument with her camera as a receptive device to register, merge and enable a ritual of healing. To synchronize the level of knowledge in her body and mind, she reperforms the trauma under her conditions and rewrites her memories, aiming to change them at a cellular level. At the same time this work gives her perspective to see and support her father, who at that time is going through intensive cancer treatment. The project highlights the process of emphatic engagement that brings dimensionality to the body and self again and grows a capacity to join with the suffering of others. "By rewriting her story in a photographic face-to-face, by taking back her body and telling the story on her own terms, by creating a link with suffering but also a link with life and with others (in this instance with her own father, treated for cancer), the work of Izabel Jurcewicz deploys the full power of enhanced auto-fiction." - Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents 2020

American street photographer Leon Levinstein is much admired within the photographic community, but little known outside of it. Solo exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada in 1995 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2010 brought him to the attention of many, but his dynamic and original work is yet to achieve the recognition it deserves. Levinstein's fearless and unsentimental black and white images, whether shot in New York City, Coney Island, Haiti, Mexico or India, possess in Metropolitan Museum of Art Curator of Photographs Jeff Rosenheim's words, "graphic virtuosity - seen in raw, expressive gestures and seemingly monumental bodies - balanced by an unusual compassion for his off-beat subjects." In 1975, at the age of 65, Levinstein received a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His intention, in his own words, was to photograph "as wide a spectrum of the American scene as my experience and vision will allow." This long-awaited book fulfils this ambitious goal.

'I spend a lot of time on Google Earth looking for places with an interesting or unusual aesthetic. My shooting days are usually quite simple. I shoot at sunrise and at sunset to capture the best light.' - Sebastien Nagy Award-winning Brussels-based photographer Sebastien Nagy has travelled all over the world, capturing bridges, towers, houses, roads, monuments and other structures from above with his drone camera. In a spectacular series of images, he shows the architectural footprint that humans leave behind on earth. From Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and from the 'cycling through water trail' in Belgium to the Dubai Frame in the United Arab Emirates, Nagy invariably captures these well-known and lesser-known structures at the perfect time of day, as if they are all bathed in golden light. The approximately 120 photos are divided into four themes: Water, City, Desert and Nature.

Don McCullin is one of four new titles being published in Autumn 2007 in Thames & Hudson's acclaimed 'Photofile' series. Each book brings together the best work of the world's greatest photographers in an attractive format and at an easily affordable price. Handsome and collectable, the books are printed to the highest standards. Each one contains some sixty full-page reproductions printed in superb duotone, together with a critical introduction and a full bibliography.

In 2009, Bulgari entered into a partnership with Save the Children, and its contribution to the charity has now reached $35 million. United in solidarity to improve the lives of some of the world's most vulnerable and deprived children, Bulgari and Save the Children are joined by dozens of the most celebrated figures from the worlds of entertainment, sports, and music in Stop Think Give. Over the years renowned photographer Fabrizio Ferri has shot celebrities from all over the world wearing a Save the Children ring and pendant, often with hands held aloft to symbolize putting a stop to child poverty. The celebrity protagonists, each of whom participated in the project on a pro-bono basis, include Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody, Meg Ryan, Luke Evans, Oliver Stone, Pedro Almodovar, Isabella Rossellini, Marina Abramovic, Sting and Jessica Biel. Large in format, with intimate timeless portraits, this stunning work is a fitting document of a most worthwhile cause.

Overgrown industrial complexes, disused asylums, abandoned palaces and monasteries feature in this latest incendiary book from Carpet Bombing Culture. Beauty in Decay - The Art of Urban Exploration broke new ground in depicting the global phenomenon of Urban Exploration (Urbex) when it published in 2010. Author RomanyWG has again tirelessly tracked down dozens of new locations to amaze viewers of Beauty in Decay II, a further peek behind the Urbex curtain. Urban explorers find the beauty layers of history, multi-hued peeling paint, antique objects, ancient initials in the dust and the other physical manifestations of memory that abandoned, impermanent urban spaces manifest. For Beauty in Decay RomanyWG has gone behind the lens to give us a further peak behind the Urbex curtain. This time the HDR is paired down and the spectacle ramped up.