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Books > Arts & Architecture > Photography & photographs > Individual photographers
"What is it about a dull yellow metal that drives men to abandon their homes, sell their belongings and cross a continent in order to risk life, limbs and sanity for a dream?" - Sebastiao Salgado When Sebastiao Salgado was finally authorized to visit Serra Pelada in September 1986, having been blocked for six years by Brazil's military authorities, he was ill-prepared to take in the extraordinary spectacle that awaited him on this remote hilltop on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. Before him opened a vast hole, some 200 meters wide and deep, teeming with tens of thousands of barely-clothed men. Half of them carried sacks weighing up to 40 kilograms up wooden ladders, the others leaping down muddy slopes back into the cavernous maw. Their bodies and faces were the color of ochre, stained by the iron ore in the earth they had excavated. After gold was discovered in one of its streams in 1979, Serra Pelada evoked the long-promised El Dorado as the world's largest open-air gold mine, employing some 50,000 diggers in appalling conditions. Today, Brazil's wildest gold rush is merely the stuff of legend, kept alive by a few happy memories, many pained regrets-and Sebastiao Salgado's photographs. Color dominated the glossy pages of magazines when Salgado shot these images. Black and white was a risky path, but the Serra Pelada portfolio would mark a return to the grace of monochrome photography, following a tradition whose masters, from Edward Weston and Brassai to Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, had defined the early and mid-20th century. When Salgado's images reached The New York Times Magazine, something extraordinary happened: there was complete silence. "In my entire career at The New York Times," recalled photo editor Peter Howe, "I never saw editors react to any set of pictures as they did to Serra Pelada." Today, with photography absorbed by the art world and digital manipulation, Salgado's portfolio holds a biblical quality and projects an immediacy that makes them vividly contemporary. The mine at Serra Pelada has been long closed, yet the intense drama of the gold rush leaps out of these images. This book gathers Salgado's complete Serra Pelada portfolio in museum-quality reproductions, accompanied by a foreword by the photographer and an essay by Alan Riding. Also available in a signed and limited Collector's Edition and as an Art Edition.
_______________________ THE FIRST FULL-LENGTH BIOGRAPHY OF LEGENDARY PHOTOGRAPHER LEE MILLER _______________________ 'Lee Miller was an astounding woman, brought memorably to life in this astounding book' - Daily Telegraph 'Does its perplexingly complicated subject more than justice, adding welcome depths and nuances to the familiar legend' - Sunday Times 'A serious and gripping biography from Carolyn Burke' - Boyd Tonkin, Independent _______________________ Lee Miller was one of the most extraordinary photographers of the twentieth century, famous for her portraits and devastating photographs of World War Two, as well as for her legendary beauty. An art student and a Vogue model, she was a close friend of artists such as Picasso, Cocteau, Max Ernst and Paul Eluard, and became a muse of Man Ray and the Parisian surrealists. One of the few female photographers to enter Hitler's Germany, she was the first to access his Munich home and among the first to document the liberation of the concentration camps. Carolyn Burke captures Lee Miller in all her complexity, unveiling the glittering art world of the thirties and forties of which she was a central figure. Meticulously researched, beautifully written, this is an enthralling account of one of the most fascinating women of her era.
Alone every Tuesday with his newborn daughter, Kenny Deuss fielded frequent requests from his partner, Tineke, for photos of the baby when she was away from home. His series of hilariously Photoshopped images of the baby in mock perilous situations began with teasing photographs that showed just how "safe" the baby was. Currently, people from all over the world follow Kenny's adventures with his (now 2) daughters Alix and Aster through his Instagram account “On Adventure with Dad.” In this book he bundles his best photos, supplemented with a large number of never-before-seen images. He also includes 'tips' for dads and dads-to-be with a large dose of his typical dry humour.
In 2002, Tabitha Soren first began photographing a group of minor league draft picks for the Oakland A's-young men coming into the major league farm system straight from high school or college. Since then, she has followed the players through their baseball lives, an alternate reality of long bus rides, on-field injuries, friendships and marriages entered and exited, constant motion, and very hard work, often for very little return. Some of the subjects, like Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton, have gone on to become well-known, respected players at the highest level of the game. Some left baseball to pursue other lines of work, such as selling insurance and coal mining. Others have struggled with poverty and even homelessness. Fifteen years after that first shoot, Fantasy Life portrays a selection of these stories, gathering together a richly textured series of photographs taken on the field and behind the scenes at games, along with commentaries by each of the players and memorabilia from their lives-from kindergarten-age baseball cards to x-rays of player injuries. Dave Eggers contributes a five-part short story that compellingly condenses the roller-coaster ride of the minor-league everyman, from youthful pursuit of stardom through the slog of endless hardscrabble games, to that moment of realization that success may not be just around the corner after all. Additonally, a number of the featured players add their own real-life experiences of trying to make it to "The Show." Together, these elements evoke the enduring spirit of this quintessential American fantasy of making it in the major leagues.
Daniel Meadows is a pioneer of contemporary British documentary practice. His photographs and audio recordings, made over forty-five years, capture the life of England's 'great ordinary'. Challenging the status quo by working collaboratively, he has fashioned from his many encounters a nation's story both magical and familiar. This book includes important work from Meadows' ground-breaking projects, drawing on the archives now held at the Bodleian Library. Fiercely independent, Meadows devised many of his creative processes: he ran a free portrait studio in Manchester's Moss Side in 1972, then travelled 10,000 miles making a national portrait from his converted double-decker the Free Photographic Omnibus, a project he revisited a quarter of a century later. At the turn of the millennium he adopted new 'kitchen table' technologies to make digital stories: 'multimedia sonnets from the people', as he called them. He sometimes returned to those he had photographed, listening for how things were and how they had changed. Through their unique voices he finds a moving and insightful commentary on life in Britain. Then and now. Now and then.
W.R. Trivett (1884-1966), a farmer born in Watauga County, North Carolina, was also a self-taught professional photographer who left behind an invaluable collection of over 400 glass plate negatives taken between 1907 and the late 1940s in the Beech Mountain community of neighboring Avery County. Along with the photographs (over 90 of which are reproduced herein), a collection of Trivett's personal papers survive, revealing very enlightening information about his life in the mountains. This work--the fourth in McFarland's continuing series of Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies--carefully examines Trivett's life and photographs, comparing his work to that of contemporary outside photographers who often produced stereotypical images of mountain people. Through Trivett's images we can, by contrast, see the everyday reality for most people in rural Appalachia.
First we had dogs underwater, then dogs shaking off water... and now dogs soaking up the exhilarating no-holds-barred pleasure of a ride in a car. Photographer Lara Jo Regan began her pet project as a calendar but the response was overwhelming and absolute: her photographs of the cruising canines, taken from incredible perspectives, with tongues hanging and ears flapping, became a global Internet sensation. The energy of the photographs is impressive and visceral. In order to get these shots, Regan built a special light, which jutted out over the roof of the car, a harness that allowed her to lean out of the window and various other contraptions to make the images come to life. Dogs In Cars will have the reader laughing out loud.
'I have seen landscapes which, under a particular light, made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge.' - C.S. Lewis The magnificent mountains of Mourne have long inspired artists and writers. Here, author and photographer Gareth McCormack shares his passion, knowledge and stunning pictures of these sweeping peaks, including the great Slieve Donard, Slieve Bearnagh and Slieve Binnian, with its otherworldly granite tors. He travels further into Mourne Country, to the towns of Newcastle by the sea, Dundrum and Kilkeel, and the estates of Tollymore, Rostrevor and Castlewellan, and finds monuments that bear witness to lives long ago, from pre-historic dolmens to smugglers' routes, Norman castles to traditional stone walls.
Alexey Titarenko created the series of collages and photomontages that became Nomenklatura of Signs from 1986-1991, under the strict Soviet rule. This new publication presents the series in its entirety for the first time. Working in secret, Titarenko conceived the project as a way to translate the visual reality of Soviet life into a language that expressed its absurdity, in a hierarchy of symbols that, together, formed a nomenclature - or, in Russian, nomenklatura, a term for the system by which government posts were filled in the Soviet Union. Drawing inspiration from the aesthetics of Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and other artists of the early 20th century Russian avant-garde, Titarenko captures an uncanny, darkly comic world in which language is controlled and subverted much like the Newspeak of George Orwell's novel 1984. The book includes an introduction by writer Jean-Jacques Mari and art historian Gabriel Bauret, as well as a critical interpretation of the series by art historian Ksenia Nouril. The book is designed by Kelly Doe Studio, NYC.
Built in 1883, the Hotel Chelsea, on 23rd Street in New York City, quickly became the most famous and notorious hotel in the world. From day one, it has been a center of artistic and bohemian activity, with notable residents like actor Ethan Hawke, painter Phillip Taaffe, magazine editor Sally Singer, filmmaker Milos Forman, poet and painter Rene Ricard, beat poet Herbert Huncke, and novelist Joseph O'Neill. This photographic collage of 76 images and vignettes was gathered by a longtime hotel resident prior to the hotel's restoration under new ownership. It unpacks suitcases of memories with atmospheric photographs of residents and guests from the past 20 years. As the author notes, "Life at the Chelsea Hotel arrived in fragments, signs, things heard, and things felt, rather than chronologically charted."
Henri Cartier-Bresson was 'the eye of the 20th century' and one of the world's most acclaimed photographers. Paris was his home, on and off, for most of his life (1908-2004). The photographs he took of the city and its people manage to be both dreamlike and free of affectation. Here are around 160 photographs taken over a more than fifty-year career. Mostly in black and white, this selection reveals the strong influence on Cartier-Bresson of pioneering documentary photographer Eugene Atget (1857-1927), and the clear visual links with Surrealism that infused Cartier-Bresson's early pictures. After an apprenticeship with Cubist painter Andre Lhote, in 1932 Cartier-Bresson bought his first Leica, a small portable camera that allowed him to capture movement and the rhythms of daily life in Paris. Cartier-Bresson observed from close quarters the Liberation in August 1944 and the civil disturbances of May 1968. In between he also succeeded in capturing the faces of Parisians in their natural habitat, celebrated artists and writers and citizens alike. Ever-attentive to different ways of portraying the city around him, Cartier-Bresson returned to drawing during the last two decades of his life. This collection is not only a superb portrait of Paris in the 20th century, it is testament to Cartier-Bresson's skill as a supreme observer of human life. With 200 illustrations
From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train, a profound, beautifully realized memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year. Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, with no design yet heeding signs, including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, “Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey.” For Patti Smith - inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from Southern California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places - this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment. But as Patti Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope of a better world. Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.
A Wild Life is Michael "Nick" Nichols's story, told with passion and insight by author and photo-editor Melissa Harris. Nichols' story combines a life of adventure, with a conviction about how we can redeem the human race by protecting our wildlife. The book's two central characters are the photographer - who journeys from the American South, via the photographers' co-operative Magnum, to becoming lead wildlife photographer of National Geographic magazine - and the author, who travels with the photographer on assignment in Africa, to gain intimate and deep insight into her subject. Harris's story also draws on meetings with some of the world's leading eco-scientists - including legendary primatologist, Jane Goodall.
Valerie Belin constantly explores matter, the body and the living, absence and their representations; she brilliantly develops her research on light, detail and texture. After a first volume released in 2007, Damiani now presents her subsequent work, with series produced between 2007 and 2016: Fruit Baskets , Lido , Ballroom Dancers , Vintage Cars , Crowned heads , Black-eyed Susan , Settings , Brides , Bob , Interiors and Still Life as well as her most recent and original series, All Star . The volume also comprises exhibition views and photographs taken during her performance at the Centre Pompidou in 2014. An immersion into a rare and unusual body of work that brilliantly questions matter and the living through the photographic medium. Photography of confusion and absence.
This annotated anthology presents the first English translation of German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch's collected writings. A towering figure in the history of photography, Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897-1966) has come to epitomize New Objectivity, the neorealist movement in modernist literature, film, and the visual arts recognized as the signature artistic style of Germany's Weimar Republic. Today, his images are regularly exhibited and widely considered key influences on contemporary photographers. Whether they capture geometrically intricate cacti, flooded tidal landscapes, stacks of raw materials, or imposing blast furnace towers, Renger-Patzsch's photographs embody what his peer Hugo Sieker termed "absolute realism," an approach predicated upon the idea that photographers have one task: to exploit the camera's unique capacity to document with uncompromising detail. Not only a photographer, Renger-Patzsch was also an influential and lucid writer who advocated his unique brand of uncompromising realism in almost a half century's worth of articles, essays, lectures, brochures, and unpublished manuscripts addressing photography, technology, and modernity. Drawing on his papers at the Getty Research Institute and other archives, The Absolute Realist unites in one volume this skillful photographer's ideas about the defining visual medium of modernity.
Some of Nick Brandt’s subjects are humans, some are animals, but they all are creatures of equal and obvious personhood. The overwhelming sense in the photographer’s ongoing global series The Day May Break is that they are all figuring out how to live in a new world. Each has arrived at the shoot at Senda Verde wildlife sanctuary in Bolivia through their own cascade of tragedy. Both extreme droughts and floods have destroyed people’s homes and livelihoods. Victims of habitat destruction and wildlife trafficking, the animals are rescues that can never be released to the wild. People and animals were photographed in the same frame and indeed convey a sense of connectedness through a shared fate. Fog is the unifying visual, symbolic of the natural world rapidly fading from view; and an echo of the smoke from wildfires, intensified by climate change, devastating so much of the planet. But in spite of their loss, these people and animals are survivors, pioneers entering the new phase our world has reached. In The Day May Break they share their powerful stories.
"We must remember that in the brutality of battle another such apocalypse is always just around the corner." -Sebastiao Salgado In January and February 1991, as the United States-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein's troops retaliated with an inferno. At some 700 oil wells and an unspecified number of oil-filled low-lying areas they ignited vast, raging fires, creating one of the worst environmental disasters in living memory. As the desperate efforts to contain and extinguish the conflagration progressed, Sebastiao Salgado traveled to Kuwait to witness the crisis firsthand. The conditions were excruciating. The heat was so vicious that Salgado's smallest lens warped. A journalist and another photographer were killed when a slick ignited as they crossed it. Sticking close to the firefighters, and with characteristic sensitivity to both human and environmental impact, Salgado captured the terrifying scale of this "huge theater the size of the planet": the ravaged landscape; the sweltering temperatures; the air choking on charred sand and soot; the blistered remains of camels; the sand still littered with cluster bombs; and the flames and smoke soaring to the skies, blocking out the sunlight, dwarfing the oil-coated firefighters. Salgado's epic pictures first appeared in the New York Times Magazine in June 1991 and were subsequently awarded the Oskar Barnack Award, recognizing outstanding images on the relationship between man and the environment. Kuwait: A Desert on Fire is the first monograph of this astonishing series. Like Genesis, Exodus, and The Children, it is as much a major document of modern history as an extraordinary body of photographic work.
Naomi Rosenblum (1925-2021) was the leading historian of photography in her lifetime. Her two major books, A World History of Photography and A History of Women Photographers, furthered the recognition of photography as a central art form of the 20th century, and one in which women played a critical role. Rosenblum's deep knowledge and remarkable eye are evident in the collection of photography that she and her family built in her lifetime. This beautifully designed volume, conceived by Naomi and her daughters, Nina and Lisa, marks the first publication of the family's exceptional collection, which is focused on work that combines aesthetic considerations with humanist values. The photographers represented range from pioneers like Alfred Stieglitz, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, Lewis Hine, Paul Strand (the subject of Naomi Rosenblum's doctoral dissertation), and her husband, Walter Rosenblum, to acclaimed contemporary practitioners including Mary Ellen Mark, Ming Smith, and Sebastiao Salgado. The collection is intergenerational and also includes important examples of 20th century sculpture by such artists as Lynn Chadwick and Barry Flanagan. Essays by several distinguished contributors - including artist and scholar Deborah Willis; curator Barbara Tannenbaum; Milan-based curator and writer Enrica Vigano; and editor and writer Diana C. Stoll - celebrate and elucidate Naomi Rosenblum's life and career. A Humanist Vision is both a fitting tribute to a path breaking scholar and a contribution to the photographic literature in its own right.
"When you first view Rose-Lynn Fisher's photographs, you might think you're looking down at the world from an airplane, at dunes, skyscrapers or shorelines. In fact, you're looking at her tears. . . . [There's] poetry in the idea that our emotional terrain bears visual resemblance to the physical world; that our tears can look like the vistas we see out an airplane window. Fisher's images are the only remaining trace of these places, which exist during a moment of intense feeling-and then vanish." -NPR "[A] delicate, intimate book. . . . In The Topography of Tears photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher shows us a place where language strains to express grief, longing, pride, frustration, joy, the confrontation with something beautiful, the confrontation with an onion." -Boston Globe Does a tear shed while chopping onions look different from a tear of happiness? In this powerful collection of images, an award-winning photographer trains her optical microscope and camera on her own tears and those of men, women, and children, released in moments of grief, pain, gratitude, and joy, and captured upon glass slides. These duotone photographs reveal the beauty of recurring patterns in nature and present evocative, crystalline imagery for contemplation. Underscored by poetic captions, they translate the mysterious act of crying into an atlas mapping the structure and magnificence of our interior lives. Rose-Lynn Fisher is an artist and author of the International Photography Award-winning studies Bee and The Topography of Tears. Her photographs are exhibited in galleries, festivals, and museums across the world and have been featured by the Dr. Oz Show, NPR, Smithsonian, Harper's, New Yorker, Time, Wired, Reader's Digest, Discover, Brain Pickings, and elsewhere. She received her BFA from Otis Art Institute and lives in Los Angeles. |
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