The first monograph on a groundbreaking Surrealist masterpiece, Reading Claude Cahun's Disavowals offers a comprehensive account of Cahun's most important published work, Aveux non avenus (Disavowals), 1930. Jennifer L. Shaw provides an encompassing interpretation of this groundbreaking work, paying careful attention to the complex interrelationship between the photomontages and writings of Aveux non avenus. This study argues that the texts and images of Aveux non avenus not only explore Cahun's own subjectivity, they formulate a trenchant social and cultural critique. Shaw explores how Cahun's work both calls into question the dominant culture of interwar France - with its traditional gender roles, religious conservatism, and pronatalism - and takes to task the era's artistic avant-garde and in particular its models of desire. This volume cuts across the disciplinary boundaries of interwar art studies, demonstrating how one artist's personal exploration intervened in wider contemporary debates about the purpose of art, the role of women in French culture, and the status of homosexuality, in the aftermath of World War I.

We live in an increasingly urbanised world, but there are still many magnificent stretches of wilderness unaltered by humankind. From the most remote mountains and valleys in Alaska to the southern tip of Chile and Argentina, from Europe’s primeval forest on the Polish-Belarusian border to Norway’s fjords, and from the Namib Desert to Kamchatka in far-eastern Russia to canyons in Kurdistan and rainforests in Cambodia, The Wild celebrates the beauty of uncultivated landscapes all around the globe. Arranged by continent, the book roams across landscapes and climates, from Antarctica’s dry valleys to African burning deserts, from European marshlands to Arabian rugged peaks and on to Tanzania’s craters, Indonesia’s volcanoes and New Zealand’s bubbling mud pools. Each entry is supported with fascinating captions explaining the geology, geography, flora and fauna. In doing so, the book reveals some of the world’s most naturally bizarre places. Illustrated with more than 200 colour photographs, The Wild leads the reader to the planet’s least cultivated places, from jungles to tundras. Take a step into the wild.

The Golden Valley is an exploration and a celebration of a small south Wales valley. The site of ancient tombs and settlements, its rural life was for just over a century taken over by the brutal occupation of coal mining before abandonment once more to nature. In well-chosen words and stunning photographs this is the story of one place, and many.

Making Marigold: Beaders Of Bulawayo is a portrait of a women’s beading co-operative specialising in loomed beadwork, based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

Over 200 photographs reveal the sumptuous glamour of the Marigold beadwork and necklaces. Short, stand-alone narrative vignettes offer background insights into the making and development of the Marigold co-operative.

How did these women, whose skilled practice and creative impulses evident in every necklace, perfect this practice? And what has sustained their efforts across the decades?