Bruce Davidson's groundbreaking "Subway," first published by Aperture in 1986, has garnered critical acclaim both as a documentation of a unique moment in the cultural fabric of New York City and for its phenomenal use of extremes of color and shadow set against flash-lit skin. In Davidson's own words, "the people in the subway, their flesh juxtaposed against the graffiti, the penetrating effect of the strobe light itself, and even the hollow darkness of the tunnels, inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks and closed off from each other." In this third edition of what is now a classic of photographic literature, a sequence of 118 (including 25 previously unpublished) images transport the viewer through a landscape at times menacing, and at other times lyrical and soulful. The images present the full gamut of New Yorkers, from weary straphangers and languorous ladies in summer dresses to stalking predators and homeless persons. Davidson's accompanying text tells the story behind the images, clarifying his method and dramatizing his obsession with the subway, its rhythms and its particular madness.
Bruce Davidson (born 1933) is considered one of America's most influential documentary photographers. He began taking photographs when he was ten, and studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Yale University School of Design. In 1958 he became a member of Magnum Photos, and in 1962 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to document the civil rights movement. After a solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1963, Davidson spent two years photographing in Harlem, resulting in the book "East 100th Street." In 1980, after living in New York City for 23 years, Davidson began "Subway," his startling color essay of urban life.

Packed with images and diagrams from more than a dozen acclaimed photographers, this resource shows exactly how to master middle-key photographs. The techniques illustrated provide tips for establishing sufficient structure by precisely defining the objectives of the middle-key shoot. Covering all aspects--from the conception of the portrait to lighting, clothing, props, and backgrounds that support the image to the technical and equipment requirements--this guidebook also discusses middle key both within and outside the studio setting. By consciously deciding to create middle-key portraits, photographers can help to avoid arbitrary decisions and begin more precisely selecting the kinds of colors and tones that will produce visual harmony and an overall pleasing appearance.

They are casual and somewhat absurd portraits taken during military exhibitions, patriotic ceremonies, and war games. By abandoning the formality expected in representations of military display, these portraits turn out to be disconcerting, as they explore ironically the signs of identity, rank, and belonging of members of the military establishment. In a highly militarized region, where the wounds caused by recent military dictatorships are still open, this work generates questions about the meaning of these forces in the contemporary world. The series In Uniform was the winner of the second edition of the RM Latin American Photobook Competition, selected by a jury made up of Martin Parr, Horacio Fernandez, Jonathan Roquemore, Dieter Neubert, Iata Cannabrava, Marcos Lopez, Paolo Gasparini, Olivier Andreotti, and Ramon Reverte.

Closely examining staged images of Japanese femininity, this study centers on the mid-Meiji souvenir photography of Kusakabe Kimbei, approaching from the artist's perspective while referencing his culture's visual and traditional practices. The analysis attempts to construe visual material in its original context using various points of departure, including the sociocultural significance of the staged models, the visual display of the photographic models in relation to the visibility problem of Japanese women in Meiji visual media, and Kimbei's visual encodings of Japanese femininity. By means of contextualized analysis, this survey seeks to illuminate the intricate structure of significations embedded on the visual plane, ultimately demonstrating how Kimbei's female images present a locus of multilayered meanings.

Over the period of a year Gavin Quinn visited the private homes of 100 actors and asked them to try and answer the question: Why do you think you became an actor? Each response was filmed and recorded. He then subsequently photographed each of them. The result is this book. This book tells the story of these one hundred actors: one hundred illuminating answers to a simple question. In ONE the actor talks to the reader from the stillness of their portrait within their own environments. The book is one element of a large-scale performance project created and conceived by Pan Pan, involving 100 actors, 100 rooms and 100 audience members in a specially designed structure designed by the sculptor Andrew Clancy. Subtitled Healing with Theatre, this one on one meeting is enabled by an outflow of energy from actor to audience through this intimate setting, so that we become in a sense healed by the experience. In the live performance and the film version of ONE the audience meets the performer one to one, in much the same way as we discover each actor as we turn the pages of this book. Overall, ONE is an arena of creativity where the audience and artist interact, providing a special way for art and performance to be experienced and looked at. It is an aesthetic encounter made concrete for both actor and audience: multifaceted, personal, bodily and intellectually illuminating. This book will appeal to all interested in the theatre, photography and fine books As the total print-run for the publication will be 600 - 26 copies numbered A - Z and 574 other numbered copies - it is envisaged that the book shall sell out quickly.

Ellen von Unwerth, one of the world's most original and intimate fashion photographers pays homage to the most delectable women walking the earth right now. "Fraulein" features over 1000 provocative photographs of icons such as Claudia Schiffer, Penelope Cruz, Natalie Portman, Kate Moss, Vanessa Paradis, Britney Spears, Eva Mendes, Lindsay Lohan, Dita von Teese, Adriana Lima, Carla Bruni, Eva Green and many many more. The images combine beautifully crafted scenarios, high production values with a joyful spontaneity. Von Unwerth's color and immaculate black and white photographs celebrate sex, femininity, romance and the sheer joy of living the moment. And if that moment features a riding crop, handcuffs, maybe a very flimsy negligee, or some black stockings and a brilliant smile -then so much the better. Sometimes the subjects willingly flaunt and delight in their intimate fantasies. Other times, it seems as if we are voyeurs who have stumbled into these very private and guarded moments. The images were shot over the last 15 years and many of them are unpublished. Sam Shahid, one of New York's top designers, who collaborated with von Unwerth on the book says "Fraulein" is 'like a very entertaining movie that hits you in all kinds of ways'. Like all great movies, it requires repeated viewing.

This is the book for the weekend! With French flair and a sure sense of composition style, photographer Fred Goudon gives us a look into the beds of strangers. The artist wraps his stubbly, muscled men in soft colours and gentle contrasts. His portraits are less sexual than they are highly erotic. The soft lighting creates fascinating physical landscapes in the sheets - atmospheric photographs from one of the greatest contemporary French photographers that will make you melt!

These photographs were taken in the early 1970s for a book on sexual love. At a time when people were jailed for depicting acts of intimacy, artist and photographer Arnold Skolnick made some of the most memorable and erotic images of the twentieth century, many far too sophisticated for the book for which they were taken. Of the few that were exhibited at the time, a critic wrote: "These photos give the forms of two people making love the grandeur and power of sculpture. One is, of course, reminded of Rodin." With good reason not to promote them, Skolnick stored the negatives and contact sheets away for over thirty years, but he did not forget them. Now, having reached his seventieth birthday, Skolnick has gone back to the work, to produce an extraordinarily beautiful lovesong--a lush and highly sensual celebration of the union of man and woman. "LoveSong" features fifty-five stunning tritone images, printed in Italy, and is bound in full satin, with a satin slipcase. 55 tritone photographs.

As a student in the 1970s, Deborah Willis came to the realization that images of black beauty, female and male, simply did not exist in the larger culture. Determined to redress this imbalance, Willis examined everything from vintage ladies' journals to black newspapers, and started what would become a lifelong quest. With more than two hundred arresting images, many previously unpublished, Posing Beauty recovers a world many never knew existed. Historical subjects such as Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker illuminate the past; Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali take us to the civil rights era; Denzel Washington, Lil' Kim, and Michelle Obama celebrate the present. Featuring the works of more than one hundred photographers, including Carl van Vechten, Eve Arnold, Lee Friedlander, and Carrie Mae Weems, Willis's book not only celebrates the lives of the famous but also captures the barber shop, the bodybuilding contest, and prom night. Posing Beauty challenges our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be "beautiful."

In this unique and startling collection of portraits following Naked New York, we see the "beautiful people" of Los Angeles first clothed, then completely naked.

The people of Los Angeles are men and women of all shapes, ages, colors, and professions living in a city famed for its Hollywood glamour and perpetual summer. Photographed outdoors we see a magician, screenwriter, trapeze artist, unemployed surfer, filmmaker, casting director, aerospace engineer, and many more. This serious and, at the same time, amusing group of portraits shows the surprising differences and not so surprising similarities we have to one another clothed and unclothed.

Unlike traditional nude photography, these portraits don't have erotic or sexual overtones; they are simply real people who reveal both their clothed public selves and their naked private selves. Greg Friedler's work as a documentary photographer is a kind of anthropological survey of people. If clothing is a voluntary choice, unclothed we see people in an involuntary state—we see their bodies as we see their faces, unmasked. These images are at once deeply intimate and refreshingly matter of fact.

From an early age on I perceived a striking difference between men and women. As I grow older, that perception deepens. So writes Elliott Erwitt, tongue slightly in cheek, in this wonderful new collection of his photographs from around the world. Children perceive the difference between the sexes at an early age and we see them here discovering it for the first time. Older people have known the difference for years and we see them savoring it. In between, Between the Sexes is a sometimes poignant, sometimes outrageous record of males and females trying (and sometimes not trying) to get along, with wildly varying results.

In the quest for beauty there has only ever been one authority - Vogue. The magazine's pursuit of perfection has chronicled the changing face of beauty at its seductive best; its photographs and illustrations represent the power of the transformation of self, the creative statement made with a brush of make-up, the seduction implied in a gloss of lipstick. Having created a world where the female form rules supreme, Vogue is the fairy godmother to beauty's fable and Vogue Beauty celebrates the fashion and form that has shaped our viewpoint: clothed or naked; dramatically enhanced or naturally simplistic; the face, the mask, the luxury, the allure of the aesthetic. Capturing the scent of glamour alongside the romance of woman, Vogue Beauty is as classic as a stick of red lipstick.

This book gives finely-detailed period photographs of the locality from the world-famous Frith archive. With extended captions to accompany the pictures, it contains a full introduction.