While the female nude has long played a conspicuous role in western iconography, the male nude has not always enjoyed such attention, or acceptance. This ode to the male physique celebrates the evolving, at one time illicit, art form from anonymous 19th century erotica through to contemporary work from David Hockney and Duane Michaels. Through the classic, the playful, and the provocative, it explores the compositions, postures, and role-playing of this often under-explored genre. Esteemed masters such as Herbert List, George Platt Lynes or Robert Mapplethorpe are all there, alongside Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden, famed for his homoerotic images of nude youths in classical postures in Sicily. Further highlights include illustrations from Physique Pictorial, the leading organ of the mid-50s gay scene and a pioneer in gay publishing. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

A Scotsman Best Photography Book of 2017 Texts by Filippo Grandi, UN High Comissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, and Robert Del Naja, Massive Attack In October 2015, Giles Duley was commissioned by the UNHCR to document the refugee crisis. Over the next seven months, he was to criss-cross Europe and the Middle East attempting to put a human face to one of the biggest humanitarian emergencies of our time. Duley visited fourteen countries to tell the stories of individuals and families forced to flee their homes. He chronicled the turmoil of Lebanon, the camps of Jordan and Iraq, hellish scenes on the beaches of Lesvos and the refugees arrival in Germany. Bringing together over 150 original photographs, this book captures how even in the midst of such horror and tragedy there is humour, the unexpected and, above all, humanity.

An illuminating portrait of young LGBTQ people in China, the latest addition to the acclaimed photobook series celebrating LGBTQ communities around the world Same-sex relationships have been an accepted part of Chinese culture for centuries. It was only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, under the influence of the West, that homophobia became more prevalent; and under Mao, homosexuality was criminalized. By the turn of the last millennium, same-sex relationships were once again legal, and by 2001, homosexuality had been declassified as a mental disorder. Polling suggests that the younger generation embraces sexual diversity and LGBTQ rights. But the stigma against queer people still remains. Recent reports from China have noted government attempts to clamp down on LGBTQ media and events, and numerous citizens are still being sent by family members to conversion therapy. Photographer Sarah Mei Herman first started photographing young queer people and their personal relationships during an artist residency in Xiamen in Fujian Province on China's southeastern coast. As she explored what drew these people together, she herself built up close friendships with her subjects and, even after her residency had ended, returned to Xiamen to photograph them, capturing the way they have changed over the course of a number of years. The sixteenth entry in The New Press's worldwide LGBTQ photobook series, Solace is a stunning collection of full-color photos in a beautiful, affordable volume. It provides a portrait of young people navigating the ambiguities of friendship and sexuality as they enter adulthood and grapple with what it means to be queer in modern-day China. Solace was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).

One of the most powerful painters of our age, Francis Bacon lived and worked for the last thirty years of his life in a modest building in London's South Kensington. After he died in 1992, access was granted to award-winning photographer Perry Ogden to work undisturbed for days on end to produce this riveting record of the house and its contents. In the studio itself, thirty years of inspired artistic endeavor had accumulated unchecked: the slashed and discarded canvases scattered across the floor; the brushes, rags, and tins encrusted with paint; the doors and walls used as impromptu palettes; the piles of photographs of friends and models; the crumpled and torn pages of magazines and books that served as a stimulus for Bacon's work; the notes, sketches, and ideas for paintings jotted down and then cast aside; the last unfinished self-portrait on the easel.

For some of those close to Bacon, the studio was a heroic statement, a work of art in its won right, secretly constructed over many years to distill and give form to his aesthetic intentions. Now in this astonishing book we are invited to take a privileged look around this private space, to become intimate witnesses to the amazing conditions in which Bacon lived and worked, to gain unrivaled insights into how, why, and what he painted.

It is humble. Unassuming. Everyday and ordinary to millions of Texans. Yet, the complex network of twisted tributaries that is the Trinity River thunders, ambles, even crawls over 550 miles of Texas landscape and has shaped the destinies of Native Americans, outlaws, outcasts, dreamers, desperadoes, millionaires, military men, and many others over thousands of years. Luther Smith's series of more than fifty photographs taken over seven years of various stages and locations on the Trinity captures the river's many personalities: the meandering West Fork in Archer County, the pollution-littered shore where the West Fork runs through Fort Worth, the flooding which occasionally spills into cities and over highways. Mike Nichols' essay on the river provides an insightful and nostalgic look into the Trinity's shaping and being shaped by generations of Texans. Thomas W. Southall's essay, "Reflections on a River's Convergence," discusses landscape photography and, more specifically, the photography of Smith. Though Smith is active in efforts to preserve the natural environment, this series is both a call to environmental consciousness and a reminder of the quiet, humble wilderness that still exists but is often unseen. His photographs embody the natural simplicity of often unnoticed parts of the Texas landscape. Each photograph is a mood, a face of the time-shaping river. And each is its own story.

At a time when surfing is more popular than ever, it's fitting to look back at the years that brought the sport into the mainstream. Developed by Hawaiian Islanders over five centuries ago, surfing began to peak on the mainland in the 1950s-becoming not just a sport, but a way of life, admired and exported across the globe. One of the key image-makers from that period is LeRoy Grannis, a surfer since 1931, who began photographing the longboard era of the early 1960s in both California and Hawaii. This edition brings back Grannis's hair-raising, sold-out Collector's Edition, curated from the photographer's personal archives, to showcase his most vibrant work in a compact and affordable format-from the bliss of catching the perfect wave at San Onofre to dramatic wipeouts at Oahu's famed North Shore. An innovator in the field, Grannis suction-cupped a waterproof box to his board, enabling him to change film in the water and stay closer to the action than any other photographer of the time. He also covered the emerging surf lifestyle, from "surfer stomps" and hordes of fans at surf contests to board-laden woody station wagons along the Pacific Coast Highway. It is in these iconic images that a sport still in its adolescence embodied the free-spirited nature of an era-a time before shortboards and celebrity endorsements, when surfing was at its bronzed best.

"Through these travels and the photographs, I got to love the United States more than I could have in any other way." - Jack Delano Amid the ravages of the Great Depression, the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) was first founded in 1935 to address the country's rural poverty. Its efforts focused on improving the lives of sharecroppers, tenants, and very poor landowning farmers, with resettlement and collectivization programs, as well as modernized farming methods. In a parallel documentation program, the FSA hired a number of photographers and writers to record the lives of the rural poor and "introduce America to Americans." This book records the full reach of the FSA program from 1935 to 1943, honoring its vigor and commitment across subjects, states, and stylistic preferences. The photographs are arranged into four broad regional sections but otherwise allowed to speak for themselves-to provide individual impressions as much as they cumulatively build an indelible survey of a nation. The images are both color and black-and-white, and span the complete spetrum of American rural life. They show us convicts, cotton workers, kids, and relocated workers on the road. We see subjects victim to the elements of nature as much as to the vagaries of the global economic market. We find the work of such perceptive, sensitive photographers as Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Russell Lee, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and Dorothea Lange, and read their own testimonies to the FSA project and their encounters with their subjects, including Lange's worn, weather-beaten and iconic Migrant Mother. What unites all of the pictures is a commitment to the individuality and dignity of each subject, as much as to the witness they bear to this particular period of the American past. The subjects are entrenched in the hardships of their historical lot as much as they are caught in universal cycles of growing, playing, eating, aging, and dying. Yet they face the viewer with what is utterly their own: a unique, irreplaceable, often unforgettable presence. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

This book captures the core of who Joe Biden is as a lifelong public servant, and who he would be as America's next President--featuring photographs from his eight years as one of America's most consequential vice presidents and partner to Barack Obama. These visually arresting photographs and behind-the-scenes stories show Biden stepping into his own as a leader ready to guide a nation in distress. They also reveal a new dimension to Biden's humanity--as a man whose decency and kindness shines through both tragedy and triumph, whose working-class roots inform his values, and whose candor and approachability enable him to connect with citizens of all kinds. This book traces Biden's vice presidency in unprecedented detail, shedding light on who he is as a political leader and patriot, and also as a father, husband, and friend. It will delight and fascinate readers who yearn for the return of honesty and ethics to the nation's highest offices. As we draw closer to the 2020 presidential elections, this portrait of one of the most influential names in American politics is more timely and important than ever.

This tiny treasure is a glorious tribute to Ansel Adams and to the vanishing landscape he loved. In 1941 Ansel Adams was hired by the United States Department of the Interior to photograph America's national parks for a series of murals that would celebrate the country's natural heritage. Because of the escalation of World War II, the project was suspended after less than a year, but not before Adams had produced this group of breathtaking images, which illustrate both his early innovations and the shape of his later, legendary career as America's foremost landscape photographer. The invitation to photograph the nation's parklands was the perfect assignment for Adams, as it allowed him to express his deepest convictions as artist, conservationist, and citizen. These stunning photographs of the natural geysers and terraces in Yellowstone, the rocks and ravines in the Grand Canyon, the winding rivers and majestic mountains in Glacier and Grand Teton national parks, the mysterious Carlsbad Caverns, the architecture of ancient Indian villages, and many other evocative views of the American West demonstrate the genius of Adams' technical and aesthetic inventiveness. In these glorious, seminal images we see the inspired reverence for the wilderness that has made Ansel Adams' work a most enduring influence on the intertwining spirits of art and environmentalism, both so necessary for the preservation of our natural world.

For more than twenty years, Maria Paula Acuna has claimed to see the Virgin Mary, once a month, at a place called Our Lady of the Rock in the Mojave Desert of California. Hundreds of men, women, and children follow her into the desert to watch her see what they cannot. While she sees and speaks with the Virgin, onlookers search the skies for signs from heaven, snapping photographs of the sun and sky. Not all of them are convinced that Maria Paula can see the Virgin, yet at each vision event they watch for subtle clues to Mary's presence, such as the unexpected scent of roses or a cloud in the shape of an angel. The visionary depends on her audience to witness and authenticate her visions, while observers rely on Maria Paula and the Virgin to create a sacred space and moment where they, too, can experience firsthand one of the oldest and most fundamental promises of Christianity: direct contact with the divine. Together, visionary and witnesses negotiate and enact their monthly liturgy of revelations. Our Lady of the Rock, which features text by Lisa M. Bitel and more than sixty photographs by Matt Gainer, shows readers what happens in the Mojave Desert each month and tells us how two thousand years of Christian revelatory tradition prepared Maria Paula and her followers to meet in the desert. Based on six years of observation and interviews, chapters analyze the rituals, iconographies, and physical environment of Our Lady of the Rock. Bitel and Gainer also provide vivid portraits of the pilgrims-who they are, where they come from, and how they practice the traditional Christian discernment of spirits and visions. Our Lady of the Rock follows three pilgrims as they return home with relics and proofs of visions where, out of Maria Paula's sight, they too have learned to see the Virgin. The book also documents the public response from the Catholic Church and popular news media to Maria Paula and other contemporary visionaries. Throughout, Our Lady of the Rock locates Maria Paula and her followers in the context of recent demographic and cultural shifts in the American Southwest, the astonishing increase in reported apparitions and miracles from around the world, the latest developments in communications and visual technologies, and the never-ending debate among academics, faith leaders, scientists, and citizen observers about sight, perception, reason, and belief.

Dianne D'Cotta has always liked making records of her travel and local surroundings and a few years ago started to put together grids of 9 photos on different themes, to save space and tell a story. One day she posted one of them on social media and before long had a following, which has continued to grow. Interspersing small details like palm trees and signs with larger views of familiar places, this book includes the areas visitors know and love, such as the quirky shops along the high street, the long seafront and beautiful beaches, but also the places local people will recognise, such as Jacob's Ladder, Little Dennis and the Docks Choir. People love how she captures the historically interesting, seaside, arty, university, botanically diverse, foodie, community minded, working port town that is Falmouth.

'The Bang-Bang Club' was a group of four young photographers, friends and colleagues, Ken Oosterbroek, Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva, who covered the last years of apartheid, taking many of the photographs that encapsulate the final years of white South Africa. Two of them won Pulitzer Prizes for individual photos. Ken, the oldest and a mentor to the others, died, accidentally shot while working; Kevin, the most troubled of the four, committed suicide weeks after winning his Pulitzer for a photograph of a starving baby in the Sudanese famine. Written by Greg and Joao, The Bang-Bang Club tells their stories, the story of four remarkable young men, the stresses, tensions and moral dilemmas of working in situations of extreme violence, pain and suffering, the relationships between the four and the story of the end of apartheid. An immensely powerful, riveting and harrowing book.

"Fair Park Deco" is a fascinating tour of the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. Like every American exposition in the 1930s, it began in economic depression. Although its economy had been buoyed by major oil discoveries in the early '30s, Texas agriculture was hard hit by the Great Depression. By the middle of the decade, state officials had set their sights on a great centennial celebration to help stimulate the economy and attract tourist dollars. "If during the next six months the people of the state could become filled with the idea of holding a big celebration on the one hundredth anniversary of the establishment of Texas independence," the state's centennial commission speculated in July, 1934, "it would have the effect of creating a general forward-looking spirit through the state. It would be more stimulating than anything we can think of, and this effect would be immediate."

This book focuses specifically on the Art Deco art and architecture of Fair Park--the public spaces, buildings, sculptures and murals that were designed for the 1936 exposition. Most of the chapters in the book represent different areas of Fair Park, with buildings and artwork effectively arranged in the same order that a visitor to the Texas Centennial Exposition might have seen them. The art and architecture are featured in original photography by Jim Parsons and David Bush as well as in historic photographs.

Fair Park is one of the finest collections of Deco architecture in the country, but it is so much more: the embodiment of Texan swagger, it is a testament to the Texanic task of creating a dazzling spectacle in the darkest days of the Depression.

From his humble beginnings in London's East End, Ted Blackbrow went on to become one of the UK's greatest press photographers. Thrown out of a good grammar school at 15, Ted embarked on a career that would see him photograph members of the Royal Family, Enoch Powell, The Beatles, Sean Connery, Elton John and Mick Jagger, to name just a few! Long before social media, his images were being shared all over the globe. His pictures of the Vietnamese refugees on the Sibonga were a widely-syndicated world exclusive, and what started as an ordinary day at Newmarket Racecourse resulted in an award-winning photograph that was syndicated across the world. A believer in the idea that no matter how good your equipment, you have to be in the right place at the right time to get the picture (or, as was often the case, the wrong place at the right time!), the author reveals how a mixture of cheek, boldness, and a large slice of luck enabled him to get some incredible images. What a Life! features some of the best of Ted's photos, along with the entertaining, engaging and enlightening stories behind them.