Art Edition E- No. 401-500"The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska, USA, "2009Gelatin silver print40 x 30 cm (16 x 12 in.)

Dans ce troisieme opus de sa serie realisee pour TASCHEN, la celebre designer graphique Yang Liu confronte nos modes de vie d'autrefois avec ceux d'aujourd'hui. Sur le modele de ses precedents livres qui ont connu un immense succes, Hier/aujourd'hui, mode d'emploi utilise le principe des paires de pictogrammes saisissants pour evoquer les transformations et les defis de notre monde en constante evolution. Liu s'est fait connaitre par son melange de subtilite graphique et d'observation perspicace de nos comportements. Dans Hier/aujourd'hui, mode d'emploi, son regard aiguise sur nos gouts et nos tendances se fait plus ambitieux puisqu'il en vient a juxtaposer passe et present pour aborder les changements profonds de notre societe. Au fil des pages, l'auteur nous fait observer les ideologies en opposition, les menaces universelles passees et actuelles, notre relation a l'environnement et l'immense impact de la technologie sur nos modes de vie, nos modes de pensee et sur notre facon d'aimer, du commerce en ligne a l'avenement d'un "homo numericus". Attentive a un grand nombre de sujets, de la geopolitique a nos tendances a la concentration, Liu integre a son panorama chaque detail de la vie quotidienne comme des grands evenements historiques. A travers des themes comme Facebook, le gaspillage alimentaire, les modes de deplacement, la tendance a la concentration, Hier/aujourd'hui, mode d'emploi promene un regard espiegle mais perspicace sur ce que nous sommes et d'ou nous venons.

Along with Turner, no artist has sought more than Claude Monet (1840-1926) to capture light itself on canvas. Of all the Impressionists, it was the man Cezanne called "only an eye, but my God what an eye!" who stayed completely true to the principle of absolute fidelity to the visual sensation, painting directly from the object. It could be said that Monet reinvented the possibilities of color, and whether it was through his early interest in Japanese prints, his time in the dazzling light of Algeria as a conscript, or his personal acquaintance with the major painters of the late 1800s, what Monet produced throughout his long life would change forever the way we perceive both the natural world and its attendant phenomena. The high point of his explorations were the late series of water lilies, painted in his own garden at Giverny, that, in their moves towards almost total formlessness, are really the origin of abstract art. This biography does full justice to this most remarkable and profoundly influential of artists, and offers numerous reproductions and archive photos alongside a detailed and insightful commentary.

On October 1, 1958, the world's first civilian space agency opened for business as an emergency response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik a year earlier. Within a decade, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, universally known as NASA, had evolved from modest research teams experimenting with small converted rockets into one of the greatest technological and managerial enterprises ever known, capable of sending people to the Moon aboard gigantic rockets and of dispatching robot explorers to Venus, Mars, and worlds far beyond. In spite of occasional, tragic setbacks in NASA's history, the Apollo lunar landing project remains a byword for American ingenuity; the winged space shuttles spearheaded the International Space Station and a dazzling array of astronomical satellites and robotic landers, and Earth observation programs have transformed our understanding of the cosmos and our home world's fragile place within it. Throughout NASA's 60-year history, images have played a central role. Who today is not familiar with the Hubble Space Telescope's mesmerizing views of the universe or the pin-sharp panoramas of Mars from NASA's surface rovers? And who could forget the photographs of the first men walking on the Moon? Researched with the collaboration of NASA, this collection gathers more than 400 historic photographs and rare concept renderings, scanned and remastered using the latest technology and reproduced in extra-large size. Texts by science and technology journalist Piers Bizony, former NASA chief historian Roger Launius, and best-selling Apollo historian Andrew Chaikin-and an extensive mission checklist documenting the key human and robotic missions-round out this comprehensive exploration of NASA, from its earliest days to its current development of new space systems for the future.The NASA Archives is more than just a fascinating pictorial history of the U.S. space program. It is also a profound meditation on why we choose to explore space and how we will carry on this grandest of all adventures in the years to come.