The definitive book on the work of a virtuosic and revered American photographer Irving Penn (1917-2009) was among the most esteemed and influential photographers of the 20th century. Over the course of a nearly seventy-year career, he mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, and detail. This indispensable book features one of the largest selections of Penn's photographs ever compiled, including famous and beloved images as well as works that have never been published. Celebrating the centennial of Penn's birth, this lavish volume spans the entirety of his groundbreaking career. An enlightening introduction situates his work in the context of the various artistic, social, and political environments and events that affected the content of his photographs. Lively essays acquaint readers with Penn's primary subjects and campaigns, including early documentary scenes and imagery; portraits; fashion; female nudes; peoples of Peru, Dahomey (Benin), New Guinea, and Morocco; still lifes; and much more. Irving Penn: Centennial is essential for any fan of this artist's work or the history of 20th-century photography. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (04/20/17-07/30/17) Grand Palais, Paris(09/21/17-01/29/18) Instituto Moreira Salles, Sao Paolo (Fall 2018)

American street photographer Leon Levinstein is much admired within the photographic community, but little known outside of it. Solo exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada in 1995 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2010 brought him to the attention of many, but his dynamic and original work is yet to achieve the recognition it deserves. Levinstein's fearless and unsentimental black and white images, whether shot in New York City, Coney Island, Haiti, Mexico or India, possess in Metropolitan Museum of Art Curator of Photographs Jeff Rosenheim's words, "graphic virtuosity - seen in raw, expressive gestures and seemingly monumental bodies - balanced by an unusual compassion for his off-beat subjects." In 1975, at the age of 65, Levinstein received a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His intention, in his own words, was to photograph "as wide a spectrum of the American scene as my experience and vision will allow." This long-awaited book fulfils this ambitious goal.

To ensure the ongoing availability of Diane Arbus Revelations, Aperture is proud to release this vitally important volume on the fiftieth anniversary of the posthumous 1972 Arbus retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and the simultaneous publication of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph. Revelations explores the origins, scope, and aspirations of Arbus's wholly original voice. Arbus's frank treatment of her subjects and her faith in the intrinsic power of the medium have produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in its steadfast celebration of things as they are. Presenting many of her lesser-known or previously unpublished photographs in the context of the iconic images reveals a subtle yet persistent view of the world. The book reproduces two hundred full-page duotones of Diane Arbus photographs spanning her entire career. It also includes a new contribution by Sarah Meister, executive director of Aperture, alongside essays by Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography, emeritus, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and a discussion of Arbus's printing techniques by Neil Selkirk, the only person authorized to print her photographs since her death. An extensive chronology by Elisabeth Sussman, guest curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art show, and Doon Arbus, the artist's eldest daughter, is illustrated by more than three hundred additional images and composed primarily of excerpts from the artist's letters, notebooks, and other writings, amounting to a kind of autobiography. An afterword by Doon Arbus precedes biographical entries on the photographer's friends and colleagues, compiled by Jeff L. Rosenheim, curator in charge of the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. These texts help illuminate the meaning of Diane Arbus's controversial and astonishing vision.

The first comprehensive, posthumous monograph and retrospective on Bernd and Hilla Becher, best known for their photographs of industrial structures in Europe and North America For more than five decades, Bernd (1931-2007) and Hilla (1934-2015) Becher collaborated on photographs of industrial architecture in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Great Britain, and the United States. This sweeping monograph features the Bechers' quintessential pictures, which present water towers, gas tanks, blast furnaces, and more as sculptural objects. Beyond the Bechers' iconic Typologies, the book includes Bernd's early drawings, Hilla's independent photographs, and excerpts from their notes, sketchbooks, and journals. The book's authors offer new insights into the development of the artists' process, their work's conceptual underpinnings, the photographers' relationship to deindustrialization, and the artists' legacy. An essay by award-winning cultural historian Lucy Sante and an interview with Max Becher, the artists' son, make this volume an unrivaled look into the Bechers' art, life, and career. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (July 11-October 30, 2022) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (December 17, 2022-April 2, 2023)

This eye-opening study of Civil War photography traces the introduction of the camera into the battlefield and shows its influence on history and our responses to war Six hundred thousand lives were lost between 1861 and 1865, making the conflict between North and South the nation's deadliest war. If the "War Between the States" was the test of the young republic's commitment to its founding precepts, it was also a watershed in photographic history, as the camera recorded the epic, heartbreaking narrative from beginning to end-providing those on the home front, for the first time, with immediate visual access to the horrors of the battlefield. Photography and the American Civil War features both familiar and rarely seen images that include haunting battlefield landscapes strewn with bodies, studio portraits of armed Confederate and Union soldiers (sometimes in the same family) preparing to meet their destiny, rare multi-panel panoramas of Gettysburg and Richmond, languorous camp scenes showing exhausted troops in repose, diagnostic medical studies of wounded soldiers who survived the war's last bloody battles, and portraits of both Abraham Lincoln and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Published on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg (1863), this beautifully produced book features Civil War photographs by George Barnard, Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, and many others. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art(04/01/13-09/02/13) The Gibbes Museum of Art (09/27/13-01/05/14) New Orleans Museum of Art (01/31/14-05/04/14)

Significant and iconic photographs created over the last 100 years provide an essential history and new interpretation of the medium Beginning with Paul Strand's landmark From the Viaduct in 1916 and continuing through the present day, Photography's Last Century examines defining moments in the history of the medium. Featuring nearly 100 masterworks, it includes both rare and iconic examples of works by photography's most renowned and influential artists, including Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Walker Evans, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, and Cindy Sherman, as well as a diverse group of lesser-known practitioners who helped define photography in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Jeff Rosenheim's detailed and perceptive text addresses the avant-garde artists of the early decades of the 20th century, the changing role of the camera after the Second World War, the rise of the international market for fine photographic prints in the 1960s, the photography boom in the late 1970s, and the implications of calling this period the "last" century of photography. Exquisitely designed and produced, this book offers new insight on the development and significance of photography as an art form over the course of the past 100 years. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (March 10-June 28, 2020)