Why People Photograph by
A now classic text on the art, "Why People Photograph" gathers a selection of essays by the great master photographer Robert Adams, tackling such diverse subjects as collectors, humor, teaching, money and dogs. Adams also writes brilliantly on Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Laura Gilpin, Judith Joy Ross, Susan Meiselas, Michael Schmidt, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Eugene Atget. The book closes with two essays on "working conditions" in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century American West, and the essay "Two Landscapes." Adams writes: "At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are."
Train Your Gaze by
Focusing on the presence of the photographer's gaze as an integral part of constructing meaningful images, Roswell Angier combines theory and practice, to provide you with the technical advice and inspiration you need to develop your skills in portrait photography.Fully updated to take into account advances in creative work and photographic technology, this second edition also includes stunning new visuals and a discussion on the role of social media in the practice of portraiture.Each chapter includes a practical assignment, designed to help you explore various kinds of portrait photography and produce a range of different styles for your creative portfolio.
Non-Places by
An ever-increasing proportion of our lives is spent in supermarkets, airports and hotels, on motorways or in front of TVs, computer and cash machines. This invasion of the world by what Marc Auge calls non-space results in a profound alteration of awareness- something we perceive, but only in a partial and incoherent manner. Auge uses the concept of supermodernity to describe the logic of these late-capitalist phenomena a logic of excessive information and excessive space. In this fascinating and lucid essay he seeks to establish and intellectual armature for an anthropology of supermodernity. Starting with an attempt to disentangle anthropology from history, Auge goes on to map the distinction between place, encrusted with historical monuments and creative social life, and non-place, to which individuals are connected in a uniform manner and where no organic social life is possible. Unlike Baudelairean modernity, where old and new are interwoven, supermodernity is self-contained- from the motorway or aircraft, local or exotic particularities are presented two-dimensionally as a sort of theme-park spectacle. Auge does not suggest that supermodernity is all-encompassing- place still exist outside non-place and tend to reconstitute themselves inside it. But he argues powerfully that we are in transit through non-place for more and more of our time, as if between immense parentheses, and concludes that this new form of solitude should become the subject of an anthropology of its own.
Camera Lucida by
A graceful, contemplative volume,Camera Lucidawas first published in 1979. Commenting on artists such as Avedon, Clifford, Mapplethorpe, and Nadar, Roland Barthes presents photography as being outside the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind, and rendering death and loss more acutely than any other medium. This groundbreaking approach establishedCamera Lucidaas one of the most important books of theory on the subject, along with Susan Sontag'sOn Photography.
Union by
Noel Bowler's photographs document the interior spaces of trade union offices in fourteen different countries--Ireland, Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Scandinavia, Canada, and the United States, all with distinct cultural and historical differences. The series provides a glimpse into the normally unseen spaces where the decisions and policies are created that affect so many. These offices share commonalities in terms of bureaucratic and organisational structures--an iconography oforganized labor. Combining photographs of these interior spaces with portraits of union leaders,Union is a journey through an anxious world where the apparent certainty of the past faces an unknown future. DAS AUF AMAZON.DE ANGEGEBENE ERSCHEINUNGDATUM BEZIEHT SICH NUR AUF USA. DER TITEL IST IN EUROPA BEREITS LIEFERBAR, AUCH DURCH AMAZON.DE / THE PUBLICATION DATE INDICATED HERE IS ONLY FOR USA. THIS TITLE IS ALREADY AVAILABLE IN EUROPE, ALSO ON AMAZON.DE
Tom Hunter by
Tom Hunter is a London-based photographer of international renown for his engaging, distinctive, and often provocative re-creations of Old Master paintings. In 1998 he won the John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award for A Woman Reading a Possession Order, a beautifully crafted photograph based on a composition by the Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Featuring selections of the bold images that established Hunter’s reputation, together with new work, this book conveys the artist’s deep concern with depicting the lives of the residents of Hackney, East London, as captured in the headlines of Hunter’s local newspaper, the Hackney Gazette. These startling, sometimes tragic, stories are retold in carefully staged photographs, whose compositions are frequently derived from paintings in the National Gallery. An essay by best-selling novelist Tracy Chevalier examines Hunter’s story-telling, while Colin Wiggins discusses the relationship between Hunter’s work and paintings in the National Gallery and elsewhere.
City of Tomorrow and Its Planning by
In this 1929 classic, the great architect Le Corbusier turned from the design of houses to the planning of cities, surveying urban problems and venturing bold new solutions. The book shocked and thrilled a world already deep in the throes of the modern age. Today it is revered as a work that, quite literally, helped to shape our world. Le Corbusier articulates concepts and ideas he would put to work in his city planning schemes for Algiers, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Geneva, Stockholm, and Antwerp, as well as schemes for a variety of structures from a museum in Tokyo to the United Nations buildings. The influence it exerted on a new generation of architects is now legendary. The City of To-morrow and Its Planning characterizes European cities as a chaos of poor design, inadequate housing, and inefficient transportation that grew out of the unplanned jumble of medieval cities. Developing his thesis that a great modern city can only function on a basis of strict order, Le Corbusier presents two imposing schemes for urban reconstruction -- the "Voisin" scheme for the center of Paris, and his more developed plans for the "City of Three Million Inhabitants," which envisioned, among other things, 60-story skyscrapers, set well apart, to house commercial activities, and residential housing grouped in great blocks of "villas." For those who live in cities as well as anyone interested in their planning, here is a probing survey of the problems of modern urban life and a master architect's stimulating vision of how they might be solved, enlivened by the innovative spirit and passionate creativity that distinguished all of Le Corbusier's work.
DIY/Underground Skateparks by
A skateboarding book like no other, this collection of stunning color photographs from around the world reveals an authentic, unsentimental view of an often overglamorized subculture. The Irish photographer and skateboarder Richard Gilligan spent four years traveling through Europe and the US to photograph homemade skateparks. The resulting photographs are not your run-of-the-mill action shots filled with miraculous body moves, slashes, twists, and turns. Instead, Gilligan chooses to focus on the sport's "negative space": the out-of-the-way concrete embankments, nondescript suburban lots where kids come to practice, a simple wooden ramp so insubstantial that no one but a skateboarder would recognize its use. Many of these photographs can be appreciated as unique, if prosaic, landscapes, but Gilligan also populates his pictures with skaters at rest, smoking alone, hanging out together, or walking home, board in hand. The images offer a grittily beautiful tribute to the ineffable hunger that unites all skateboarders--young, old, rich, poor. In these photographs Gilligan realizes the act of skating represents more than a quest for glory, but a means of self expression.
Girl on Girl: art and photography in the age of the female gaze by
A new generation of female artists is emerging who have grown up in a culture saturated with social media and selfies. This book looks at how young women are using photography and the internet to explore issues of self-image and female identity, and the impact this is having on contemporary art. Forty artists are featured, all of whose principal subject matter is either themselves or other women. Each is accompanied by a short profile based on personal interviews with the author, giving a fascinating insight into this exciting shift in female creativity.
Say nothing : a true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland by 
Basic Critical Theory for Photographers by
Basic Critical Theory for Photographers generates discussion, thought and practical assignments around key debates in photography. Ashley la Grange avoids the trap of an elitist and purely academic approach to critical theory, taking a dual theoretical and practical approach when considering the issues. Key critical theory texts (such as Sontag's 'On Photography' and Barthes' 'Camera Lucida') are clarified and shortened. La Grange avoids editorilising, letting the arguments develop as the writers had intended; it is the assignments which call into question each writer's approach and promote debate. This is the ideal book if you want to understand key debates in photography and have a ready-made structure within which to discuss and explore these fascinating issues. It is accessible to students, from high school to university level, but will also be of interest to the general reader and to those photographers whose training and work is concerned with the practical aspects of photography. Also includes invaluable glossary of terms and a substantial index that incorporates the classic texts, helping you to navigate your way through these un-indexed works. The book also contains useful information on photo-mechanical processes, explaining how a photograph can appear very differently, and as a result be interpreted in a range of ways, in a variety of books.
Infra by
Infra, Richard Mosse's first book, offers a radical rethinking of how to depict a conflict as complex and intractable as that of the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mosse photographs both the rich topography, inscribed with the traces of conflicting interests, as well as rebel groups of constantly shifting allegiances at war with the Congolese national army (itself a patchwork of recently integrated warlords and their militias). For centuries, the Congo has repeatedly compelled and defied the Western imagination. Mosse brings to this subject the use of a discontinued aerial surveillance film, a type of color infrared film called Kodak Aerochrome. The film, originally developed for military reconnaissance, registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light, rendering the green landscape in vivid hues of lavender, crimson, and hot pink. The results offer a fevered inflation of the traditional reportage document, underlining the growing tension between art, fiction, and photojournalism. Mosse's work highlights the ineffable nature of current events in today's Congo. Infra initiates a dialogue with photography that begins as an intoxicating meditation on a broken genre, but ends as a haunting elegy for a vividly beautiful land touched by unspeakable tragedy.
New Topographics by
"The New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" was one of those rare exhibitions that permanently alters how an art form is perceived. Held at the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York, in January 1975, it was curated by William Jenkins, who brought together ten contemporary photographers: Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore and Henry Wessel, Jr. Signaling the emergence of a new approach to landscape, the show effectively gave a name to a movement or style, although even today, the term "New Topographics"--more a conceptual gist than a precise adjective--is used to characterize the work of artists not yet born when the exhibition was held. Although the exhibit's ambitions were hardly so grand, New Topographics has since come to be understood as marking a paradigm shift, for the show occurred just as photography ceased to be an isolated, self-defined practice and took its place within the contemporary art world. Arguably the last traditionally photographic style, New Topographics was also the first Photoconceptual style. In different ways, the artists thoughtfully engaged with their medium and its history, while simultaneously absorbing such issues as environmentalism, capitalism and national identity. In this vital reassessment of the genre, essays by Britt Salvesen and Alison Nordstrom accompany illustrations of selected works from the 1975 exhibition, with installation views and contextual comparisons, to demonstrate both the historical significance of New Topographics and its continued relevance today. The book also includes an illustrated checklist of the 1975 exhibition and an extensive bibliography.
Trent Parke: Minutes to Midnight by
In 2003, Trent Parke began a roadtrip around his native Australia, a monumental journey that was to last two years and cover a distance of over 90,000 km. Minutes to Midnight is the ambitious photographic record of that adventure, in which Parke presents a proud but uneasy nation struggling to craft its identity from different cultures and traditions. Minutes to Midnight merges traditional documentary techniques and imagination to create a dark visual narrative portraying Australia with a mix of nostalgia, romanticism and brooding realism. This is not a record of the physical landscape but of an emotional one. It is a story of human anxiety and intensity which, although told from Australia, represents a universal human condition in the world today.
Post-Photography by
The real world is full of cameras; the virtual world is full of images. Where does all this photographic activity leave the artist-photographer? Post-Photography tries to answer that question by investigating the exciting new language of photographic image-making that is emerging in the digital age of anything-is-possible and everything-has-been-done-before. Found imagery has become increasingly important in post-photographic practice, with the internet serving as a laboratory for a major kind of image-making experimentation. But artists also continue to create entirely original works using avant-garde techniques drawn from both the digital and analogue eras. This book is split into six sections - Something Borrowed, Something New, Layers of Reality, Eye-Spy, Material Visions, Post-Photojournalism and All the World Is Staged - which cover the key strategies adopted by 53 of the most exciting and innovative artist-photographers of the 21st century, drawn from all over the world.
Thomas Struth: Fotografien 1978-20210 by
"Thomas Struth's photographs are about making order visible. And with the help of these images, the viewer finds him- or herself better able to grasp some of the many and varied faces of reality." Photographer Thomas Struth is one of the most acclaimed artists to emerge from Europe in the late twentieth century. With great precision, clarity of color, and an unwavering instinct for composition, he addresses both important photographic motifs and informal, often little-known subjects. Struth characteristically treats the various aspects of his photographs in an even-handed way, a neutrality he also applies to the viewer, for he puts the viewing public on a par with his pictorial world. "Struth poses aesthetically formulated issues that make such an impact not least because they concern us personally and are, above all, crucial to the future of human civilization." This lavish volume is the most comprehensive study of Struth's oeuvre, showcasing all of the famous series and images: the streetscapes of Düsseldorf, New York City, Rome, China, and elsewhere; the family portraits; the museum photographs; the flowers, plants, and rainforests; and most recently, the studies of science and technology. Struth revisits many of his subjects, adding ever more layers of complexity and interpretation. Essays by renowned curators and critics complete this essential study of one of the world's major artists. "Struth's work suspends both belief and doubt and shifts the subject to a bigger picture about the inescapable entanglement of experience and ideology."
Ponte City by
Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse worked at Ponte City, the iconic Johannesburg apartment building which is Africa's tallest residential skyscraper, for more than six years. They photographed the residents and documented the building-- every door, the view from every window, the image on every television screen. This remarkable body of photographs is presented here in counterpoint with an extensive archive of found material and historical documents. The visual story is integrated with a sustained sequence of essays and documentary texts. In the essays, some of South Africa's leading scholars and writers explore Ponte City's unique place in Johannesburg and in the imagination of its citizens. What emerges is a complex portrait of a place shaped by contending projections, a single, unavoidable building seen as refuge and monstrosity, dreamland and dystopia, a lightning rod for a society's hopes and fears, and always a beacon to navigate by. This long-term project obtained the Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d'Arles in 2011.
The Disciplinary Frame by
Photography can seem to capture reality and the eye like no other medium, commanding belief and wielding the power of proof. In some cases, a photograph itself is attributed the force of the real. How can a piece of chemically discolored paper have such potency? How does the meaning of a photograph become fixed? In The Disciplinary Frame, John Tagg claims that, to answer these questions, we must look at the ways in which all that frames photographyOCothe discourse that surrounds it and the institutions that circulate itOCodetermines what counts as truth. The meaning and power of photographs, Tagg asserts, are discursive effects of the regimens that produce them as official record, documentary image, historical evidence, or art. Teasing out the historical processes involved, he examines a series of revealing case studies from nineteenth-century European and American photographs to Depression-era works by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Margaret Bourke-White to the conceptualist photography of John Baldessari. Central to this transformative work are questions of cultural strategy, the growth of the state, and broad issues of power and representation: how the discipline of the frame holds both photographic image and viewer in place, without erasing the possibility for evading, and even resisting, capture. Photographs, Tagg ultimately finds, are at once too big and too small for the frames in which they are enclosedOCoalways saying more than is wanted and less than is desired.
Maidan : portraits from the Black Square by
This title by Anastasia Taylor-Lind is a series of portraits of anti-government protestors and mourners made in a makeshift photographic studio in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), Kiev.
