BOOKS 2013: My Top Ten and More

A Period of Juvenile Prosperity 

Photographs by Mike Brodie

Published by Twin Palms

A Period of Juvenile Prosperity Published by Twin Palms

Photographs by Mike Brodie

Now in its third printing...

At 17 Mike Brodie hopped his first train close to his home in Pensacola, FL thinking he would visit a friend in Mobile, AL. Instead the train went in the opposite direction to Jacksonville, FL. Days later, Brodie rode the same train home, arriving back where he started. Nonetheless, it sparked something and Brodie began to wander across the U.S. by any means that were free - walking, hitchhiking and train hopping. Shortly after, Brodie found a Polaroid camera stuffed behind a carseat. With no training in photography, the instant camera was an opening for Brodie to document his experiences. read more....

 

 Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits
Photographs by Vivian Maier, Edited by John Maloof
Essay by Elizabeth Avedon. Published by powerHouse Books

"For the first time, Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits reveals the fullest and most intimate portrait of the artist to date with approximately 60 never-before-seen black-and-white and four-color self-portraits culled from the extensive Maloof archive, the preeminent collector of the work of Vivian Maier." –powerHouse Books

Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits. Courtesy of John Maloof

 “The work sings with photographic purity, the love for physically making pictures. There is no place or use for a witness or collaborator, remaining uncluttered and free from the pursuits of acceptance, notoriety, and celebrity.” –Elizabeth Avedon

Don't Miss:

VIVIAN MAIER | SELF PORTRAIT: Exhibition
at the Howard Greenberg Gallery to January 4, 2014
The Fuller Building, 41 East 57 Street, NY 10022

 The Big Book. Volumes One and Two.
Photographs by W. Eugene Smith

University Of Texas Press, Austin, 2013

Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

 University Of Texas Press, Austin, 2013

W. Eugene Smith, an icon in the field of twentieth-century photography, is best known as the master of the humanistic photographic essay. In 1959, Smith became obsessed with creating an extended photo-essay that he called “The Big Book,” a complex retrospective of his work that would reflect his philosophy of art and critique of the world. Smith’s layout grouped photographs out of context and chronological order to form a series of connected “visual chapters and sub-chapters” that were intended to have a Joycean or Faulknerian literary quality. After three years of intense labor, Smith completed two handmade folio-sized maquettes to send to publishers. With 380 pages and 450 images, The Big Book was universally rejected as non-commercial, and it was never published. read more... 

 Ametsuchi. Photographs by Rinko Kawauchi
Aperture, 2013

Photograph by Rinko Kawauchi

Rinko Kawauchi has gained international recognition for her nuanced, lushly colored images that offer closely observed fragments of everyday life. In her latest work, she shifts her attention from the micro to the macro. The title, Ametsuchi, is comprised of two Japanese characters meaning “heaven and earth,” and is taken from the title of one of the oldest pangrams in Japanese—a chant in which each character of the Japanese syllabary is used. In Ametsuchi, Kawauchi brings together images of distant constellations and tiny figures lost within landscapes, as well as photographs of a traditional style of controlled-burn farming (yakihata) in which the cycles of cultivation and recovery span decades and generations. Punctuating the series are images of Buddhist rituals and other religious ceremonies—a suggestion of other means by which humankind has traditionally attempted to transcend time and memory. (Publisher)

 Shooting Soldiers. Civil War Medical Photography

Photographs by Reed Brockway Bontecou, MD

 Burns Archive Press

Stanley B. Burns, MD in front of his Reed Bontecou Collection of medical Civil War Photography at the "Photography and the American Civil War" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Summer 2013. (Photo: EA)

Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R.B. Bontecou, is a revealing exposé of the war-time clinical photographs of Reed Bontecou. This is the first volume of a series showcasing the Civil War carte de visite (CdV) photographs of Reed Brockway Bontecou, MD, Surgeon-in-Charge of Harewood U.S. Army General Hospital, Washington DC. The book contains 102 plates of wounded soldiers and 50 other medical photographs that vividly document the distinction between clinical photographs taken during the war and the post war images made for pension purposes. Also included are discussions of death and sacrifice as well as listings of the soldiers presented with their units, battle, and official accounts of their wounds. read more...

Dorothea Lange. Grab a Hunk of Lightning.
Photographs by Dorothea Lange.
Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2013

Dorothea Lange. Grab a Hunk of Lightning celebrates one of the twentieth century's most important documentary photographers, Dorothea Lange. Led off by an authoritative biographical essay by Elizabeth Partridge (Lange's goddaughter), the book goes on to showcase Lange's work in over a hundred glorious plates. Dorothea Lange is the only career-spanning monograph of this major photographer's oeuvre in print, and features images ranging from her iconic Depression-era photograph 'Migrant Mother' to lesser-known images from her global travels later in life. read more....

Saul Leiter: Here's More, Why Not
Photographs by Saul Leiter
Fifty One Publications, 2013

"Saul Leiter's apartment is filled with memories, photographs and paintings of people he knew and the people he lived with but Saul hasn't found the answers yet to questions as to why he has done what he did. Probably because he enjoyed doing it and that's about it. Every time I enter his place this is what strikes me: this apartment filled with his life. It moves me and touches me just the like man living there does." -Fifty One Publications

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French Ed.) by Clement Cheroux 

Published by Centre Georges Pompidou, 2013

"Born in 1908 in France, Henri Cartier-Bresson is considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. Early on he adopted the versatile 35mm format and helped develop the popular “street photography” style, influencing generations of photographers that followed. In his own words, he expressed that “the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. . . . It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.” Clément Chéroux is a photographic historian and curator of the photographic collection at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He has worked on many exhibitions as well publications on photography." This book was originally published by Harry N. Abrams, 2009

 Barcelona. Photographs by Janelle Lynch

Radius Books, 2013

 GROUND 5. Barcelona, Radius Books, 2013
 Photographs by Janelle Lynch

From 2007 to 2011, while living in Spain, Janelle Lynch explored the fallow landscape outside of Barcelona. With her 8×10-inch camera and a portrait lens, the artist photographed pylons, puddles, leaves, and litter as metaphors for themes of absence and presence, mourning and remembrance. Following the success of Los Jardines de México (Radius Books, 2011), Barcelona continues Lynch’s long-term interest in representations of the life cycle in the landscape. read more....

Across the Ravaged Land (Abrams, 2013)
Nick Brandt's final book in his trilogy documenting
the disappearing natural world and animals of East Africa

 Calcified Fish Eagle, Lake Natron 2012
Photograph © 2012 Nick Brandt

Lion and Wildebeest, Amboseli 2012
Photograph © 2012 Nick Brandt

Months on Photo-Eye BestSeller List

Now in his third book, Across the Ravaged Land, Brandt has taken his stately images to the next level, exposing a darker vision. These extraordinary photographs, shot between 2010 and 2012, are haunting. Through the series of dried and calcified animals out on a weathered and ravaged land, elephants watching protectively over an elephant skull, or lion and buffalo heads mounted on posts as trophies overlooking the Chyulu Hills of Kenya, Brandt brings us full circle back to a solemn close to his trilogy of books documenting the disappearing natural world and animals of East Africa." – Elizabeth Avedon (photo-eye)

Janet Russek: The Tenuous Stem (Radius Books)
Photographs by Janet Russek. Essay by MaLin Wilson Powell

The poignancy and promise of the life cycle informs Janet Russek’s long term photographic project, The Tenuous Stem. She began this work expressing sadness over loss, while noting the possibility of new life carried by a seed or a stem. In 1989, Eliot Porter—her mentor and friend—gave her a monorail camera which was too unwieldy for anything but studio work, and although she has always worked with 4 x 5 cameras, she set up still lifes for the first time. read more....

 Respecting My Elders (Magcloud, 2013)
Portraits by Ellen Wallenstein

David Vestal, 1924-2013, Photographer
Photograph © Ellen Wallenstein

Respecting My Elders - Age and the Creative Spirit is Ellen Wallenstein's self-published book of beautiful portraits of artists over 80 years old who have affected the American culture. Read my Interview with Ellen Wallenstein here

Yonkeros. Photographs by Jaime Permuth
La Fabrica, 2013

 Photograph © Jaime Permuth, 2013

In Yonkeros, Guatemalan photographer Jaime Permuth (born 1968) documents “The Iron Triangle”: Willets Point, a small and often overlooked enclave of New York City that is home to junkyards and scrap metal businesses. Permuth’s beautiful black-and-white photographs highlight local workers, and their tools and materials.

Hip Hop. Portraits of an Urban Hymn.
Photographs by David Scheinbaum 
Damiani, 2013

David Scheinbaum's portraits of Erykah Badu, Chuck D., George Clinton, Common, Mos Def, Del-Tha Funkee Homosapien, Sage Francis, Professor Griff, KRS One, Mike Relm, Tajai, Wu-Tang Clan and Yelawolf (among others) approach hip hop as a positive cultural influence akin to the youth movement of the 1960s. Scheinbaum’s photographs are accompanied by essays by Gaye Theresa Johnson and Michael Eric Dyson, an artist conversation with Frank H. Goodyear III and an introduction by Brian Hardgroove of Public Enemy.

The Last Roll
Photographs by Jeff Jacobson
Daylight Books, 2013. Printed in Iceland by Oddi Press

Faux Desert, Kearney, Nebraska
Photograph © Jeff Jacobson

“A few days before Christmas, 2004, I was diagnosed with lymphoma,” writes photographer Jeff Jacobson (born 1946) in his preface to The Last Roll. “After each chemotherapy session I retreated to our home in the Catskills to recuperate. I began photographing around the house as I was too sick to go anywhere else. As my strength returned, my photographic universe slowly expanded.” Shortly thereafter, Kodak discontinued production of Kodachrome, the stock that had shaped Jacobson’s vision as a photographer. He bought up as much remaining Kodachrome film as he could, and exposed his last roll a few days before Christmas, 2010. The compelling body of photographs made on Kodachrome provides a nuanced, first-person depiction of a cancer patient’s changing perspectives on life, death, art and the world at-large. read more....

Most titles above are available at photo-eye Books

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SELF PUBLISH, BE HAPPY
Book Club, SPBH Editions, Shop Books
Director: Bruno Ceschel

Self Publish, Be Happy is an organisation founded by Bruno Ceschel in 2010 with the aim of celebrating, studying and promoting self-published photo books through events (such as exhibitions, displays and talks), publications and online exposure. Self Publish, Be Happy also organises workshops that help artists and photographers make and publish their own books.

PAU WAU PUBLICATIONS
Publishers: Andreas Laszlo Konrath and Brian Paul Lamotte

Pau Wau Publications is an independent publishing collective dedicated to the production of small run & limited edition publications of contemporary photography. Our handmade process invokes a craft-based tradition that employs modern technology to create publications that we hope engage and inspire a dialogue on form, display and image.