12.27.2017

2017 BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS : PART II + HONORABLE MENTIONS

Photograph ©  Larry Sultan

MACK, 2017

 MACK, 2017

First published in 1992 to wide critical acclaim, Pictures From Home is Larry Sultan's (b. 1946, Brooklyn; d. 2009, California) pendant to his parents. Sultan returned home to Southern California periodically in the 1980s and the decade-long sequence moves between registers, combining contemporary photographs with film stills from home movies, fragments of conversation, Sultan's own writings and other memorabilia. The result is a narrative collage in which the boundary between the documentary and the staged becomes increasingly ambiguous. 196 pages, 140 color plates MACK

In the wake of his passing I reread Pictures From Home. Unbelievable. Has there ever been a photographer who writes better than Sultan? I’m certain that nobody has done a better job combining text and pictures. In this regard, Pictures From Home is the absolute zenith. Plainspoken, smart and brutally honest, it is a masterpiece of narrative photography.” – Alec Soth



Aperture, 2017


Susan Meiselas, one of the most influential photographers of our time and an important contributor to the evolution of documentary storytelling, provides an insightful personal commentary on the trajectory of her career in Susan Meiselas: On the Frontline. She guides us through her ideas, practices, and decision-making along her journey—from Carnival Strippers (1976) and Nicaragua: June 1978–July 1979 (1981; reissued by Aperture 2008, 2016) to Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997) and Cova da Moura, Portugal (2004). This book includes over 100 photographs from her earliest work and most iconic images, along with previously unpublished photographs.” Aperture



Åsa Sjöström: Silent Land
Bokförlaget Max Ström, Stockholm

"Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe and one of the consequences of this fact is felt most harshly in the fabric of the family. Since the fall of the Soviet Union - when the country was a prosperous farming and wine community - nearly a quarter of the population has moved abroad in search of a better life."

"Åsa Sjöström focused on the Gradinari family. This past year, they could not afford to buy enough seed for their harvest since the father of the family was unable to travel to russia for work. Around the struggling family, she found a strikingly beautiful countryside. Amidst the painful economic pressures, sunflower fields were in blossom. Her pictures are poised between joy and sadness, work and play, summer holidays and annual responsibilities." Bokförlaget Max Ström



The Black Dandy and Street Style
Aperture Foundation, 2017

The Black Dandy and Street Style

Photograph (c) Russell K. Frederick

Described as “high-styled rebels” by author Shantrelle P. Lewis, black men with a penchant for color and refined fashion, both new and vintage, have gained popular attention in recent years, influencing mainstream fashion. But black dandyism itself is not new; originating in Enlightenment England’s slave culture, it has continued for generations in black cultures around the world. Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style, 173 pages, 140 black-and-white and four-color images. Aperture Foundation



 Aerial Photographer, Kacper Kowalski
Landskrona FotoFestival Portfolio Review Winner 2016

 OVER
Kacper Kowalski

 ... I first saw from above the world below covered in fresh snow


I discovered flying....I quit my job, stopped seeing my friends, and hardly spent time at home anymore. I needed an excuse to justify what I was doing, so I came up with photography. There were no digital cameras or drones at that time—you needed to be able to slip a new roll of film into the camera in midair. I would take off from a meadow next to my house and enter that enchanted, colorful realm at one hundred and fifty meters. I would bring back photographs, like pirate’s booty. It was my mission to reveal the unknown, unseen world to the people; to record a portrait of civilization from on high. I felt I was educating and enlightening...I received awards, had exhibitions, and signed photobooks.

Do you recall Tarkovsky’s Stalker? That’s how I felt when I first saw from above the world below covered in fresh snow. Cold, empty, and strange. Under my rib cage an unfamiliar planet, abandoned by people. The sky merges with the Earth in front of me, the depths of whiteness stretch behind me. Through horizonless fog I move instinctively from one shape to the next, guided by structures and forms. I plunge deeper and deeper until all that remains is the here and the now, within which I meditate. With my whole being I experience the disturbing, ephemeral universe that belongs to nobody, not even to myself. I’ve found my Utopia. It doesn’t matter what I see when looking but what I feel. –
Kacper Kowalski

I was fortunate to meet Kacper Kowalski at the 2016 Landskrona Photo Festival Portfolio Review. His portfolio was nominated as the best of all the work viewed by the Reviewers, and he was chosen as the Winner of the Review. His work continues to be exhibited internationally.

"Over" Aerial Photographs and Text by Kacper Kowalski




Cheshire Bridge Road is an alluring look into a diverse southern urban community within Atlanta

Cheshire Bridge Road
by Teri E Darnell

For the last twenty years photographer Teri Darnell has lived in a neighborhood along Cheshire Bridge Road know as Atlanta’s Red-Light District. She submersed herself into the culture by walking up and down this infamous one-mile road photographing people and the environment. She discovered that Cheshire Bridge Road provides a community where all people are free to live with the person they are inside regardless of sexuality, gender, and race. Seedy strip clubs, sex shops, and gay nightclubs line Cheshire Bridge Road. Drag shows come alive most nights of the week, as they have been for decades. The establishments are disappearing quickly from an explosion of redevelopment. It’s just a matter of time before this unique community is forced to disperse, the diversity along this road no longer exists. Check out Teri Darnell's photographs. Amazon , 12x12



 ANDERSON + LOW : Voyages
Lucky Panda Press, 2017

ANDERSON + LOW : Voyages
Lucky Panda Press, 2017

Internationally acclaimed photographers Anderson + Low brought their latest photography series, Voyages, to the Science Museum last spring, focusing on the Museum's collection of maritime models. Using innovative methods of photography, Anderson + Low created a series of beautiful and ethereal images which capture the collection in a new light, reimagining the models as epic voyagers. Lucky Panda Press



ANNE BERRY | PRIMATES
 21ST EDITIONS, 2017

ANNE BERRY | PRIMATES
 21ST EDITIONS. 2017

"Anne Berry spent several years traveling across Europe and America, stopping at small zoos to photograph the primates you see here. The smaller zoos allowed Berry more one-on-one time with her subjects. Sometimes Berry would wait for days to get the right shot, which meant connecting beyond the glass-as-cage as well as the glass-as-lens...few photographers have communicated the depth and complexity of primate emotions as Berry has." – Collier Brown. 21st Editions



Following in the Footsteps of Johannes Larsen
Crymogea, Reykjavík, Iceland 2017

 Melstaður, July 27, 1930
Drawing by Johannes Larsen

Melstaður, June 17, 2016
Photograph by Einar Falur Ingólfsson

Photographer Einar Falur Ingólfsson has been photographing places in Icelandic nature previously portrayed in illustrations for translations of the Icelandic sagas. Now it is time for another artist, Johannes Larsen, that illustrated the Icelandic sagas published by Gyldendal. It is a fascinating study of the role of landscape. 

From 2014 to 2016, the Danish artist Johannes Larsen' (1867–1961) drawings were the guide of Einar Falur Ingólfsson, while travelling around and photographing Iceland. Larsen was in Iceland during the summers of 1927 and 1930 and made over 300 drawings of sites mentioned in the Sagas of the Icelanders for a three-volume edition of the sagas published by the Danish press Gyldendal between 1930 and 1932.  Almost ninety years later, Ingólfsson followed in Larsen’s footsteps, working with a large sheet film camera in many of the same places he visited. 182 pages, Crymogea, Reykjavík 2017


MAN WITH PANAMA HAT
 Photograph © Raphael Shammaa


Raphael Shammaa


Raphael Shammaa

“It is beautiful! Very elegant, sophisticated. Beautifully designed and printed. A lovely piece to keep for anyone receiving it” –Elizabeth Avedon. Fifty two pages plus cover and 39 images. Printed on Mohawk Superfine Eggshell Fine Art paper. Available at Dashwood Books




ALISON ROSSITER: EXPIRED PAPER
Radius Books / Yossi Milo Gallery

Expired Paper offers a comprehensive look at Alison Rossiter's body of work—Latent, Tarnish, Landscapes, Pools, Pours, Dips, Quads, and Collages. Art critic Leah Ollman’s accompanying text serves as an ideal complement to the images: “All of the works pay homage to the rich idiosyncrasies of photographic papers across history, and restore a sanctity to the photograph as object. Made without cameras, lenses or film, the works are nothing but process and materiality. Their subject, if they can be said to have one, is time, photography’s most irreducible ingredient.” (Art in America) Includes a selection of early 20th-century photographic paper packages (which the artist has collected for over 30 years) in a separate booklet. Radius Books



FRIEDLANDER | MEISELAS | MANDEL | BURKE  


Four Book Set : TBW Books
Book 1: Mike Mandel - Boardwalk Minus Forty
Book 2: Susan Meiselas - Prince Street Girls
Book 3: Bill Burke - They Shall Take Up Serpents
Book 4: Lee Friedlander - Head

Four iconic living American photographers offer entirely new bodies of never before seen work. Reaching back 30 years and beyond, the books feel contemporary through deliberate choices in editing, sequence, and design, while continuing to celebrate their vintage origins. Each artist's vision, while individually experienced, comes together to form a powerful quartet of books.


The Legacy of Judaism in the New World
Photographs by Wyatt Gallery

Award-winning photographer Wyatt Gallery documents the oldest synagogues and cemeteries dating back to the early 1600’s on Barbados, Curacao, Jamaica, St. Thomas, St. Eustatius, and Suriname through his singular style of photos with histories written by Stanley Mirvis. The enclaves, formed by Sephardic Jews who fled the Catholic Inquisition, became so influential that they helped fuel the success of the American Revolution and partially finance the first synagogues in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island.  Schiffer


 Cig Harvey: You An Orchestra You A Bomb
Schilt Publishing, 2017


"You An Orchestra You A Bomb, is a vibrant and bold book; possibly her most beautiful to date. It explores the photographer’s relationship with life itself. It is a book about paying attention to and appreciating the fragile present. You An Orchestra You A Bomb captures moments of awe, makes icons of the everyday, and looks at life on the threshold between magic and disaster. 

Cig Harvey has always experienced the world viscerally but after a traumatic event, a raw heightened awareness of temporary nature of life permeates this new work. Through breathless moments of beauty, her images propel us to fathom the sacred in the split seconds of everyday. Cig's photographs are interwoven with her intimate poetry in this hauntingly beautiful book.”– Schilt Publishing

 Gabriela Herman: The Kids
The Children of LGBTQ Parents in the USA
The New Press, 2017

A stunning new photobook featuring more than fifty portraits by Gabriela Herman of children brought up by gay parents in America, sixth in a groundbreaking series that looks at LGBTQ communities around the world. The New Press


Bluewater Shore
by Douglas Stockdale
Bluewater Shore
by Douglas Stockdale

I finally met Douglas Stockdale last summer at the LACP Portfolio Reviews after following his "PhotoBook Journal" for years. He shared his latest self-published Artist Book, Bluewater Shore,  created from re-purposed photographs from the artist family album that investigates memory, family and American culture. It's housed in a unique, hand-inscribed plastic ziplock bag. Self-published.



 The Topography of Tears (Paperback)Rose-Lynn Fisher
Bellevue Literary Press, 2017

In this powerful collection of images,  award-winning photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher trains her optical microscope and camera on her own tears and those of men, women, and children, released in moments of grief, pain, gratitude, and joy, and captured upon glass slides. These duotone photographs reveal the beauty of recurring patterns in nature and present evocative, crystalline imagery for contemplation. Her first book, BEE, is a close-up study of the honeybee via scanning electron microscope in magnifications from 10x to 5000x. Her new book, The Topography of Tears, explores the realm of our tears through an optical microscope.  Bellevue Literary Press




Here For The Ride is Andre D. Wagner’s first monograph and comprehensive body of work. The book chronicles the everyday life of people as they embark on a personal journey through the New York subway system. 62 photographs that are intended to be read more than viewed, Here For The Ride is a collective sequence alluding to the qualities of life that are often invisible to the common eye. Containing two interrelated documents, the hardcover book contains the primary photographic narrative, with an introduction by Miles Hodges. The paperback includes an essay by Zun Lee, an in-depth interview with the artist and a series of images that delve deeper into the artistic process behind book. Creative Future





I met Lithuanian photographer and media artist Visvaldas Morkevičius (now based in Berlin-Vilnius) at the Landskrona FotoFestival Portfolio Review 2017. He works between fashion and documentary, collaborating with other artists as a photographer: Dazed digital, i-D online, i-D Germany, NEON magazin, Nido, Future Music magazine, Citizens of humanity magazine...more here
Portraitzine is the latest project by Visvaldas Morkevičius, comprising a series of photographs as results of the visual anthropology research. The author sees Portraitzine as a collection of “journeys.” Read more: http://portraitzine.com/



Photographer Sinden Collier

Rhett Collier and Sinden Collier
 
"Losing my Religion but not my Faith"
Photograph © Sinden Collier

"The collaboration of writer Rhett Collier and photographer Sinden Collier has produced a conceptual museum quality book of original thoughts and images, aptly entitled: "TRAINS OF THOUGHT - Welcome Aboard!" The thoughts are visceral and stimulating, touching upon wisdom, reality, imagination and inspiring reflections. The images are ethereal, evoking mood and atmosphere in a painterly photographic style, each resonant to the thought with which it is paired. This pairing provides a central underscoring of the messages.” Trains-of-Thought.com




Once in Harlem, Katsu Naito builds on his remarkable ability to intimately engage with his subjects to create emotional dialogues that can transcend bounds of ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic strata, to, as he puts it, "look into each other’s soul to build another dimension of a relationship.” 100 pages 55 duotone plates TBW Books


 Reading New York
Lawrence Schwartzwald

Photojournalist Schwartzwald’s beautifully printed self published 30 page book-zine available at Dashwood Books.


Passage, 2017


”Sundets Pärla”, The Pearl of the Strait by Swedish photogapher Sanja Matoničkin taken from Helsingborg, the town at Öresund, where fresh north-western winds blow in from the sea. The low pressures bring in showers of rain from the North Sea creating glittering pools, where the buildings are mirrored, meditating on their age and beauty. Passage

2017 BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS
PART I


* Text for most posts courtesy of their publisher. 

12.25.2017

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS OF 2017 : ROUND-UP PART I



In 1957, New York photojournalist Jerry Dantzic spent time with the iconic singer Billie Holiday during a week-long run of performances at the Newark, New Jersey, nightclub Sugar Hill. The resulting images offer a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of Billie with her family, friends, and and performing. The years and the struggles seem to vanish when she sings; her face lights up. Later that same year, Dantzic photographed her in color at the second New York Jazz Festival at Randall’s Island. Only a handful of the photographs in the book have ever been published. Jerry Dantzic: Billie Holiday at Sugar Hill, a gorgeous coffee table book with 100 photos; Text by Grayson Dantzic and Introduction by Zadie Smith.


by Kahn + Selesnick, Candela Books, 2017


by Kahn + Selesnick, Candela Books, 2017


Against a backdrop of ecological decline, this memoir/travelogue follows an itinerant theatrical troupe, Truppe Fledermaus, as they stage absurdist performances in various locations including Europe, America, and Japan. The book, whose physical design format is modeled on Ukiyo-e series such as Hiroshige’s One Hundred Views of Edo, contains photographs of the Truppe, their travels, and their performances with corresponding text narrating the images. It is the author’s preference to have the pages of the book be loose and non-linear so that readers can explore the images and story in any order they prefer. By Kahn + Selesnick; 104 unbound pages in a band and slipcase.

Published by Eye + Inc. (2017)

Nydia Blas : The Girls Who Spun Gold. Ithaca, N.Y. 2016 

For the first time in 30 years, since Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s 1986 book, “Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers,” a book celebrates black women photographers! "Mfon: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora” published photographs by 100 black women of African descent ranging in age from 13 to 91. Co-editors, the award winning documentary photographer, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn and critically acclaimed, award winning visual artist, Adama Delphine Fawundu, selected the photographs. With an Introduction by Dr. Deborah Willis, MacArthur Fellow and Chair of the Dept. of Photography + Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU; as well as essays written by women scholars, journalists and artists.


MAC'S Grand Hornu, 2017

LaToya Ruby Frazier, Maria C.'s hands holding a family photograph showing her mother brother, and herself as a child.

Photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier grew up in Braddock, PA, a borough in the American Rust Belt ravaged by the steel-industry crisis that hit the US during the Reagan administration. In this former bastion of the steel industry, the artist was raised in her Afro-American family, whose story she told in The Notion of Family. Her 2016 residency at Grand-Hornu allowed her to pursue her work on postindustrial society in Belgium, turning her camera to the Borinage, a mining region whose intense activity in the 19th century was diminished by a series of crises that led to the closure of the last mine in 1976. Testimonies gathered by Frazier from the former miners and their families have resulted in And from the Coaltips a Tree Will Rise, an extensive collection of portraits, landscapes and still lifes.

 Ken Hermann : Flower Men
Kehrer Verlag, 2017 

Ken Hermann : Flower Men
Kehrer Verlag, 2017  

"Ken Hermann’s images are pathways, connecting us to micro worlds and challenging us to rethink ideas of photographic representation. Passionate about individuals and their unique histories, he explores the fragile balance between people and their environment, between tradition and modernity. Hermann’s photography seamlessly weaves cultural and political content, blending documentary and cinematic portraiture. "
Flower Man is a personal portrait project made in the Malik Ghat Flower Market in Kolkata....It’s a beautiful and at the same time very stressful place—the market is one of the biggest flower markets in Asia and is very busy. There are a lot of superstitions and religious beliefs surrounding flowers in India. For example, I wasn’t able to photograph some of the flower sellers because their flowers were holy, and they would lose their “power” if photographed. —Ken Hermann

I was first introduced to Danish photographer Ken Hermann at the 2017 Landskrona Foto Festival Portfolio Reviews after viewing many of his photographs in National Geographic magazine. Check out his other brilliant series here: KenHermann.dk  


 Debi Cornwall : Welcome to Camp America
Radius Books, 2017

Debi Cornwall : Welcome to Camp America

Debi Cornwall is a conceptual documentary artist who returned to visual expression in 2014 after a 12-year career as a wrongful conviction lawyer.  Welcome to Camp America is a vivid aglimpse into the U.S. Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, (known as “Gitmo”) and its growing diaspora, through photographs, once-classified government documents, and first-person accounts. Welcome to Camp America reflects three bodies of work, including: Gitmo at Home, Gitmo at Play, showing residential and leisure spaces of both prisoners and guards; Gitmo on Sale, depicting the commodification of American military power through gift-shop souvenirs; and Beyond Gitmo, investigating life after detention with 14 men once held as accused terrorists, now cleared and freed, living in nine countries, from Albania to Qatar. Environmental portraits in the free world replicate conditions of military regulation photography at Guantánamo Bay: no faces are shown. With unique construction in English and Arabic, the book seeks common ground while asking provocative questions about compromises made between humanity and fear in the post-9/11 era.


Yoga: The Secret of Life : Francesco Mastalia 
powerHouse Books, 2017

Yoga: The Secret of Life : Francesco Mastalia 
powerHouse Books, 2017

I met photographer Francesco Mastalia at the 2016 annual "New York Portfolio Review" sponsored by the New York Times Lens Blog and the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Graduate School of Journalism. He has traveled the world photographing tribal, religious, spiritual, and indigenous people. Yoga: The Secret of Life is his photo-documentary about the spiritual and physical journey of yoga. Through photographs and text this fine art book explores the personal experiences of 108 of today’s leading practitioners and how this ancient practice has transformed their mind, body, and spirit. The photographs are taken on glass plates using the wet collodion process, a photographic technique dating back to the 1850s. With the use of a large format wooden camera and antique brass lens, glass plates are hand coated to produce one of a kind ambrotype images. The collodion process transcends us to another place, another time. When light and chemistry collide we enter a mysterious world where art and science meet and the alchemy reveals itself. 224 pages include world renowned yogis Radhanath Swami, Sharon Gannon, David Life, Gurmukh Kaur Khasla, Sri Dharma Mittra, Krishna Das, Tao-Porchon Lynch, Shiva Rea, Rod Stryker, Seane Corn and Rodney Yee.


 Jenny Rova : Älskling 
A Self-Portrait Through The Eyes of My Lovers
b.frank books, Zurich 2017

 Jenny Rova : Älskling 
A Self-Portrait Through The Eyes of My Lovers

I met Swedish-born photographer Jenny Rova at the 2017 Landskrona Foto Festival Portfolio Reviews  where she won Honorable Mention for the Best Portfolio of the Year 2017. I was blown away by two of her series. The first is Älskling A Self-Portrait Through The Eyes of My Lovers, published by b.frank books, Zurich 2017

"My intention was to make a self-portrait made by other people. I was asking my ex boyfriends and lovers to give me all the pictures they took of me during our relationship. The pictures I got were from a twenty-five years period of time. The first photo was when I was nineteen, the last one this year when I’m forty-five. The series contains fifty-five photographs and has nine different authors. I’m presenting the pictures in a chronological order. The work can be seen as biographical work, telling about a part of my life, but it’s also an indirect portrait of the photographer, the partner behind the camera. An aspect that is interesting to me is the special way of looking at each other when you are in love. These pictures can be seen as an attempt capture closeness and attraction between two people within a photograph.”



 "For his 40th birthday she invited him on a trip to Venice"
From: I would Also Like To Be -  A Work On Jealousy
(photocollage)

The second series is I Would Also Like To Be : A Work On Jealousy, is my favorite just for the sheer courage it took to create and publish this work. We may all have experienced jealousy seeing our former partner enjoying themselves in their new relationship. Rova has taken this jealousy to a whole new level collaging her face into her former boyfriends facebook photographs with his new girlfriend. Absolutely love this. 

Roma explains: "I’m following and spying on my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. I pursue them on Facebook, downloading all the pictures they have been uploading there of themselves and each other. I’m placing myself in the new girlfriend’s position, imitating her pose, expression and dressing myself in the same outfit. I’m photographing myself in the same light as in the picture of them. The figure of me I glue onto the original picture, covering the girlfriend. In this way I build a dream life of my own on top of theirs. During the process of taking the new girlfriend’s poses, I’m once again, briefly a part of my ex-love’s life and I can imagine how it would be to be her.”


The Best of LensCulture, Vol 1
Schilt Publishing, 2017

© Justine Tjallinks

LensCulture's first book, The Best of LensCulture, Vol 1, features contemporary photographers from all over the world, discovered during four of LensCulture’s annual competitions. Not only are these photographers geographically diverse, but their work encompasses many different genres. "The range of work in this book is wide and diverse—from portraits to street photography, photojournalism, personal stories, documentary, fine art, fictional narratives, poetic  beauty and abstraction. Their images will take you on a tour of the world and introduce you to people, cultures, historic events and the wonders of nature.” 288 pages, 200 color and black-and-white photos. A must-see of current emerging and established contemporary photography.


Janet Russek + David Scheinbaum:
Remnants, Photographs of the Lower East Side
Radius Books, 2017

Janet Russek + David Scheinbaum:
Remnants, Photographs of the Lower East Side
Radius Books, 2017

Throughout its history, New York’s Lower East Side has reflected the cultural demographics of the city. David Scheinbaum and Janet Russek started photographing the area in 1999, and have chronicled a time of extraordinary transformation. Undergoing rapid gentrification into a “hipster” neighborhood, the future of the Lower East Side is now unclear. In 2008, the National Trust for Historic Preservation added the neighborhood to its list of America’s Most Endangered Places, and many believe the cultural institutions and ideologies that established the Lower East Side are disappearing forever. With this book, Remnants, Photographs of the Lower East Side, Scheinbaum and Russek capture remnants of history through their intimate portraits of traditional businesses, places of worship, people, and the old world architecture that have defined the Lower East Side for generations. 120 images.


Patrick Baz : Christians of Lebanon, Rites & Rituals
Tamyras Editions, 2017

 Patrick Baz : Christians of Lebanon, Rites & Rituals
Tamyras Editions, 2017

Patrick Baz : Christians of Lebanon, Rites & Rituals
Tamyras Editions, 2017

Far from controversy and any political affiliation, this photography book is a true reflection of the faith of an entire community. French-Lebanese photographer Patrick Baz offers us the result of over two years of work, Christians of Lebanon, Rites & Rituals, during which he traveled across the country to document the beliefs and rituals of the Christians of Lebanon. French and English.

"After putting an end to a long career as an international war photographer, I went back to my roots, to Lebanon, in order to recharge. As I returned home, the whole region was in turmoil over the massacre of Christians and different minorities at the hands of Islamic groups. During random conversations, I kept getting asked the same questions that seemed to be gnawing at the members of the Christian community: “Will we stay here? Will they throw us out? Will they persecute us?” They looked to me, as if I, a former war correspondent who had travelled to dangerous territories, held all the answers. I was also surprised by the community’s increasingly visible identity, and the abundance of its ostentatious signs. Crosses and statues of Levantine saints erected on hills to mark the territory, religious processions in public spaces, holy pictures and crucifixes adorning building lobbies, vehicles and mountains roads."

"I never intended to take a historical or thematic approach to the subject, but rather a visual and humane one, devoid of judgement. I just captured what I saw. I came back from this journey with convictions, assertions, surprises, and breakthroughs. I invite you all to share them with me.”– Patrick Baz


 Tales Of Lipstick And Virtue : Anna Ehrenstein
Editions Bessard, 2017

Tales Of Lipstick And Virtue : Anna Ehrenstein
Editions Bessard, 2017

I met photographer Anna Ehrenstein at the at 2017 Landskrona Foto Festival Portfolio Reviews in Landskrona Sweden. She was the winner of both the Best Portfolio Award, as well as the Artproof Grant Sweden. Her project Tales of Lipstick and Virtue blurs the line between truth and fiction in a narration which deals with the topics of gender, class, self representation, racial prejudices, post-colonialism….As a young woman, born and raised in Germany with Albanian origin, reaction on representation and self image and their cultural differences have always played a major role in Ehrenstein's life. "Due to the fact that I will never genuinely be part of either German or the Albanian society, I found my voice in the meta-position of an observer. The question of whether or not, especially in the post-communistic context of Albania, visual and sexual self-determination as well as femininity are empowering young women globally plays a key role in this body of work. The communist cry for ‘necessity’ and the feminist cry for ‘naturalness’ contrast with the human desire for experimentation, self- expression and speculation." Limited Edition + Signed C Print.


 Grímsey : Cole Barash
Silas Finch, 2017

  Grímsey : Cole Barash
Silas Finch, 2017

Brooklyn-based photographer Cole Barash's latest work documents the tiny community on Grimsey, an island north of Iceland where roughly 90 people live, a lush patch of green encased in cliffs. 57 full color plates. Beautifully packaged and printed as only Silas Finch does so well with a cloth wrapped hardcover and french fold dust jacket printed on uncoated stock. 

Daily, In A Nimble Sea : Barry Stone
Silas Finch, 2017


Barry Stone's "DAILY, IN A NIMBLE SEA, is an anagram of “BAILEY ISLAND, MAINE,” where a tiny stretch of coastline is incessantly transformed by the interactions of fog, sun, and tides. When the tide goes out, a rocky field of seaweed is revealed. To walk across it is to traverse the ocean floor in the open air. It is a magical place, and for seven summers I have watched my girls grow and change against this backdrop. Photographs put a feeble defense against the passage of time: the still image halts the waves from breaking, only to paradoxically heighten our awareness of their inevitable movement forward." 37 color plates printed on matte paper. Cloth-wrapped hardcover with photographic tip-in, beautifully printed and packages as all Silas Finch books are made. Check out their several other titles: Silas Finch


~ FULL DISCLOSURE ~

Saving two of my favorites for last, I have to  disclose I had a hand in each. However, I would still have chosen them as 2 of my top choices in any case!

Dornith Doherty and her view camera,
Svalbard, near the North Pole


Archiving Eden : Thirst, 2009  

A Digital Chromogenic Lenticular Photograph (26.5 x 47.5") Doherty told me, “This is a collage made of about 4,000 seeds. The colors shift from green to blue, referring to the cryogenic process and the impossibility of stopping time in living materials. I wanted to make visible the number of seeds it takes to save a species."

  Dornith Doherty: Archiving Eden
Schilt Publications, 2017

"Many of Archiving Eden's images radiate a spiritual dimension, emanating wordlessly like hieroglyphs from nature, seeming to reflect life itself from within the seed. Using x-ray technology, Doherty was able to peer into the infinitely delicate structures of seeds and plantlets not visible to the human eye." – Elizabeth Avedon 

Archiving Eden begins with photographer Dornith Doherty documenting the primordial wilderness surrounding the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, leading us on a powerful journey in wonder at the elegant grandeur across a vast inhospitable, desolate landscape. Located on an island that is the northernmost place in the world, she takes us onto the icy surfaces around the glacial bay and airport, right up to the entrance door to the Vault, a frozen, silent space holding back the weight of the world.

Archiving Eden explores the role of seed banks and their preservation efforts in the face of climate change, the extinction of natural species, and decreased agricultural diversity. Serving as a global botanical backup system, these institutions assure the opportunity for the reintroduction of species should a catastrophic event or civil strife affect a key ecosystem somewhere in the world."
In 2012, Dornith Doherty was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Archiving Eden was published by Maarten Schilt, designed by Victor Levie, with an essay by Elizabeth Avedon. An Exhibition of this work is currently at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art through January 14, 2018, Fort Worth, Texas!


 Victoria Will : Borne Back
Peanut Press, 2017

Victoria Will : Borne Back
Editing photographs with photographer Victoria Will

Kevin Bacon 
Victoria Will : Borne Back
Elle Fanning and Glenn Close

Victoria Will : Borne Back
Jason Momoa wrote the Introduction

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

A review of  Victoria Will's : Borne Back is excerpted from The Washington Post’s column, In Sight, written by Nick Kirkpatrick (December 19, 2017):

"At the Sundance Film Festival, photographer Victoria Will had just minutes with some of Hollywood’s most famous actors and directors — arguably, some of the most photographed people in the world — but she chose a process that at its core is imperfect: tintype. The 19th century wet-plate photography process predates film. There are no negatives, no large digital files or multiple frames, and no do-overs. Each image is one of a kind."

“I love that when you make a tintype you are making a thing, a physical photographic object — one that you can hold and experience in a different way,” Victoria Will told The Washington Post’s In Sight. “But I also love the finicky nature of the chemistry. Each plate is one of a kind. In the digital age these two aspects of the medium really inspire me.”

On one of the last pages of the book is a quote from Walker Evans: “The eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.” When asked, Will said it sums up what she loves and why she is so drawn to photography. “A successful image for me is one that makes you feel. It needs to touch you in some way,” she said. “I think unconsciously, and clearly articulated by Evans here, photographers are moved by emotion. That’s what is actually pushing the shutter.” 

Will’s monograph Borne Back is published by Ashly Leonard Stohl and David Carol of Peanut Press; with a Foreword by Jason Momoa (Pride of the Gypsies...Aquaman); Book design by Elizabeth Avedon; Pre-production by Joe Chanin and Printed at Meridian Printing. Available in a hardbound trade edition or a limited edition featuring a signed trade edition and one of three signed and numbered prints. Order it here: Peanut Press


Con't BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS Part II

* Text for most posts courtesy of their publisher.