12.30.2020

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS OF 2020: ROUND-UP PART II + Honorable Mentions

“Darker Than Blue” © Mathieu Bitton

“Darker Than Blue” © Mathieu Bitton
 

Mathieu Bitton: Darker Than Blue

“The photographs in my “Darker Than Blue” collection represent moments I was fortunate enough to witness throughout my recent world travels. When I look at these pictures now, they feel like they were taken through a time machine, or a lucid dream, carrying every sensation and nuance—hyper realistic contrasts— only my Leica cameras can capture. The title “Darker Than Blue” references a 1970 Curtis May eld lyric from the Civil Rights- themed, “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue.” I’ve always loved its depth and symbolism, and have sought to reflect that paradox of hope and struggle in these images. My lifelong passion for the history, music, cinema, posters, and other arts of the black community comes full circle with this exhibit as my contribution to artifacts that honor such a rich and beautiful culture.”

MATHIEU BITTON

Editions NOEVE Paris & NOEVE GRAFX

 


 
Bester V, Mayotte, 2015 © Zanele Muholi 

 
Dad on Bed © Larry Sultan, series“Pictures from Home,”1984

Stephen Frailey: 

Looking at Photography'

“Inspired by John Szarkowski’s 1973 Looking at Photographs,  and paying homage to the concept of the one hundred images and a page of text for each, Stephen Frailey now updates this classic with significant works of photography from mid-70s to the present.”

Looking at Photography covers all genres of photography, and through discussing the significance of the individual works Frailey – as photographer, editor and educator - articulates the themes and sensibilities of contemporary photography.”

 

Damiani, 2020

 

 


Congo in Conversation 



Finbarr O'Reilly:

CONGO IN CONVERSATION

"Congo in Conversation” is a series of collaborative eye-witness accounts with Congolese journalists and photographers, in conjunction with Finbarr O'Reilly, 11th winner of the Carmignac Award for Photojournalism. For six months, they documented the human, social and ecological challenges that the Congo faces during the Covid-19 crisis. Bilingual French-English.

 

Jointly edited by Reliefs Éditions and the Fondation Carmignac.



 
Studio Practice © Julia SH

The Dining Room, 2018 © Guanxu Xu

LENSCULTURE

The Best of LensCulture, Volume 4

LensCulture has sought to discover the most interesting photographers working worldwide, and it is still a joy to discover pictures that feel completely new, fresh, energized, exciting, surprising, and relevant in today’s ever-changing world.

For this book, we’ve relied on the expertise and personal taste of more than 40 experts who deal with photography every day of their lives. They have combed through thousands of photographs from people in more than 150 countries on six continents to select the pictures you can discover in this book. Every photographer featured in this book is an award winner

Schilt Publishing, 2020


Jeremiah Dine: Daydreams Walking 

196 photographs shot on the streets of New York City by Jeremiah Dine (born 1959) between 2010 and 2017. Dine’s exploration of the daily ebb and flow of humanity follows in the tradition of 20th-century street photography as practiced by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand, among others.

 

Dine has photographed on the streets of New York since he was a teenager, first in black and white with 35mm cameras, then in the 2000s in color with digital cameras. The book’s title is derived from the Frank O’Hara poem “Music,” which is included here, as well as a playlist of songs that Dine listened to while walking and shooting. Beautifully designed by Yolanda Cuomo.

Damiani , 2020

 

Jeremiah Dine : Natural Selection


One of my favorite books of all time is Jeremiah Dine's : Natural Selection . 104 photographs taken at the American Museum of Natural History. NY. Published by Edition Hansjörg Mayer, Stuttgart / London, 1983. Out of print, look for collector's copies out there.

 



 

Simon Bainbridge:

Magnum Artists: Great Photographers Meet Great Artists

Matisse and Picasso by Robert Capa, Takashi Murakami by Olivia Arthur, Warhol and de Kooning by Thomas Hoepker, Bonnard by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nancy Burson by Paul Shambroom, Sonia Delaunay by Herbert List, Kiki Smith by Susan Meiselas, and many more.  Magnum Artists brings together a collection of over 200 photographs that define the unique relationship between the world’s greatest photography collective and the world’s greatest artists.

 

Laurence King Publishing, 2020



 
 

Kieran Dodds: Gingers

This new photography book by Kieran Dodds transects eleven time zones, from the Americas through Europe, on to the Middle East and Asia. The people who bear the genes, who carry the hair, have unique histories. They occupy different political regions. But they are united by a golden – well, coppery, or rusty, as the Russians would say – thread: the flow of DNA across cultures and generations, a reminder that all people are made of the same substance, and sometimes it shows.
 

Wonderful Books, 2020

 


"Young monk practicing Shaolin, one of the oldest styles of Kung Fu, 
Shaolin Monastery, Henan Province, China" ©  Steve McCurry

Steve McCurry: In Search of Elsewhere

 

Steve McCurry is known for creating some of the most iconic images of recent times and in this new collection, he shares previously unseen photographs from his incredibly rich archive. In Search of Elsewhere takes us across the globe and offers new perspectives on many of the locations that the photographer has already made famous – from India, Myanmar and Cuba, to Kashmir and the white-washed temples of the Himalayas.

 

Laurence King Publishing, 2020

 




Ashok Sinha:

Gas and Glamour

"This love letter to midcentury Southern California offers an armchair road trip through the region’s most fantastical structures, showcasing “the orbs and starbursts and boomerangs and swoops in imitation neon,” — The Wall Street Journal

 

"... Over the last decade or so, I have been intrigued by L. A.’s love affair with the automobile, tracing back to a time when cars themselves were objects of beauty. Those cars are no longer on the streets today but the buildings from that era remain. As an architectural photographer, I wanted to capture L. A.’s car-culture-induced optimism and ambition reflected in polychromatic, starspangled coffee shops, gas stations, and car washes, that once lured the gaze of passing motorists."  — Ashok Sinha

 

Kehrer Verlag, 2020

 





Justin Aversano: Twin Flames

“Twindom has a deep root in shared storytelling, its visuals conjure meta textual manifestations across the astrological, the mythological, the academic and the popular
Twin Flames by Justin Aversano surveys 100 portraits of twins from around the world made in the honor of Justin's fraternal twin. A collection of both identical and fraternal, that Justin sought out in order to better understand his own place within the narrative of this unique genetic occurrence. Divided into chapters containing interviews with Aversano’s subjects, which provide context for the series itself, as well as includes the hidden stories that inform the subjects’ own personalities and conceptions of identity, filmed using three formats: Polaroid, 120mm, and 4x5.
 
Self Published, 2020
 
 


  

"Gay Fire Island" includes 90 pictures that were shot by koitz over the past 14 summers of queer life in the two mostly gay and lesbian communities of Cherry Grove and the Pines on Fire Island.” Fabulously designed by Bonnie Briant.
 

GayPinkBook.com


Fran Foreman:

The Rest Between Two Notes

"By integrating her contemporary photography with historical periods and various settings around the world, Fran Forman creates a world of illusion. Upon closer inspection, what appears ordinary suggests an underlying tension and an aura of mystery. Expressed in the diffused colors of twilight and chiaroscuro, her images blur the boundaries between photography, late Renaissance painting, and film noir..."

 

Unicorn Publishing Group


Cooper, Bassett Hound, Home Built in 1946, Extensively Modeled 2013-2016 © Nancy Baron

Winston and Peanut (under the table), Smooth Fox Terrier, Border Terrier, Rescues, Architect: Donald Wexler, 1965 © Nancy Baron

Nancy Baron:

Palm Springs: Modern Dogs at Home

 

In good times and bad, our best friends are there for support, therapy, and unconditional love. Especially now -- where would we be without our dogs? Although the so-called modernists of Palm Springs embrace the serenity of life in post-WWII America, the sometimes-harsh realities of contemporary life are impossible to ignore. These mid-twentieth-century reenactors are often transplants, enjoying the Palm Springs lifestyle with their dogs and friends as their chosen family.
 

Schiffer, 2020

 


Melissa O’Shaughnessy

Perfect Strangers

Over the last seven years, Melissa O’Shaughnessy has photographed daily on the streets of New York. As one of a growing number of women street photographers contributing to this dynamic genre, O’Shaughnessy enters the territory with clarity and a distinctly humanist eye, offering a refreshing addition to the tradition of street photography. Through her curious and quirky vision, we witness the play of human activity on the glittering sidewalks of the city. Woven into her cast of characters are the lonely, the soulful, and the proud. She has fallen for them all―perfect strangers. Accompanied by an introduction by Joel Meyerowitz.

 

Aperture, 2020
 


 

In her early twenties, the American Photographer Mimi Plumb looked back to her Californian childhood to make a series of photographs about suburban youth. The resulting photographs collected in her new book “The White Sky’ builds a world in which an unknown trauma hangs heavy in the air, and children rule the roost.

 

Stanley Barker, 2020

 

Honorable Mentions 2020:

 


Jeff Larason : Sonder

Sonder is about the complexity of the people we pass each day in the street - those that we often ignore. 84-page book of black and white images, captured since the 1980s, primarily on the streets of Boston.

 

Self Published, 2020




 

Harvey Stein:

Then and There: Mardi Gras 1979 

 

In Then and There, the well-known photographer Harvey Stein documents a crucial aspect of public behavior at the 1979 New Orleans Mardi Gras.  Shooting with an instant SX-70 Polaroid camera, the process allowed Stein to directly interact with his subjects, who perform, observe, and even share in the photographic process.  The 47 portraits are made just feet away from each person, mostly at dusk, sharply revealed by the light of the camera’s flash bar. 


Zatara Press, 2020


Gary Beeber:

Pictures from Sylvester Manor

When I lived in Sag Harbor, one of my great pleasures was to take the ferry to Shelter Island and spend the day exploring Sylvester Manor.  The Manor is a former slaveholding provisioning planation purchased in 1651 by Nathaniel Sylvester for 1600 pounds of sugar.  It remained in the Sylvester family for 11 generations.

I particularly like to explore what’s left of the hauntingly bucolic overgrown garden.  I find myself compelled to chronicle it’s evolving decay, and think about the generations of people who lived and worked there.

I return to Sylvester Manor every so often.  What’s amazing to me is that I always find something new and totally unexpected. I feel that my best subject matter is found by chance.
 
Self Published, 2020


 

Heather Evans Smith: Alterations

"These photographs serve as metaphors for the way we alter, mend, and piece together memories, in order to make sense of what we have lost."

Self-Published, 2020

 

Norm Diamond 

Doug’s Gym: The Last of its Kind

Norm Diamond photographed the last months of a dilapidated, yet beautiful old gym in Dallas, Texas. These stark images could have come from another era. They evoke themes of memory and loss. No modern gym looks like this. The owner, Doug Eidd, a grizzled 87-year-old, opened the gym in 1962. He could have emerged from a time capsule as well. His members did not care that the gym was run down or that Doug smoked cigars most of the day. They respected his expertise and loved the casual atmosphere he created. Although Doug was still fit, he did not resemble the muscle-bound figure of his youth. He knew that time would one day engulf him and the gym. This came to pass in the spring of 2018 when he was forced to close the gym on short notice. Diamond stayed to photograph the removal of the equipment as Doug’s Gym drifted into memory.

 

Kehrer Verlag, 2020

 



 

Judy Brown:

WEATHERBURY FARM


Following a career as Professor of Physics at Wellesley College and Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab, Judy Brown has combined her long-time passions for animals and photography. She is particularly interested in form, texture, and lighting in images and is attracted to subjects for their simplicity and beauty of form. 

 

Self Published, 2020

 


 

August Eriksson: 

What Happens When Nothing Happens

 

"These 66 photographs, I would contend, together constitute a single picture, a single portrait of a city in a certain state, a state that is a city: Stockholm in summer. The chronotope Stockholm in summer holds a world of conflicting emotions: endless freedom and ease, nostalgia and exhilarated intoxication, an ennui for the shortness of life that is combined with a flavor of eternity, curiosity about the unknown and a feeling of being at home. " – AUGUST ERIKSSEN

 

Livonia Print Ltd

 



Karen Davis:

Still Stepping: A Family Portrait

 

Still Stepping: A Family Portrait is a twenty-two year, long-form portrait of a family as it cruises along, gets clobbered by a treacherous childhood illness and then moves forward.  Amidst the quotidian of life, my photographs and the family’s words—from letters, an essay, a documentary and interviews—provide an intimate window into a world turned upside down then righted by two shaken but determined parents.

 VISIT: PART I

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