12.29.2021

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS 2021 ROUND-UP PART II

Past Present: Photographs by Justine Tjallinks

Past Present: Photographs by Justine Tjallinks. NHP Publishing
Justine Tjallinks, an Amsterdam-based Dutch artist, combines the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ to create images that have a sense of nostalgia whilst the content and subjects are often firmly fixed in present day sensibilities. Taking inspiration from Dutch master painters for their use of light and color, this is juxtaposed with remarkable, contemporary faces and figures seen in modern clothing designs.” Amazon 


Woman with Scarf at Inspiration Point, Yosemite National Park, CA, 1980 © Roger Minick

The Glen Canyon, Deep Semantic Image Segments, 2020 © Trevor Paglen

American Geography: Photographs of Land Use from 1840 to the Present. Edited by Sandra S. Phillips and Sally Martin Katz. Texts by Beverly Dahlen, Hilary Green, Layli Long Soldier, Barry Lopez, Jenny Reardon, Richard White, and Richard B. Woodward. Radius Books
Drawing primarily from the vast permanent collection of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, American Geography charts a visual history of land use in the United States providing a complex, thought-provoking survey featuring work from Robert Adams, Dawoud Bey, Barbara Bosworth, Debbie Fleming Caffery, William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, Terry Evans, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Emmet Gowin, Lee Friedlander, Dorothea Lange, An-My Lê, Trevor Paglen, Wendy Red Star, Mark Ruwedel, Victoria Sambunaris, Stephen Shore, Alec Soth, and Carleton E. Watkins, among others. Radius Books

Inez Milholland at the National American Woman Suffrage Association Parade, 
Washington, D.C., March 3, 1913. Library of Congress

Standing Together: Inez Milholland's Final Campaign for Women's Suffrage By Jeanine Michna-Bales. MW Editions
Through her photographs, combining dramatic landscapes and historical reenactments of important vignettes of Milholland on her journey with archival materials, Michna-Bales captures a glimpse of the monumental effort required to pass the 19th Amendment. A multifaceted meditation on a pioneer of American suffrage, through photography, writing and ephemera. “In 1916, Inez Milholland Boissevain (1886–1916) embarked on a grueling campaign across the Western US on behalf of the National Women’s Party appealing for women’s suffrage ahead of the 1916 presidential election. Standing Together, by artist Jeanine Michna-Bales (born 1971), retraces Milholland’s journey. The 30-year-old suffragist delivered some 50 speeches to standing-room-only crowds in eight states in 21 days: Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Utah, Nevada and California. She battled chronic illness and lack of sleep during her travels and died a month after her last speech in Los Angeles, where her final public words were, “Mr. President, how long must this go on, no liberty?” Amazon


Personal Ties: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Portraits by Amy Touchette

Personal Ties: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Street portraits by Amy Touchette. Foreword by Larry Fink, Afterword by C. Joi Sanchez. Schilt Publishing
“Amy Touchette represents the new generation of documentary photographers who are contributing to preserving a very important history and culture in this 21st century. Arming herself with a camera and a compassionate heart, she photographed ordinary people in her Bedford-Stuyvesant community, creating intimate portraits of personal ties, kinship, and individuality that are now frozen moments in time.” —Jamel Shabazz, Photographer.  Schilt Publishing

Tickety-Boo loosely translates 
'Everything is okay, but maybe everything isn't!'

click images to enlarge
 

Tickety-Boo. Photographs by Charles H. Traub. Damiani
The English expression ‘tickety-boo' loosely translates 'Everything is okay, but maybe everything isn't!' Therein lies the enigmatic crux of the images contained in this book. A stream of consciousness flows in Traub’s response to places, things, and people that catch his eclectic whimsy. His subjects are ambiguous and out of context, yet once organized together within this book, create a kind of pictorial completeness, both soothing and disquieting. The photographs in each spread vividly amplify each other leading the viewer to the next sequence. The mundane becomes animated, and in the end, this is a book about the delirious conditions of our time.

Artist Charles H. Traub, Founding Chair of the MFA Program in Photography, Video & Related Media at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, has published 16 books, including 8 monographs of his own, and received numerous awards including the distinguished ICP award for his work “A Democracy of Photography”. Amazon


© Renate Aller

The Space Between Memory and Expectation. Photographs by Renate Aller. Essays by Makeda Best and Courtney J Martin. Kehrer Verlag “The silent and continuous erosion trickling from the top of mountains, via glaciers, tropical forests, sand dunes, icefields of Patagonia, European glaciers into the ocean and the urban waterways of New York’s harbor. Tracing an unbroken line, the eye is guided from one sweeping landscape to the next without doubting their separateness in location and
origin, showing the interconnectedness of distant environments, opening up conversations between the different (political) landscapes in which we live”. Renate Aller Photo-Eye Books


 
Lump Sum Lottery. Photographs by Bonnie Briant. Introduction by Sylvia Plachy. Damiani Publishers 
Bonnie Briant’s personal collection of images in her first monograph, Lump Sum Lottery, transports us through the select world she inhabits outside the usual path of our ordinary lives.

“When you win the lottery you have two options, you can get all the money right away, but because of taxes you get less than if you’re willing to parse it out over time. Taking all the money right away but actually taking less is called taking the lump sum. The title is a comment on my constant, “I’ll have everything now, even though I know I should wait.”– Bonnie Briant  Amazon


Headed West. Paul McDonough. Essay by Albert Mobilio. Stanley/Barker Publishers
From the 1960’s through the 1990’s McDonough made numerous photographic treks, seeking to capture people, animals, architecture, land-and-cityscapes — in short, the American life, pre-internet, pre-cell phone, that was thrumming all around him.

As Hilton Als of the New Yorker so aptly put it: “McDonough’s project, it seems to me, is a kind of record of his life as a walker… his pictures are a map of experience, of his consciousness. He is a thinker who looks through the eye of his camera to distinguish truth from reality.”  Amazon



Stories and Dreams: Portraits of Childhood. Photographs by Steve McCurry. With an introduction from Ziauddin Yousufzai, Father of Malala. Laurence King Publishing
A new-born baby is carefully checked over at a hospital in Jaipur, a small girl grins from a bench on Rome's Piazza Navona and energetic boys jostle in front of the camera in Havana – over his long career and on his many travels Steve McCurry has taken an incredible selection of photographs of children, each one managing to hint at an epic story. Stories and Dreams brings a unique selection of these images together for the first time., this is a colorful portrayal of the challenges, hopes and adventures of children from across the world. Available in four languages. Amazon


Sleeping Beauty. Photographs by Lydia Panas. MW Editions
This volume presents award-winning Pennsylvania-based photographer Lydia Panas’ much-praised series of mesmerizing color portraits of reclining women and girls. In an interesting reversal of roles, the artist's and models' gazes are intertwined, incorporating the viewer as participant in an often uncomfortable connection. Critics and curators have praised the work for Panas’ artistic and technical mastery, and all have noted and examined the powerfully affecting gaze of her subjects. Photo-Eye Books

Cey Adams checking out REBELS

 Rebels: From Punk to Dior. Photographs by Janette Beckman. 
DRAGO Publishing 
Rebel, from Punk to Dior, is one of the most complete anthologies of its kind, containing the best works of British-born photographer, Janette Beckman. Known as one of the most famous street photographers, with her feminine and underground touch, Janette has portrayed the all-time greatest exponents of the Hip Hop, Punk and Underground scenes. From the images of rappers who have climbed the world rankings to the most famous fashion campaigns ever, this book summarizes in more than 240 pages and as many original photographs, the spirit of a generation that made history and continues to influence the world of fashion and the international collective imagination. -- Drago  Amazon 


The Street Becomes by Jaime Permuth. Meteoro Editions, Amsterdam
The Street Becomes is the resulting project of Guatemalan photographer Jaime Permuth’ residence as a Smithsonian Artist Fellow in 2014. This body of work explores the changing character of the urban street in times of war and peace. The Street Becomes is entirely based on archival images. One part of the images comes from the private archives of local Washington DC photographers who documented the Latino Festival during the 70s and 80s. The second part comes from the US Marine Corps archives and documents the American military occupation of Central America and the Caribbean in the early 20th Century. An artistic intervention on these source images suggests new meanings for the street and examines the kind of contests that are predicated on overtaking and controlling public spaces. Permuth is also the author of “Yonkeros (Libros de Autor)” Photographs by Jaime Permuth (La Fábrica).  Meteoro



Fauxliage. Photographs by Annette LeMay Burke. Foreword by Ann M. Jastrab. Daylight Books
Fauxliage documents the proliferation of disguised cell phone towers in the American West. For me, the fake foliage of the trees draws more attention than camouflage. The often-farcical tower disguises belie the equipment's covert ability to collect all the phone calls and digital information passing through them, to be bought and sold by advertisers and stored by the government. From the very start, cell towers were considered eyesores. Plastic leaves were attached in an attempt to hide the visual pollution. Over time, the disguises evolved from primitive palms and evergreens into more elaborate costumes. The towers now masquerade as flagpoles, crosses, water towers, and cacti. Today, as our demand for five bars of connectivity continues to increase, the charade still persists. I was initially drawn to the towers’ whimsical appearances. The more I photographed, the more disconcerted I felt that technology was clandestinely modifying our environment. – Annette LeMay Burke
 

 
What Lies Within: Photographs by Dale Niles. 
Foreword by Aline Smithson. Afterword by Alexa Dilworth
A book of photographs about a unique collector's eclectic collections.


“Sometimes in life the world presents you with something unexpected, like a small gift that appears fully wrapped with a bow on top. Seven years ago, I entered the collector’s world of Andrea M. Noel after a friend suggested that I might be interested in photographing Andrea's expansive collections. After approaching her about potential of examining her assortments photographically, I was presented with a list of over sixty collecting categories, ranging from kitchen utensils to bedpans and urinals. When I arrived at Andrea's beautiful, home complete with a wraparound porch festooned with wisteria, I was unprepared for the surprises that lay within.”– Dale Niles, photographer.   TO ORDER


 

Afghanistan Photographs: 1971-1972. Photographs by Adrian Panaro and Arthur Panaro. Self-Published
In 1971, Arthur Panaro joined the Peace Corps and was posted to Kabul, Afghanistan, to teach English at the University there. A year later, he was joined by his brother Adrian (a former colleague of mine at the Avedon Studio during the 70’s – EA) and the two set off to explore the regions surrounding Kabul and beyond. The book is a visual and historical chronicle of their experiences throughout Afghanistan when that remote nation was nominally ruled by a king and mostly at peace within its own borders. Little more than a year following their travels, Afghanistan began to spiral into the war and upheaval that still marks the fate of its people and institutions after nearly 50 years.

Featured are the massive 4th century BCE statues of the Buddha at Bamian. Photographs of these and murals painted on the walls of the niches surrounding the larger of the two Buddhas provide a testament to the loss of these great relics dynamited by Taliban iconoclasts in 2001 and completely destroyed. The photographs feature encounters with the Afghan people and the natural and historical marvels of the high deserts and mountains, following the Central Asian silk route utilized by Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan and Tamerlan, notables among the throngs of invaders passing through this storied land even up to the present.

Afghanistan, Photographs 1971-1972 is sumptuously illustrated with 110 beautiful photographs taken by the Panaro brothers just before the nation of Afghanistan began its long descent into social upheaval, war and chaos. Short essays, reminiscences by each brother, and an essay on the art of the Bamian Valley accompany the photographs. Amazon

A limited edition signed copy here

The Certainty of Nothing: Sandi Haber Fifield. Self Published, Limited Edition
Sandi Haber Fifield’s recent monograph is inspired by the ruins of Angkor, ancient sites built in the 12th century and once part of the Khmer Empire. Much has come and gone in this remarkable location and Haber Fifield captures its mystery and fragility. With her recognizable drawing and collage techniques, she expands upon the idea of the artist as an architect of nature. “A beautifully creative monograph; from the one-of-a-kind originals to the well designed and sequenced images. Well worth the journey through it.”–EA  A limited edition signed and numbered book here


BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS 2021 ROUND-UP : PART I

Many thanks to the Publisher's Descriptions
 



12.22.2021

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS 2021 ROUND-UP PART I


Where the World is Melting. Photographs by Ragnar Axelsson
 
Where the World is Melting. Photographs by Ragnar Axelsson. Kehrer Verlag
"Where the World is Melting includes, among others, unpublished photographs which Ragnar photographed on Hvísker at the age of ten years old, and the well-known series’ Faces of the North, Glacier, Last Days of the Arctic, and Arctic Heroes. The eminent Icelandic photographer’s themes are the physical and traditional realities of the North...For over 40 years, Ragnar Axelsson (RAX, b. 1958) has photographed people, animals, and landscapes in the most remote regions of Greenland, Iceland, and Siberia. In simple black and white photos, he captures the elementary human experience in nature on the edge of the habitable world. RAX highlights the extraordinary relationships between people, animals, and places in the Arctic and their extreme environment – relationships that change in profound and complex ways due to unprecedented climate change." Buy it here


 
Balancing Cultures. Photographs by Jerry Takigawa
 
Balancing Cultures. Photographs by Jerry Takigawa. Self-Published
"Balancing Cultures presents the work of a multi award-winning photography series about the artist’s family’s experience with the WWII American concentration camps. This project presented an opportunity to confront the racism perpetrated on the Japanese that resulted in their confinement in the American concentration camps sanctioned by President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 issued on February 19, 1942." buy it here

The Day May Break. Photographs by Nick Brandt
 

The Day May Break. Photographs by Nick Brandt. Hatje Cantz
"The environmental threat to life on this planet - both human and animal - is realized by Nick Brandt in The Day May Break to devastating effect in these powerful yet tender portraits. Art of this calibre is in a unique position to challenge and engage audiences in environmental conversation...Photographed in Zimbabwe and Kenya in late 2020, The Day May Break is the first part of a global series by acclaimed photographer Nick Brandt, portraying people and animals that have been impacted by environmental degradation and destruction.”

“The people in these photographs were all affected by climate change, displaced by cyclones and years-long droughts. Photographed at five sanctuaries, the animals were rescues that can never be rewilded. As a result, it was safe for human strangers to be close to them, photographed so close to them, within the same frame. The fog on location is the unifying visual motif, conveying the sense of an ever-increasing limbo, a once-recognizable world now fading from view. However, despite their respective losses, these people and animals have survived, and therein lies possibility and hope.” — Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Climate Change, Chair of The Elders. buy it here
 

The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship 
 
The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship 
by Deborah Willis. NYU Press
"At a time when victory in the Civil War was anything but assured, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass urged the North to arm African American soldiers to fight against the forces that had enslaved them in the Confederate South. In doing so, he recognized the vital visual argument for citizenship that a uniformed Black man would make with ‘the brass letter, US’ on his belt and an ‘eagle on his button.’ Now, in this breathtaking volume, the scholar Deborah Willis reveals to us the fullness of their humanity through a photographic record she interprets through the paper trail they left behind. At once intimate and panoramic, The Black Civil War Soldier is both a major contribution to Civil War studies and an album of our ancestors’ journey at the critical hour of American history that belongs to all of us as the descendants of their sacrifice." ― Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University. buy it here


A Photo Spirit. Photographs by Ruth Orkin
 

A Photo Spirit. Photographs by Ruth Orkin. Edited by Mary Engel and Nadine Barth. Hatje Cantz   

 "American photographer Ruth Orkin earned acclaim for her work as she combined her love for travel and her experience growing up in Hollywood into a practice that captured the cinematic elements of everyday life and revealed the humanity of the upper crust...The atmospheric photographs taken by Orkin in cities such as Florence, New York and London still shape the image of these metropolises today: her street scenes consistently offer penetrating insights into the personality of her human subjects as well as their environments. This unique quality also manifests in her celebrity portraits of figures such as Albert Einstein, Marlon Brando, Tennessee Williams and Lauren Bacall: though clearly posed, these photographs offer a certain level of candor that allows the viewer to connect with the sitters on a human level. She also pursued filmmaking with two successful features, Little Fugitive (1953) and Lovers and Lollipops (1955)—and she did all of this as one of the few female practitioners in the field. Published on the occasion of what would have been the photographer’s 100th birthday, this illustrated volume celebrates Orkin’s life and career with an equally extensive and fascinating overview of this exceptional artist's oeuvre." A Photo Spirit here

 
 

Mona Kuhn: Works: Photographs by Mona Kuhn
 
Mona Kuhn: Works: Photographs by Mona Kuhn. Thames & Hudson 
Text by Rebecca Morse, Simon Baker, Chris Littlewood, Darius Himes, Elizabeth Avedon.  "A stunning career retrospective of Mona Kuhn, one of the most respected contemporary photographers of her time, best known for her large-scale photographs of the human form. Throughout a career spanning more than twenty years, the underlying theme of her work is her reflection on humanity’s longing for spiritual connection and solidarity. As she solidified her photographic style, Kuhn created a notable approach to the nude by developing friendships with her subjects, and employing a range of playful visual strategies that use natural light and bucolic settings to evoke a sublime sense of comfort between the human figure and its environment. Her work is natural, restful, and a reinterpretation of the nude in the canon of contemporary art.”

“Kuhn’s distinct aesthetic has propelled her as one of the most collectible contemporary art photographers—her work is in private and public collections worldwide and she is represented by galleries across the United States. Mona Kuhn: Works, the artist’s first retrospective, features images from throughout her career, accompanied by insightful texts by Rebecca Morse, Simon Baker, Chris Littlewood, and Darius Himes. An interview with Elizabeth Avedon provides insights into Kuhn’s creative process and the ways in which she works with her subjects and locations, and achieves the visual signature of her imagery. It is an essential volume for anyone with an interest in the human form in contemporary art.” order a signed copy here

 

Blue Violet. Photographs and text by Cig Harvey
 
Blue Violet. Photographs and text by Cig Harvey. Monacelli Press  
 
"...Blue Violet is inordinately voluptuous for a photobook. One half expects to catch whiffs of the blooms Harvey describes. You’ve been warned. Open Blue Violet and prepare to be seized.”— George Slade, Photo-Eye

“Blue Violet is a vibrant meditation on the procession of seasons, sensory abundance, and the magic in everyday life. Part art book, botanical guide, historical encyclopedia, and poetry collection, Blue Violet is a compendium of beauty, color, and the senses…Plants, flowers, and our experience of the natural world are the threads that tie this unique book together. Exploring the five senses, Blue Violet takes the reader on a personal journey through nature and the range of human emotions.” buy it here

 

The African Lookbook: 
A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women
 
The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women. 
By Catherine E. McKinley. Bloomsbury Publishing  
 
"A visual history of African women told in striking and subversive historical photographs―featuring an Introduction by Edwidge Danticat and a Foreword by Jacqueline Woodson. Curator Catherine E. McKinley draws on her extensive collection of historical and contemporary photos to present a visual history spanning a hundred-year arc (1870–1970) of what is among the earliest photography on the continent. These images tell a different story of African women: how deeply cosmopolitan and modern they are in their style; how they were able to reclaim the tools of the colonial oppression that threatened their selfhood and livelihoods. and works by celebrated African masters, African studios of local legend, and anonymous artists, The African Lookbook captures the dignity, playfulness, austerity, grandeur, and fantasy-making of African women across centuries…These photos tell the story of how the sewing machine and the camera became powerful tools for women’s self-expression, revealing a truly glorious display of everyday beauty." Lookbook here
 
9 Peanut Portfolios 2021 
Brian Day, David Gonzalez,  Jean-Pierre Laffont, Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber, 
Barbara Peacock, Michelle Rick, Aline Smithson, and Preston Utley
 

9 Peanut Portfolios 2021. Peanut Press 

Brian Day, David Gonzalez, Jean-Pierre Laffont, Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber, Barbara Peacock, Michelle Rick, Aline Smithson, and Preston Utley Peanut Press 2021 books.   

Purchase separately or the full set of the 2021 Peanut Portfolio Books includes eight signed original photographs and eight signed and numbered hardcover books, eacb book has 40 pages, 18 color plates. peanutpressbooks.com/


 
Anne Berry: Behind Glass. Self-published anneberry.bigcartel.com 
"Behind Glass is a collection of photographs made in monkey houses of small zoos throughout Europe, thoughtfully constructed from exquisite archival materials. Anne Berry is recognized for her ability to create lyrical, intimate portraits of animals, and her photographs demonstrate a perception for capturing the animals’ emotional states and intense facial expressions. They reveal an undeniable communication between herself and the primates she visits and her adept ability to capture this connection. Berry’s powerful and moving photographs gently confront the viewer to facilitate a reexamination of the human, and often personal, relationship with the animal kingdom. Berry's book "Behind Glass" features a message from Dr. Jane Goodall, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, essays by primatologist Jo Setchell and Atlanta art critic Jerry Cullum, with 50 duotone plates in a beautifully crafted hardbound edition www.anneberrystudio.com



She. Photographs by Rania Matar
 
She. Photographs by Rania Matar. Radius Books “Portraits of American and Middle Eastern young women entering adulthood from Rania Matar, author of L’Enfant-Femme. As a Lebanese-born American artist and mother, Rania Matar’s (born 1964) cross-cultural experiences inform her art. She has dedicated her work to exploring issues of personal and collective identity through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood—both in the United States where she lives, and in the Middle East where she is from.”

“Rania Matar focuses on young women in their late teens and early twenties, who are leaving the cocoon of home, entering adulthood and facing a new reality. Depicting women in the United States and the Middle East, this project highlights how female subjectivity develops in parallel forms across cultural lines. Each young woman becomes an active participant in the image-making process, presiding over the environment and making it her own. Matar portrays the raw beauty of her subjects—their age, individuality, physicality and mystery—and photographs them the way she, a woman and a mother, sees them: beautiful, alive.” buy it here
 
 
kissing a stranger. Photographs by Joni Sternbach
 
kissing a stranger. Photographs by Joni Sternbach. Dürer Editions  
“This title, kissing a stranger, is a study of Sternbach’s early work made during the 1970s and 1980s. In essence it is a portrait of the artist as a young woman forming her visual language through freedom of experimentation and expression. She says ‘finding my way towards independence and autonomy as a young art student was both intensely lonely and toughening. A camera around my neck afforded me a feeling of protection. It allowed me to project myself onto the world around me; with my needs, my desires and my loneliness exposed – I felt less vulnerable.” buy it here
 
 
 BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS 2021 ROUND-UP : PART II (soon)
Many thanks to the Publisher's Descriptions.