Showing posts with label Best Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best Books. Show all posts

12.21.2014

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS of 2014....and Some Honorable Mentions

Leon Levinstein
Steidl / Howard Greenberg Library

 Saul Leiter: Early Black and White
Steidl / Howard Greenberg Library

 James Karales
Steidl / Howard Greenberg Library

Howard Greenberg and his gallery teamed with Gerhard Steidl, the preeminent German art and photography book publisher, to launch their new imprint “Steidl / Howard Greenberg Library,” with the release of three monographs – Saul Leiter: Early Black and White, James Karales, and Leon Levinstein. Read more here

 Paul Strand: Master of Modern Photography
Edited by Peter Barberie with Amanda N. Bock
Yale University Press (372 pages!)

Through his variety of innovative images, photographer Paul Strand (1890–1976) played a crucial role in establishing the medium's significance as a modern art form. Celebrating the Philadelphia Museum of Art's recent acquisition of the core collection of Strand's prints from the Paul Strand Archive, this stunning book comprehensively reassesses the artist's career in light of current scholarship and critical debates about his work. Featuring more than 250 plates, the catalogue includes many of Strand's iconic early photos such as Wall Street and Blind Woman alongside lesser-known master prints from all phases of his career. Read more here


 Private. Photographs by Mona Kuhn
Steidl

Private. Grand Falls, 2012
 Photograph © Mona Kuhn

For her fifth book with Steidl, Mona Kuhn has entered the heart of the American desert and returned with a sequence of pictures that is seductive, enigmatic and a little unsettling. "Private" proposes a world in which concrete reality and the imaginary are one. Plants and animals on the edge of survival, sun-drenched landscapes and wind-sculpted earth are intercut with a series of nudes that push Kuhn’s renowned sensitivity to human form into unexpected directions.  


Tones of Dirt and Bone
Photographs by Mike Brodie, Twin Palms Publishers

"Tower Brodie climbed next to the railroad tracks near Jack Woody's house in New Orleans." Twin Palms Publishers, 2014. Photograph © Mike Brodie

 Mike Brodie spent years crisscrossing the U.S. amassing a collection, now appreciated as one of the most impressive archives of American travel photography. The pictures in this book are taken on the road; they precede the work in his first book, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, subjects from New York City to San Francisco. Read more here


 Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada
 Twin Palms Publishers

Valerio Spada tells the story of the murder of Annalisa Durante, a young woman caught in the crossfire of a Mafia shootout, and the problems of growing up in a crime-ridden area. Bound together through an innovative, book-within-a-book design, are Spada’s photographs documenting adolescence in the land of Camorrah (the name for the Mafia in Naples) and pages detail the police investigation.  Read more here


 
 36 Blue Sky Books

Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, OR, now in its fortieth year of exhibiting great photography, published 36 monographs this year by 36 previously unpublished photographers they've shown in their gallery. Read more here

The Day the Dam Collapses
Photographs by Hiroshi Watanabe
Daylight Books / Tosei-sha Publishing, Japan

The Day the Dam Collapses
 Photograph © Hiroshi Watanabe

"....images somewhere between the real world and images pulled to form a single kigo-beyond Zen" read more here


Studio 54 
Photographs by Tod Papageorge
Stanley/Barker Editions

“Papageorge always had his camera at hand and between 1978 and 1980 he celebrated with the rich and beautiful, the artists and starlets; even today viewers can witness the eccentric and hedonistic party nights in his photographs. They revive the feeling of the disco era and express a profoundly urban spirit of directness, which condensed in New York at that time.” Read more here


Vivian Maier: A Photographer Found
By John Maloof 
Text: Marvin Heiferman  Foreword: Laura Lippman
Harper Design

The definitive monograph of American photographer Vivian Maier, exploring the full range and brilliance of her work and the mystery of her life. The selection of the photographer’s work—created during the 1950s through the 1970s in New York, Chicago, and on her travels around the country—is almost exclusively unpublished, including her previously unknown color work. It features images of and excerpts from Maier’s personal artifacts, memorabilia, and audiotapes, made available for the first time. This remarkable volume draws upon recently conducted interviews with people who knew Maier, which shed new light on Maier’s photographic skill and her life.


 You and I
Photographs by Ryan McGinley
Twin Palms Publishers, Second edition

Twin Palms publisher, Jack Woody, worked on this compilation for over seven years. He told me (while suppressing a laugh), "Some books just take longer than others." After viewing the sequencing of the book many times – it was well worth the wait. The images are skillfully edited and presented in a beautifully printed, clothbound, large format volume with essays by Vince Aletti and Sylvia Wolf, both in English and French. Read more here

https://twinpalms.com

Photograph © Paul McDonough
Photograph © Paul McDonough

Sight Seeing
Photographs by Paul McDonough
Hard Cover, 48 pages
Published by Sasha Wolf Gallery

"McDonough has often said that the intimacy he could feel, if only for a second, in the moments when he snapped his pictures was extremely seductive to him..." read more here

Seas Without A Shore
Photographs by  Chris Anthony

The scenarios document a species as seen everyday through the eyes of the artist, with the writings of Edgar Allan Poe serving as a beacon of light and a source of inspiration. Mask-making, sculpture, and costume design is an important part of the process, defining the unique and demented little world Anthony lives and shoots in. The mysteries of the sea figure greatly in these pictures with a crescendo of color images depicting survivors braving waves and currents, perhaps the result of a future world where ocean tides will wash away the planet’s coastlines.


A Field Guide to Snow and Ice
Photographs by Paula McCartney
Silas Finch
Includes 48 black and white and full color plates printed with UV inks on uncoated paper. Leporello binding with multiple panel widths and stiff front and back covers. With the spine detached from the front cover, the book becomes an installation piece approximately 34' long.

 Grays the Mountain Sends
Photographs by Bryan Schutmaat
Second Edition / Silas Finch 

 L.A., 1971
Photographs by Anthony Hernandez
Silas Finch

This sequence of 12 images – all taken in Los Angeles, California on the same day in 1971 – represents some of the earliest black and white work by Anthony Hernandez. Aluminum front and back covers.

Islands of the Blest
Edited by Bryan Schutmaat + Ashlyn Davis
Silas Finch

These photographs depict various places in the American West, and were taken over a one hundred-year period, from the 1870s through the 1970s. The photographers represented range from the completely unknown to some of America’s most distinguished practitioners of the medium. All of the images were sourced from digital public archives.

http://www.silasfinch.org

Portraits
Photographs by Martin Schoeller
teNeues

Whether portraits of political leaders, Hollywood stars, business entrepreneurs, or contemporary music royalty, these images are as daring as they are exacting, playful and precise. Regardless of the subject and setting, Schoeller's photographs seemingly come to life.

Hasted Kraeutler
Amazon


Mont St. Michel and Shiprock
Photographs by William Clift
Pearmain Press


 Photograph  Lesly Deschler Canossi

Domestic Negotiations 
Photographs by Lesly Deschler Canossi
ICP-edu

Domestic Negotiations conveys the emotional and intimate tenderness of family while revealing the raw and delicate nature of the relationships we try so desperately to preserve.


The Home Stage
 Photographs by Jessica Todd Harper
Text: Alison Nordström + Alain de Boton
Damiani 

Harper's naturalistic images pause or recreate real life for the camera; the play between the often-formal environment and her subjects--intimately portrayed family members--creates images that seem at once intimate and artificial. Her latest collection is thus aptly called The Home Stage, a double entendre that references the home-bound lifestyle of families with small children as well as the idea that home is the stage on which children first learn to live....read more on Amazon

Damiani Books 
Jessica Todd Harper 

Escape Artist
 The Art of Fran Forman
Schiffer Publishing, Ltd

In this rich and dream-like collection of photo-paintings, artist and fabulist Fran Forman offers characters, scenes and visual narratives that lure the imagination.The exquisite poems and story by writer Michelle Blake act as a guidebook to these vast imaginary worlds, suggesting voices for some of the characters and destinations for some of the journeys. 


Photograph (c) John F. Martin /All Rights Reserved

  In Character: Opera Portraiture
Foreword: Amy Tan  Preface: David Gockley

In Character: Opera Portraiture showcases the work of John F. Martin, who for years set up a portable studio in the basement of the San Francisco Opera and photographed the players in costume and full makeup right before or after they took the stage. The subjects include operas greatest stars, such as Anna Netrebko, Natalie Dessay, Deborah Voigt, Juan Diego Flórez, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Their roles run the gamut of opera personalities: heroes and heroines, villains and outcasts, royalty and common folk, Biblical figures and creatures of myth. Includes an interview with world-renowned soprano Danielle de Niese.
Crusade For Art
Jennifer Schwartz
Crusade Press

“In Crusade For Your Art, Jennifer Schwartz has written one of the most comprehensive guides to date for both the professional and emerging fine art photographer to navigate the current world of Photography. With contributions from leading photography museum, gallery and photo directors, the expert advice given is instrumental in creating what every photographer needs to know to navigate the current art market. I absolutely love this guide. It covers all bases!  I whole-heartedly recommend this masterful guide to the photographic community.”–Elizabeth Avedon

Pine Lake by Douglas Stockdale
Pine Lake by Douglas Stockdale
"A semi-fictional narrative about a multi-generational summer rite"

The Memory of Stone
Photographs by Erv Schroeder
Univ. of New Mexico Press

Erv Schroeder’s portrait of the Colorado Plateau bears witness to the primordial forces of the earth—the raw power that moved and shifted huge hunks of rock to form natural stone sculptures. Read more here

East or West:
A Walking Journey Along Shikoku's 88 Temple Pilgrimage
Photographs by Alexandra Huddleston

In September 2010, the photographer Alexandra Huddleston set out on an 800-mile walk around the island of Shikoku, Japan. To complete the Shikoku Ohenro trail pilgrims worship at 88 temples on the island, following a route that loosely traces the life and legends of the Buddhist saint Kōbō Daishi.  Read more here

Edited by John Maloof
Essay by Elizabeth Avedon
Published by PowerHouse Books 2013

 Photography books are alive and well at The Strand Bookstore. Open since 1927, The Strand carries new, used, rare and collectable photography books:  http://www.strandbooks.com

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The above list is just a small portion of the excellent photography books from 2014. Check out some of the other 2014 Best Photo Book Lists for many more!

TIME Best Photobooks List

12.28.2013

BOOKS 2013: My Top Ten and More

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... 


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)

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

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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Also View:

View Lauren Henkin's Handmade Books here


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.