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

12.24.2011

2011 BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS | Part I

A few of my choices for
The Best Photography Books of 2011
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The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious
Aperture, 2011

The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York to Feb. 19, 2012

"When I turned 50, I decided my life’s mission would be to promote the pleasure of photography." William Hunt, collector, curator, consultant, writer, teacher... Read La Lettre's Interview with WM. Hunt

"The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious presents a wonderfully idiosyncratic and compelling collection of photographs assembled around a particular theme: in each image, the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured or the eyes firmly closed. The pictures present a catalog of anti-portraiture, characterized at first glance by what its subjects conceal, not by what the camera reveals. Amassed over the course of thirty years by New York collector W. M. Hunt, the collection includes works by masters such as Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Imogen Cunningham, William Klein, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Robert Frank as well as lesser-known artists and vernacular images." –Aperture

Eyewitness. Hungarian Photography in the Twentieth Century
Brassaï, Capa, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, Munkácsi
Royal Academy Publications, 2011

"At a crucial moment between two world wars, five men changed the face of photojournalism and art photography, and inspired the world. With their groundbreaking shots, Brassaï, Capa, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, and Munkásci radically redefined photographic practice and theory, ushering in the modern era." Publisher's Description


"The elusive Vivian Maier has left us many clues and a diary of over 100,000 negatives that reflect her time and her place. The quiet observer,the plain spoken no non-sense woman, the obsessive photo taker, the nanny and mysterious legend in the making. There are a lot of good images revealed in these books all leading us to learn a little more from this sphinx like creature" – John A. Bennette, Curator of Maier's first New York exhibition, "Vivian Maier, Photographer," at the Hearst Gallery, New York

In 2011, Aperture released Diane Arbus: A Chronology and newly reissued Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph and Untitled: Diane Arbus on the fortieth anniversary of the original publication.


You and I. Photographs by Ryan McGinley
Twin Palms, 2011

"Following in the footsteps of Allen Ginsberg and his "Snapshot Poetics," McGinley turned his lens on the bodies and pastimes of his Lower East Side milieu, adding another generation to the History of Photography. This work, from the first years of this century, has given way to Ryan’s subjects running through and falling out of otherworldly utopian landscapes, caverns, forests and deserts; worlds away from the Chinatown tenements he still calls home."–Jack Woody, Twin Palms Publisher

Bordeaux Series. Photographs by Mona Kuhn
Steidl, 2011

Working with preeminent photography publisher, Gerhard Steidl, on her newly released Bordeaux Series, Kuhn said, “The thing is, I only have really wonderful things to say about Gerhard. He is indeed a genius of publishing.”–Mona Kuhn

Read Mona Kuhn's Interview



Moby: Destroyed
Damiani, 2011

“When I play music, I’m just exclusively focused on the music. When I’m taking photographs, I’m exclusively focusing on that. There’s not a lot of interdisciplinary stuff going on in my head.”– Moby

Read Moby's Interview

Core Curriculum: Writings on Photography is a collection of essays, reviews and lectures by Tod Papageorge, Photographer and Walker Evans Professor of Photography at the Yale University School of Art. Papageorge discusses with deep critical insight are Eugène Atget, Brassaï, Robert Frank (with Walker Evans), Robert Adams and his close friend Garry Winogrand.

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Sylvia Plachy's Out of the Corner of My Eye: de reojo, Goings On About Town

Although Sylvia Plachy didn't publish a book in 2011, her work remains timeless. Plachy, a Hungarian/American photographer, was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1943. Her family moved to New York City due to the Hungarian Revolution where she met photographer Andre Kertesz. Plachy's photo essays and portraits have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, The New Yorker, Granta, Artforum, Fortune, and everywhere else. They have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Berlin, Budapest, Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, Paris and Tokyo. Her book, Self Portrait with Cows Going Home (2005), is a personal history of Central Europe with photographs and text, received a Golden Light Award for Best Book in 2004. In 2009, she received the Dr. Erich Salomon Preis in Berlin for Lifetime Achievement in Photojournalism. This January 2012, Plachy and Jeff Liao will be exhibiting Panoramic Photographs of New York City when The South Street Seaport Museum reopens.

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4.30.2011

RICHARD GERE: Talks About Photography in La Lettre de la Photographie's Weekend Agenda

Giza, 2005
Courtesy of the Gere Foundation
Photograph (c) Richard Gere

Cairo, 2010
Courtesy of the Gere Foundation
Photograph (c) Richard Gere

I was in this old Mosque and I just turned to my left and that shot was there. All the angles were right, all the lines were moving, everything was right. All I had to do was take a half step to my left. Everything lined up and I knew that was it. That was the shot...That’s a very complicated photograph; the dark areas, light areas, white against black, black against white. It’s very complicated and that’s a very straight...digital print made for me by John Paul Caponigro at his place up in Maine. – Richard Gere, Le Journal de la Photographie 4.30.2011

Cover Photograph: Pilgrim, Zansker, 1983
Pilgrim, Bulfinch Press, 1997

Richard’s photographs from “Pilgrim” are clearly made from the heart. They are not only pictures that you are informed by – but they are images you feel. Richard’s images speak to our soul by exuding spirituality, compassion, and atmosphere. Richard’s “Pilgrim” photographs formed by his experiences, defines what he represents, and documents his social, spiritual, and cultural encounters. The underlining thread of his photographs is his fondness for the people of Tibet as well as his extraordinary ability to document the livelihood of the enduring people who reside within these unfamiliar and mysterious places with dignified simplicity. – David Fahey, Fahey/Klein Gallery

Lobsang Tenzing, Daramsala, 1981
Photograph © Richard Gere, Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Ulan Bator (The Arrival of His Holiness), Mongolia, 1995
Photograph © Richard Gere, Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Angels, Shekar Monastery, Tibet, 1993
Photograph © Richard Gere, Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

There are usually three shots. If it’s a difficult light situation like this where the shutters going to be open one, two, three seconds – from my own experience of my work, one of those three is going to be the one I want. It’s not always that one is sharper than another; whatever it is, one’s going to feel right to me if I do three of them. Sometimes it’s so dark, I can’t even see it, and I’m just sensing that there’s something there. There’s one in particular I took in a Monastery. It’s these two angels that are hovering there. (Angels, Shekar Monastery, Tibet, 1993) I could barely see anything when I took that shot, but I knew that the shot was there and I knew I had to take it “now.” – Richard Gere, Le Journal de la Photographie 4.30.2011



Photography can open a doorway that can lead us into a new world, expands our horizons, and shows us exciting and challenging possibilities. Richard’s photographs allow us to engage the world and renew our perspective by reinterpreting what we think we know – leading us through that doorway. – David Fahey, Fahey/Klein Gallery

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I spoke with Richard Gere for Le Journal de la Photographie about his photographs, his book and exhibitions, and about his extensive photography collection...read the entire Interview here

Le Journal de la Photographie

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3.29.2011

KATHLEEN LARAIA MCLAUGHLIN: Transylvania Project


Gheorghe, Mara, Maramures, 1999
Photograph (c) Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin

Maria, Sarbi, Maramures, 2003
Photograph (c) Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin

Northern Transylvania is the last bastion of subsistence peasant villages in Europe. It is an area so remote that the Romans never conquered them. Yet just two decades after the fall of communism, modernity is finally overcoming their centuries old traditions.

"In a single generation, the villages shown here have gone from illiterate poverty to cell phone towers. Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin's photographs capture both the traditions and the change of the first decade of the 21st century. Using a medium format camera with traditional film negatives, she pursues the mission of a documentary photographer by preserving a piece of fading history.

"Your contributions will allow us to make the final payment to the printer. Up to now, we have spent our money and the money of friends. This final amount will complete the long journey to publication."

Over 130 photos are displayed throughout 200 pages. Each image carries a caption, a location and a date. The book is organized into chapters on the seasons, the ceremonies, and the meaning of life. Throughout, there are essays, poems, proverbs, ghost stories and songs to add depth to the lives of these special villages." (...KickStarter Video)

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1.01.2011

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS OF 2010

















I was invited to submit my top 10 choices for photo-eye Magazine's annual "Best Photography Books of 2010", along with other contributors from Todd Hido - whose book A Road Divided (Nazraeli Press) I now wish I had included in my top 10, Alan Rapp, Larissa Leclair, Bruno Ceschel, Melanie McWhorter and many more. I had a hard time keeping my list down to 10 choices, so I'm posting all of the books I would have liked to list - not in any favored order:

LEE FRIEDLANDER - America By Car | DAP/FRAENKEL "Driving across most of the country’s 50 states in an ordinary rental car, Friedlander applied the brilliantly simple conceit of deploying the sideview mirror, rearview mirror, the windshield and the side windows as a picture frame within which to record the country’s eccentricities and obsessions at the turn of the century. Never has America been photographed so penetratingly and ingeniously as in Friedlander’s latest body of work."–Publisher

SALLY MANN - The Flesh and the Spirit | APERTURE "One of the apparent paradoxes in Sally Mann's work is her desire to show what lies beyond vision by using a medium invented to record reality's surface"– John B. Ravenal. This publication accompanied a significant exhibition of Sally Mann's photography in the special exhibition galleries of the Virginia Museum of Fine Art's new McGlothlin Wing. The "Untitled (Self Portraits), 2006-7" make this one of my most treasured books.

TOD PAPAGEORGE - Opera Citta' | PUNCTUM PRESS "...Tod Papageorge imagines this book to be something like a photographic stepchild of one of Calvino's invisible cities, conjured up by a camera out of bits and pieces of a place called Rome..." Papageorge, the Walker Evans Professor of Photography and Director of Graduate Studies in Photography at the Yale School of Art, (and my first formal photography teacher), was invited to Rome to work for a month on the Rome Commission. In this perfect little book of color photographs, curated by Marco Delogu and designed by Nicola Scavalli, are some of my favorite Papageorge images (a cringe worthy charge, I'm sure)...read more

EUGENE SMITH - The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of Eugene Smith From 821 Sixth Avenue 1957 - 1965 | KNOPF 821 Sixth Avenue was a late night haunt of musicians–Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonius Monk among them. Between 1957-1965, Smith, then a 38 year old former Life Magazine photographer, shot 1,447 rolls of film at his 821 Sixth Avenue loft, roughly 40,000 pictures, the largest body of work of his career. "Smith made several hundred photographs through the broken windowpane. The cracked window was a kind of aperture, and a metaphor." Buy the book-it's incredible!

CHRIS VERENE - Family | TWIN PALMS
Chris Verene follows the lives of his family and friends. The titles to his photographs tell the whole great story of what I love about his work; "My Twin Cousin's Husband's Brother's Cousin's Cousins"; "The Same Day They Signed The Divorce Papers, A Tornado Hit The House"...read more

ZWELETHU MTHETHWA | APERTURE His portraits are stunning! Photographing in urban and rural industrial landscapes, Mthethwa documents a range of aspects in present-day South Africa, from domestic life and the environment to landscape and labor issues...read more

WILLIAM EGGLESTON - For Now | TWIN PALMS ‘This monograph is the result of film-maker Michael Almereyda’s year-long search through the Eggleston archives, a remarkable collection of heretofore unseen images spanning four decades of work. Unusual in its concentration on family and friends, the book highlights an air of offhand intimacy, typical of Eggleston and typically surprising. Eggleston remarked “the book comes close to being a family album.”...read more on La Lettre

NICK BRANDT - On This Earth A Shadow Falls | BIG LIFE EDITIONS On This Earth, A Shadow Falls combines the best photographs from Nick Brandt's previous books. It features 36 images from On This Earth and 54 from A Shadow Falls and is the only publication where images from both books will appear in one volume, on a larger scale than the previous editions...read more

KENRO IZU - A Thirty Year Retrospective | NAZRAELI PRESS A book of treasures - priceless images of past civilizations. "A chance viewing of the mammoth plate photographs by the Victorian photographer Francis Frith led Izu to travel to Egypt in 1979, to photograph the pyramids and other sacred monuments. Thus began the artist’s renowned series “Sacred Places,” which includes work from holy sites in Syria, Jordan, England, Scotland, Mexico, Easter Island and, more recently, Buddhist and Hindu sites in India, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Indonesia, and China...more about Kenro Izu

ALEX WEBB + REBECCA NORRIS WEBB - Violet Isle | RADIUS BOOKS "This multi-layered portrait of “the violet isle”—a little-known name for Cuba inspired by the rich color of the soil there—presents an engaging, at times unsettling document of a vibrant and vulnerable land. It combines two separate photographic visions: Alex Webb’s exploration of street life, with his attuned and complex attention to detail, and Rebecca Norris Webb’s fascination with the unique, quixotic collections of animals she discovered there, from tiny zoos and pigeon societies to hand-painted natural history displays and quirky personal menageries."

DANNY LYON - Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement | TWIN PALMS In Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, Danny Lyon tells the compelling story of how a handful of dedicated young people, both black and white, forged one of the most successful grassroots organizations in American history. The book depicts some of the most violent and dramatic moments of Civil Rights Movement...read more

PAUL STRAND - Paul Strand in Mexico | APERTURE Co-published with Fundación Televisa A.C., Mexico, 2010, this book documents the complete photographic works made by Strand during his 1932–34 trip to Mexico as well as a second journey in 1966—a total of 234 photographs, 123 of which have never before been published. Strand in Mexico tells the story of Strand's journeys through Mexico in the early 1930s. In search of a fresh start, Strand traveled to Mexico City in late 1932 at the invitation of Carlos Chávez, the eminent Mexican composer and conductor.

Street Photography Now | THAMES + HUDSON Jointly curated by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren, Street Photography Now presents 46 photographers noted for their everyday street, subway, and shopping mall scenes. Included are a few of Magnum's masters such as Bruce Gilden, Martin Parr and Alex Webb, along with new and emerging photographers work from New York to Dakar...more

RENATE ALLER - Oceanscapes | RADIUS BOOKS "Aller has been photographing the Atlantic Ocean for over a decade, from a single point on Long Island's fabled coastline. Her images capture the shifting colors and textures of the sky and water, and the beauty and grandeur of the ocean, providing a rich document of what has made the Hamptons such an integral aspect of New York life. The sublime beauty of this Atlantic view, which Aller connects to the great nineteenth-century German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich."...more

RAGHU RAI - The Indians: Portraits from My Album. 150 Years of Portraiture In India | PENGUIN BOOKS INDIA "Raghu Rai has been in the forefront of photography in India for over 40 years. As a member of Magnum, he established an international reputation as a photographer with his special essay on the Bhopal Gas tragedy. Twenty-five of his photographs are held in the permanent collection of France's Bibliothque Nationale and in 1997 the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi gave him the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to the work of a contemporary Indian photographer." An upcoming piece on Indian Photography Books is coming up soon on La Lettre de la Photography.

ROSE-LYNN FISHER - Bee | PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS Bee was a winner in the International Photography Awards 2010: Books/Nature. "Melding art and science, photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher puts this modern tool to creative use in order to reveal the microscopic majesty of these natural wonders. BEE presents sixty astonishing photographs of honeybee anatomy in magnifications ranging from 10x to 5000x. Rendered in stunning detail, Fisher's photographs uncover the strange beauty of the honeybee's pattern, form, and structure. Comprising 6,900 hexagonal lenses, their eyes resemble the structure of a honeycomb."...more

WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY - Kodachromes | APERTURE This book includes work from 1964 to 2007. "As in all of Christenberry's photographs, the subject matter is the rural Deep South: the twisting back roads, open landscapes, rusted signage and ramshackle vernacular architecture found in Hale County, Alabama. Though many of the sites pictured in this rare collection are new, other subjects have grown iconic in Christenberry's oeuvre as he has returned to photograph them over the decades--the red building in the forest, Sprott Church, the Palmist Sign and the Bar-B-Q Inn, among others."

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