Essential books for a photo library part II
This is the book list for your photo library continued...
51. Alfred Stieglitz. Camera Work
American pioneer Alfred Stieglitz defined early 20th-century photography, creating the school of "Photo Secessionism" and founding cult art, literature, and avant-garde photo journal Camera Work. This beautiful book reproduces the entire 50-issue run, originally published between 1903 and 1917-a benchmark of photography as art form.
52. Eugène Atget. Paris
Take an intimate promenade through Paris with some 500 images from Eugène Atget, the flâneur photographer who excelled in city “documents.” Down main streets and side streets, through courtyards, arcades, and the city’s 20 arrondissements, we find a unique portrait of a beloved cityand the making of a photographic master, hailed by Man Ray, Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, and beyond.
53. Lewis W. Hine. America at Work
Photographer, teacher, and sociologist Lewis W. Hine (1874–1940) shaped our consciousness of American working life in the early 20th century like no other. Combining his training as an educator with his humanist concerns, Hine was one of the earliest photographers to use the camera as a documentary tool, capturing in particular labor conditions, housing, and immigrants arriving on Ellis Island. His images, including those of children in cotton mills, factories, coal mines, and fields, became icons of photographic history that helped to transform labor laws in the United States.
This book brings together a representative collection of Lewis W. Hine’s photography from all periods of his work. It spans his earliest forays into social-documentary work through to his more artistic and interpretative late photographs, including his phenomenal images of the construction of the Empire State Building and his symbiotic staging of human and machine as a comment on increasing industrialization. Alongside the near 350 photographs, the book includes an essay by the editor, introducing Hine’s life and pioneering work.
54. Peter Lindbergh. Untold Stories
The first-ever exhibition curated by Peter Lindbergh himself, shortly before his untimely death, Untold Stories at the Düsseldorf Kunstpalast served as a blank canvas for the photographer’s unrestrained vision and creativity. Given total artistic freedom, Lindbergh curated an uncompromising collection that sheds an unexpected light on his colossal oeuvre. This artist's book, the official companion to the landmark exhibition, offers an extensive, firsthand look at the highly personal collection. When it came to printing his photos, Lindbergh chose a special uncoated paper – a thin sheet with a soft, open surface – as a deliberate aesthetic statement.
Renowned the world over, Lindbergh’s images have left an indelible mark on contemporary culture and photo history. Here, the photographer experiments with his own oeuvre and narrates new stories while staying true to his lexicon. In both emblematic and never-before-seen images, he challenges his own icons and presents intimate moments shared with personalities who had been close to him for years, including Nicole Kidman, Uma Thurman, Robin Wright, Jessica Chastain, Jeanne Moreau, Naomi Campbell, Charlotte Rampling and many more.
This XL volume presents more than 150 photographs―many of them unpublished or short-lived, often having been commissioned by monthly fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Interview, Rolling Stone, W Magazine, or The Wall Street Journal. An extensive conversation between Lindbergh and Kunstpalast director Felix Krämer, as well as an homage by close friend Wim Wenders, offer fresh insights into the making of the collection. The result is an intimate personal statement by Lindbergh about his work.
55. Annie Leibovitz. The Early Years. 1970–1983
For more than half a century, Annie Leibovitz has been taking culture-defining photographs. Her portraits of politicians, performers, athletes, businesspeople, and royalty make up a gallery of our time, imprinted on our collective consciousness by both the singularity of their subjects and Leibovitz’s inimitable style.
The catalogue to an installation at the LUMA Foundation in Arles, France, Annie Leibovitz: The Early Years, 1970–1983 returns to Leibovitz’s origins. It begins with a moment of artistic revelation: the spontaneous shot that made Leibovitz think she could transition from painting to photography as her area of study at the San Francisco Art Institute. The meticulously and personally curated collection, including contact sheets and Polaroids, provides a vivid document both of Leibovitz’s development as a young artist and of a pivotal era.
Leibovitz’s reportage-like photo stories for Rolling Stone, which she began working for when she was still a student, record such heady political, cultural, and counter-cultural developments as the Vietnam War protests, the launch of Apollo 17, the presidential campaign of 1972, Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, and the Rolling Stones on tour in 1975. Then, as now, Leibovitz won the trust of the prominent and famous, and the book’s pages are animated by many familiar faces, among them Muhammad Ali, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ken Kesey, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Didion, and Debbie Harry, as well as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, captured in their now iconic embrace just hours before Lennon was assassinated.
Throughout the book, the portraits and reportage are linked to images of cars, driving, and even a series on California highway patrolmen. In many ways, it’s a celebration of life on the road―the frenetic rhythms, the chance encounters, the meditative opportunities. And with its rich archival aspects, it is also a tribute to an earlier time and a young photographer enmeshed in a culture that was itself in transition.
56. Stanley Kubrick Photographs. Through a Different Lens
In 1945, at just 17 years old, Stanley Kubrick became a staff photographer for Lookmagazine. His humanist slice-of-life features celebrate his native New York City and already reveal a burgeoning creative genius. With around 300 images, many previously unseen, as well as rare Look magazine tear sheets, this release coincides with a major show at the Museum of the City of New York and includes an introduction by noted photography critic Luc Sante.
57. BYWAYS. Photographs by Roger A Deakins
Portraits and landscapes from the cinematographer famed for his work with Sam Mendes and the Coen brothers
This is the first monograph by the legendary Oscar-winning cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins, best known for his collaborations with directors such as the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes and Denis Villeneuve. It includes previously unpublished black-and-white photographs spanning five decades, from 1971 to the present. After graduating from college Deakins spent a year photographing life in rural North Devon, in South West England, on a commission for the Beaford Arts Centre; these images are gathered here for the first time and attest to a keenly ironic English sensibility, also documenting a vanished postwar Britain. A second suite of images expresses Deakins’ love of the seaside. Traveling for his cinematic work has allowed Deakins to photograph landscapes all over the world; in this third group of images, that same irony remains evident.
58. Harry Gruyaert
Born in Antwerp in 1941, Harry Gruyaert was one of the first European photographers to explore the creative potential of colour in the 1970s and 1980s. This book brings together his best work, including images from his renowned 1972 series TV Shots and the later Made in Belgium, in one beautifully produced volume. Influenced by such American photographers as Saul Leiter, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, as well as by cinema, Gruyaert’s work defined new territory for colour photography: an emotive, non-narrative and boldly graphic way of perceiving the world. His photographs are autonomous and self-sufficient, often independent from any context or thematic logic. A member of Magnum Photos since 1982, he has embraced the possibilities of digital photography in his most recent work, feeling that it allows him to take more risks and capture new kinds of light.
59. Saul Leiter: 0 (Photofile)
Saul Leiter is one of four new titles published this September in Thames & Hudson’s acclaimed ‘Photofile’ series. Each book brings together the best work of the world’s greatest photographers in an attractive format and at an easily affordable price. Hailed by The Times as ‘finely produced’, the books are printed to the highest standards. Each one contains some sixty full-page reproductions, together with a critical introduction and a full bibliography.
60. Ernst Haas: New York in Colour, 1952-1962
Ernst Haas's colour works reveal the photographer's remarkable genius and remind us on every page why we love New York. When Haas moved from Vienna to New York City in 1951, he left behind a war-torn continent and a career producing black-and-white images. For Haas, the new medium of colour photography was the only way to capture a city pulsing with energy and humanity. These images demonstrate Haas's tremendous virtuosity and confidence with Kodachrome film and the technical challenges of colour printing. Unparalleled in their depth and richness of colour, brimming with lyricism and dramatic tension, these images reveal a photographer at the height of his career.
61. Steve McCurry: A Life in Pictures
The biggest and most comprehensive volume on Steve McCurry published to date and the final word on forty years of McCurry’s incredible work. Written and compiled by Bonnie McCurry, Steve’s sister and President of the McCurry Foundation, Steve McCurry: A Life in Pictures is the ultimate book of McCurry’s images and his approach to photography.
The book brings together all of McCurry’s key adventures and influences, from his very first journalistic images taken in the aftermath of the 1977 Johnstown floods, to his breakthrough journey into Afghanistan hidden among the mujahideen, his many travels across India and Pakistan, his coverage of the destruction of the 1991 Gulf War and the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, up to his most-recent work. Totalling over 350 images, the selection of photographs includes his best-known shots as well as over 100 previously unpublished images. Also included are personal notes, telegrams and visual ephemera from his travels and assignments, all accompanied by Bonnie McCurry’s authoritative text – drawn from her unique relationship with Steve – as well as reflections from many of Steve’s friends and colleagues.
62. Bruce Gilden: Cherry Blossom
Bruce Gilden first set foot in Japan in 1994. On that trip and subsequent others, he explored the meandering streets of a country that had long fascinated him. From Tokyo to Osaka, he laid Japan bare in his own inimitable photographic style. Each image is a very close and powerful encounter with a story behind it. As ever, Gilden makes his approach, talks, tells stories, takes photographs, and paints a portrait of a unique street scene. In search of personalities as strong as his own, Gilden drew on the details around him to transcribe his vision of Japan: one man’s suit, another’s hat, or a woman’s posture. All of these elements, which give strength to the images, form a captivating ensemble – on the margins, just like him.
In Cherry Blossom, Gilden tells the story of these voyages and the ties he maintains with Japan in a rare introductory text. The stories told alongside these pictures – whether an anecdote or a dialogue with their characters – render the American photographer’s vision even more contemporary than ever.
63. Facing New York by Bruce Gilden
'The cast of characters in Bruce Gilden's theatre of the street is outrageous. Sometimes tawdry and out of this world, they are mostly mysterious. To Gilden and his fellow New Yorkers, they're just neighbours. In broad and simple terms, and with great expressive authority, Gilden has captured the uniquely individualistic, self-styled New York personality on the run. In Gilden's world, no-one is on the margins of centre stage, they are all-star players.' - Susan Kismaric Originally published in 1992 by Cornerhouse Publications, the imprint of the Manchester Film & Visual Arts Centre of which Dewi Lewis was Founding Director, 'Facing New York' was Bruce Gilden's first major publication. It has since become a recognised classic but has been out of print for some time. For this new edition Bruce has replaced two images, of which he says that he just can't understand why they didn't make his original selection. Bruce Gilden has always had a fascination with what he calls 'characters'. So, for Bruce, New York, with its famously idiosyncratic citizenry and the unique energy of its streets, proved to be a giant creative playground. 'Facing New York' sees Bruce and his camera at their highest level of intensity, capturing New Yorkers in moments of utter spontaneity yet still exposing the humanity that lies behind their hardened exteriors.
64. Helen Levitt
Helen Levitt (1913 - 2009) numbers among the foremost exponents of street photography.
As a passionate observer and chronicler of everyday street life in New York, she spent decades documenting residents of the city's poorer neighbourhoods such as Lower East Side and Harlem. Levitt's oeuvre stands out for her sense of dynamics and surrealistic sense of humour, and her employment of colour photography was revolutionary: Levitt numbers among those photographers who pioneered and established colour as a means of artistic expression.
The book accompanying the retrospective of the Albertina Museum features around 130 of her iconic works. These range from her early, surrealism-influenced photographs of chalk drawings to her 1941 photos from Mexico and the clandestinely shot portraits of New York subway passengers that Walker Evans encouraged her to do in 1938. Many of these photos come from Helen Levitt's personal estate, and this exhibition represents their first-ever public showing.
65. Bruce Davidson: Subway
Bruce Davidson's groundbreaking Subway, first published by Aperture in 1986, has garnered critical acclaim both as a documentation of a unique moment in the cultural fabric of New York City and for its phenomenal use of extremes of color and shadow set against flash-lit skin. In Davidson's own words, the people in the subway, their flesh juxtaposed against the graffiti, the penetrating effect of the strobe light itself, and even the hollow darkness of the tunnels, inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks and closed off from each other. In this third edition of what is now a classic of photographic literature, a sequence of 118 (including 25 previously unpublished) images transport the viewer through a landscape at times menacing, and at other times lyrical and soulful. The images present the full gamut of New Yorkers, from weary straphangers and languorous ladies in summer dresses to stalking predators and homeless persons. Davidson's accompanying text tells the story behind the images, clarifying his method and dramatizing his obsession with the subway, its rhythms and its particular madness.
66. Bruce Davidson: Survey
Bruce Davidson is a pioneer of social documentary photography. He began taking photographs at the age of ten and continued to develop his passion at Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University. Later called upon for military service, Davidson met Henri Cartier-Bresson in France and was introduced to Magnum Photos. In his work, Davidson prizes his relationship to the subject above all else. From his profound documentation of the civil rights movement to his in-depth study of one derelict block in Harlem, he has immersed himself fully in his projects, which have sometimes taken him several years to complete. He once wrote, “I often find myself an outsider on the inside, discovering beauty and meaning in the most desperate of situations.” This survey, created in conjunction with an exhibition at Fundación Mapfre in Spain, focuses on the work that has made Davidson one of the most influential documentary photographers to this day. In addition to his civil rights series and his work in Harlem, the book includes Davidson’s well-known series Brooklyn Gang, Subway, and Central Park. The book also highlights more recent projects, such as his explorations of Paris and Los Angeles landscapes.
67. A Greek Portfolio by Constantine Manos
In the early 1960s, Constantine Manos spent three years living and working as a photographer in Greece. "A Greek Portfolio" represents an impromptu pictorial account of Manos' travels through the country. First published in 1972, it received awards at Arles and at the Leipzig Book Fair, and the limited first edition has since become a sought-after collector's item. Eight previously unpublished images and a new forward enchance this edition.
68. Alex Webb: Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names
In 1998 Alex Webb visited Istanbul and was immediately enthralled by the people, the layers of culture and history, the richness of street life. But what particularly drew him in was a sense of Istanbul as a border city, lying between Europe and Asia. As he writes, “For thirty-some years as a photographer I have been intrigued by borders, places where cultures come together, sometimes easily, sometimes roughly.” He has returned to Istanbul whenever possible, and the resulting body of work―some of Webb’s strongest to date―conveys the frisson of a culture in transition, yet firmly rooted in a complex history.
69. Hiroshi Sugimoto: Portraits
At first glance, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographic portrait of King Henry VIII of England is arresting: his camera has captured the tactility of Henry’s luxurious furs and silks, the elaborate embroidery of his doublet, and the light reflecting off of each shimmering jewel. The contours of the king’s face are so lifelike that he appears to be almost three-dimensional. It seems as though the twenty-first-century artist has traveled back in time nearly five hundred years to photograph his royal subject. While Sugimoto’s portraits of historical figures appear to capture a lived moment in time, they are fiction. These portraits are in fact at least twice removed from the subject: his photograph captures a wax figure that has been created by a sculptor from either a photographic portrait or a painted one. Sugimoto has photographed his portraits of historical subjects in black and white, with each “sitter” posed against a black background, giving the images an austere formality. The black backdrop, free of any props or additional visual information, amplifies the illusion that we are viewing a contemporary portrait in which the subject has stepped out of history. Other portraits appear to be photojournalistic. Sugimoto’s image of the Duke of Wellington at Napoleon’s deathbed is actually a photograph of the mise en scene created by the wax museum, but it registers as real in our minds. The portraits of wax figures, which in this volume are presented alongside a handful of portraits of living subjects and photographs of memento mori, call into question what it is the portrait captures. As with his other major bodies of work―Dioramas, Seascapes, Theaters―Sugimoto’s Portraits address the passage of time and history. We recognize these historical figures because of the many contemporaneous drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs that have recorded them. We take it for granted that a photograph of a living subject is true, but what does that mean? Are Sugimoto’s portraits of living subjects more “true” than the historical portraits of wax figures? Is Hans Holbein’s painted portrait of Henry VIII truer than Sugimoto’s photograph of the wax figure made from Holbein’s painting?
70. Bill Brandt
With a career spanning nearly half a century, Bill Brandt was a master of several major genres of photography: photojournalism, portraiture, the nude and landscapes. At first glance, Brandt’s genres may appear unrelated, but when analysing his career in its entirety, a common theme comes to the forefront: what psychologist Sigmund Freud and philosopher Eugenio Trías called 'the sinister.' From his earliest photographs taken as an amateur in the 1930s to his late portraits and studies of the female body, Brandt expresses a fascination with the strange and dark aspects of life that only he can reveal.
71. Willy Ronis: The Master Photographer's Unpublished Albums
The definitive reference on master French photographer Willy Ronis, this volume reproduces personal and previously unpublished photo albums of his work that he curated and commentated throughout his career.
A key figure in twentieth-century photography, Willy Ronis conveyed the poetic reality of postwar France in iconic black and white photographs. Influenced by Alfred Steiglitz and Ansel Adams, and amicable with his contemporary Magnum photographers, Ronis was the first French photographer to contribute to Life magazine. In the 1950s, MoMA curator Edward Steichen featured Ronis―along with Henri- Cartier Bresson, Robert Doisneau, and Brassaï― in the groundbreaking exhibitions The Family of Man and Five French Photographers .
Throughout his life, this powerhouse of humanist photography kept meticulous record of his work, curating each era into albums, which are reproduced here for the first time. Timeless photographs of postwar France and its inhabitants are accompanied by the photographer’s original observations and comments, framing the images within their technical and historical context. Photography historian Matthieu Rivallin’s critical perspective adds nuance to the photographer’s notes, and the ensemble is a groundbreaking and definitive reference on the myriad aspects of the artists’ immense career and is an essential volume for all photography aficionados.
72. The Misfits: Chronique d'un Tournage par les Photographes de Magnum
Magnum Photos had obtained the exclusive filming of John Huston's The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, from a screenplay by Arthur Miller. The film turned to Reno and the Nevada desert in the summer of 1960. Nine major photographers - Eve Arnold, Cornell Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt, Erich Hartmann, Ernst Haas, Inge Morath and Dennis Stock - were thus privileged witnesses of a film in the making. The Misfits was the last screen appearance of Marilyn before her death in 1962. "I wrote this feel good film for Marilyn. At the same time, I'm glad that it was done, because she dreamed of being taken seriously as an actress", said Arthur Miller in an interview with Serge Toubiana. Despite the failures and tragedies (the death of Clark Gable occurred fifteen days after the end of filming), The Misfits became a legendary film, and it is possible to trace the action thanks to Magnum photographs.