Overseas deliveries  Please note that, as this is a heavy item, overseas postage will be charged at twice our standard rates.

Publisher's Description

Reflections in Black, the first comprehensive history of black photographers, is a groundbreaking pictorial collection of African American life. Featuring the work of undisputed masters such as James VanDerZee, Gordon Parks, and Carrie Mae Weems among dozens of others, this book is a refutation of the gross caricature of black life that many mainstream photographers have manifested by continually emphasizing poverty over family, despair over hope. Nearly 600 images offer rich, moving glimpses of everyday black life, from slavery to the Great Migration to contemporary suburban life, including rare antebellum daguerrotypes, photojournalism of the civil rights era, and multimedia portraits of middle-class families. A work so significant that it has the power to reconfigure our conception of American history itself, Reflections in Black demands to be included in every American family's library as an essential part of our heritage. A Los Angeles Times and Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2000, and a Good Morning, America best gift book of 2000.

Publisher: Norton

Size: 22.5 x 30.5"

368 pages

Publisher's Description

Overseas deliveries  Please note that, as this is a heavy item, overseas postage will be charged at twice our standard rates.

Publisher's Description

Named a best book of 2012—Modern Art Notes

“[O]ne of the most interesting, liveliest art history books I’ve read this year.”—Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes podcast 

Photographic manipulation is a familiar phenomenon in the digital era. What will come as a revelation to readers of this captivating, wide-ranging book is that nearly every type of manipulation we associate with Adobe’s now-ubiquitous Photoshop software was also part of photography’s predigital repertoire, from slimming waistlines and smoothing away wrinkles to adding people to (or removing them from) pictures, not to mention fabricating events that never took place. Indeed, the desire and determination to modify the camera image are as old as photography itself—only the methods have changed.

By tracing the history of manipulated photography from the earliest days of the medium to the release of Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, Mia Fineman offers a corrective to the dominant narrative of photography’s development, in which champions of photographic “purity,” such as Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, get all the glory, while devotees of manipulation, including Henry Peach Robinson, Edward Steichen, and John Heartfield, are treated as conspicuous anomalies. Among the techniques discussed on these pages—abundantly illustrated with works from an international array of public and private collections—are multiple exposure, combination printing, photomontage, composite portraiture, over-painting, hand coloring, and retouching. The resulting images are as diverse in style and motivation as they are in technique. Taking her argument beyond fine art into the realms of politics, journalism, fashion, entertainment, and advertising, Fineman demonstrates that the old adage “the camera does not lie” is one of photography’s great fictions.

Publisher: Yale University Press

Size:  9 1/2 x 10 1/2"

288 pages, 276 color & black & white illustations

Publisher's Description

The Lomography phenomenon shows that interest in and love for cheap, fun cameras has never been stronger. But the few plastic-lens models that are still manufactured are only the tip of the iceberg, with hundreds of amazing, exciting, weird and wonderful models widely available and at low prices.

This book is the first to look at every significant ‘people’s camera’ launched since Kodak’s Box Brownie brought cameras to the masses in 1908 and launched the photo revolution providing a fascinating insight into the tastes of previous generations.

Publisher: Ilex Press

Size:152 x 202 mm

176 pages, full colour throughout

Dec 12 out of stock - please only order if you are happy with 2013 delivery.

Publisher's Description

William Klein: Life is Good & Good for You in New York Trance Witness Revels is regarded as one of the most influential and groundbreaking photo books created in the last half century. Published in 1956, its visual energy captured the rough and tumble streets of New York like no artbook had before or has done since. Books on Books 5 reproduces in its entirety Klein’s brilliantly photographed and designed magnum opus. The American Art historian, Max Kozloff, contributes an essay called William Klein and the Radioactive Fifties.

Publisher: Errata Editions

Size: 9.5 x 7"

160 pages

Publisher's Price: £29.50

About the Books on Books series

Errata Editions’ Books on Books series is an on-going publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of those originals. Each in this series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or prohibitively expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study into the creation and meanings of these great works of art.

Each in the Books on Books series contains; illustrations of every page in the original photobook being featured; a new essay by established writers on photography composed specially for this series; production notes about the creation of the original edition; biography and bibliography information about each artist.

Publisher's Description

This pioneering study offers detailed analysis of the impact of photographys birth on the classical art form of painting. Photography divided opinion in its early years; some saw it as an invaluable tool in the enhancement of artistic reproductions, while many believed it to be too mechanical to be associated with the grand concept of Art. Covering portraiture, landscapes, nudes, tableaux vivants, and still lifes, this richly-illustrated volume showcases some of the earliest photographic works alongside paintings that challenged, resisted, or were influenced by the emergence of photography in the first half of the nineteenth century. Author Dominique de Font-Réaulx examines the birth of photography in this period, its first forays into the public domain, and the organizations set up to preserve and defend it against a raft of criticism. The influence of figures such as Daguerre (creator of the daguerreotype, and originally a painter himself), Nièpce, and Hippolyte Bayard is charted, as the idea of accurately replicating images seen by the human eye gradually became a very real possibility. Imperfections, for so long erased by painters seeking to capture an idealized version of the body, were laid bare by an invention that captured even the minutest details. Featuring an engaging text accompanied by a rich selection of illustrations, Painting and Photography explores not only photographys fight for recognition, but its impact on painters of the day, challenging them to devise new ways of capturing the human form.

Publisher: Flammarion

320 pages

Publisher's Description

The Bitter Years celebrates some of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century and provides a whole new insight into Edward Steichen’s impact on the history of documentary photography.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was still a vivid memory in 1962 and The Bitter Years was the title of a seminal exhibition held that year at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by Edward Steichen. 2012 marks its 50th anniversary. No proper catalogue was produced of the exhibition in 1962 so this book provides a unique opportunity to see all the photographs in a structure and sequence that reflect those devised by Steichen for the original show.

The exhibition featured more than 200 images by photographers who worked under the US Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1935–41 as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. The FSA, set up to combat rural poverty, included an ambitious photography project that launched many photographic careers, most notably those of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange.

The exhibition featured their work as well as that of ten other FSA photographers, including Ben Shahn, Carl Mydans and Arthur Rothstein. Their images are among the most remarkable in documentary photography – testimonies of a people in crisis, hit by the full force of economic turmoil and the effects of drought and dust storms.

This book is published in association with the Centre National de l’Audiovisuel and the Ministry of Culture in Luxembourg. It accompanies a permanent display at the Château d’Eau in Dudelange of the original exhibition, given by Steichen, who was born in Luxembourg. No proper catalogue was produced of the exhibition in 1962 so this book provides a unique opportunity to see all the photographs in a structure and sequence that reflect those devised by Steichen for the original show.

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Size: 305 x 240 mm

288 pages with 229 illustrations

Publisher's Description

An extravagant photographic history of photographers and their cameras.

Photographers celebrates the truly innovative men and women behind the camera; trailblazers in their field, who captured and immortalised our world.

This definitive edition shows rarely seen photographs of some of twentieth-century photography’s greatest names. From Henri Cartier-Bresson and Weegee, to David Bailey and Richard Avedon by way of the men and women of Life and Picture Post magazines as well as anonymous pressmen, they are all shown at work with their camera. Photographers shows photographers with their celebrity subjects, who range from the best-known Hollywood stars to players of sport, musicians and politicians. It also shows some of those same celebrities turning the camera back on to the photographer.

Photographers shows off the classic cameras used by the press, photojournalists and fashion photographers. The Leica, the Nikon, the Pentax, the Rolleiflex and Speed Graphic are among the cameras shown in use. A section on wartime photographs shows aerial cameras in action.

Amongst the photographers shown are: Antony Armstrong-Jones, Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Cecil Beaton, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Terence Donovan, Philippe Halsman, Bert Hardy, Annie Leibovitz, Tony Ray-Jones and Weegee. Stars include Sean Connery, Sammy Davis Jr, David Hemmings, Audrey Hepburn, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Peter Sellers, Terence Stamp, James Stewart, Robert Vaughn and John Wayne; and subjects such as the Beatles, Christine Keeler, Bobby and John F Kennedy, and shots on film sets.

An introductory essay by one of the world’s leading photographic specialists, Michael Pritchard, sets the photographers and their cameras within a wider context of the rapid growth in demand for photographs of celebrities from the 1890s and the development of celebrity culture associated with the rise of the movies from the 1920s.

Produced in association with Getty Images, one of the world’s leading collections of photography, Photographers reproduces each of the images to the highest standards supported by detailed captions.

Publisher: Real Art Press

Size: 300 x 250 mm

288 pages, 260 colour and b/w photographs

Publisher's Description

This is the first book to provide a full and coherent introduction to the photography of Victorian Scotland. There are many books which deal with particular elements and individual photographers, which show the interest in the subject, but no book draws everything together to provide an understanding of the multi-faceted nature of photography and the inter-relationship with other activities in the society of the time. This authoritative introduction, building upon these other publications, will provide a wide-ranging appreciation of early Scottish photography and in particular that Scottish photography was in the vanguard of many international trends. The material has been structured and the topics organised, with appropriate illustrations, as both a readable narrative and a foundation text for the subject.

Key Features

• Draws together a coherent narrative of the many different aspects of photography in Victorian Scotland
• Shows how photography was related to, and was influenced by, the society and culture of the time
• Highlights how Scotland and Scots were in the forefront of photography in Victorian times
• Uses the most apt illustrations to emphasise the quality of the image-making

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Size: 234 x 156 mm

224 pages, 130 illustrations

Publisher's description

The Dutch photobook is internationally recognized for its innovative and collaborative approach between photographers, printers, and designers. Dutch graphic designers have long worked at the forefront of their discipline, often crossing existing boundaries and exploring new territories—qualities that have become an integral part of contemporary Dutch photobook culture.

The current photobook publishing boom in the Netherlands springs from a long-standing tradition of excellence. This tradition precedes WWII, but the aftermath of the war marked a period of particularly close collaboration between photographers and designers. Their contributions led to such unique photography books as Ed van der Elsken’s Love on the Left Bank (1956) and Chili September by Koen Wessing (1973). Innovations such as the photo novel and the company photobook bloomed in the 1950s and 60s. Later, other genres emerged as part of the publishing landscape, including conceptual and documentary works.

The Dutch Photobook will feature selections from approximately one hundred historic, contemporary, and self-published photobook projects, including landmarks such as Hollandse taferelen by Hans Aarsman (1989), The Table of Power by Jacqueline Hassink (1996), Why Mister Why by Geert van Kesteren (2006), and Empty Bottles by Wassink Lundgren (2007).

Dutch photo historians Frits Gierstberg and Rik Suermondt contribute several texts on the history of the genre, the collaborative efforts between photographers and designers, and their inspiration and influences, to complement the special, high quality reproductions of photobooks. Award-winning designer Joost Grootens contributes unique charts and diagrams that bring all of these elements together, forming a visually unique map of the Dutch photobook.

Publisher: Aperture

Size: 11" x 9 1/2"

240 pages, 620 four-colour images

An array of hydralike tentacles surround a ragged white ring (the immediate aftermath of a drop of milk falling onto a table); a sensuous red shape being stretched out at one end by a dense black spot (a bullet, in fact, being shot through a candle flame). MIT scientist Harold Edgerton (1903-1990) devoted much of his career to revealing images like these--moments exponentially too brief for the human eye to ever glimpse in real time, which today are a familiar part of our visual lexicon. As an inventor and electrical engineer, "Doc" Edgerton created and patented a series of high-speed electric flash mechanisms that enabled his cameras to capture the tiniest slices of time, and produced a substantial body of work almost as a byproduct of his experiments and researches. In this respect, Edgerton's photographs can be seen as the surprising results of his adventures in mechanics, and as worthy successors to the earlier efforts of Eadweard Muybridge to divide up time and transcend the limits of the human eye. The literally arresting images collected in this survey of his career occupy a fascinating midground status between art and scientific artifact, and reveal Edgerton as a man magnificently obsessed with the paradoxes and wonders of motion.

Publisher - Thames & Hudson

Binding - Hardback

Publication Date - 2011

Size - 508 pages, 34 x 28 cm

 

This special and important photography book presents, for the first time, the very best contact sheets created by Magnum photographers. Contact sheets tell the truth behind a photograph. They unveil its process, and provide its back story. Was it the outcome of what a photographer had in mind from the outset? Did it emerge from a diligently worked sequence, or was the right shot down to pure serendipity a matter of being in the right place at the right time? This landmark publication provides the reader with a depth of understanding and a critical analysis of the story behind a photograph, the process of editing it, and the places and ways in which the selected photographs were used. For anyone with a deep appreciation of photography and a desire to understand what goes into creating iconic work, Magnum Contact Sheets will be regarded as the definitive volume. With 435 illustrations in total, 230 in colour, including over 3,600 frames on 139 contact sheets.

Received First Prize for the 2009 American Association of Museums Publications Design Competition in the category of Exhibition Catalogues.

Short-listed for the 2009 And/Or Photography Book Award sponsored by the Krazsna-Krausz Foundation.

Brought to Light invites readers to step back to a time when photography, X-rays, and movies were new, when forays into the world beneath the skin or the realm beyond our everyday vision captivated scientists and the public alike. In this book, accounts of scientific experimentation blend with stories of showmanship to reveal how developments in 19th-century technology could enlighten as well as frighten and amaze. Through a series of 200 vintage images—produced by photographers, scientists, and amateur inventors—this book ultimately traces the rise of popular science.

 

The images demonstrate early experiments with microscopes, telescopes, electricity and magnetism, motion studies, X-rays and radiation, and spirit photography. We learn how these pictures circulated among the public, whether through the press, world’s fairs, or theaters. What started out as scientific progress, however, often took on the trappings of magic and superstition, as photography was enlisted to offer visual evidence of clairvoyance, spirits, and other occult influences.

 

With beautifully reproduced plates and engaging narratives, this book embodies the aesthetic pleasures and excitement of the tale it tells.

Corey Keller is associate curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Jennifer Tucker is associate professor of History at Wesleyan University. Tom Gunning is professor of Art History at the University of Chicago.

Maren Gröning is Curator of the Photographic Collection at the Albertina Museum, Vienna.

Published Nov 2008
216 p., 9 1/2 x 11 3/4
207 color illus.
ISBN: 9780300142105

Publisher's price £35

Publisher's Description
The photograph found a home in the book before it won for itself a place on the gallery wall. Only a few years after the birth of photography, the publication of Henry Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature heralded a new genre in the history of the book, one in which the photograph was the primary vehicle of expression and communication, or stood in equal if sometimes conflicted partnership with the written word. In this book, practicing photographers and writers from different fields of scholarship share a range of new approaches to reading the photobook, developing fresh ways of understanding how meaning is shaped by an image’s interaction with its text and context and engaging with the visual, tactile and interactive experience of the photobook in all its dimensions. Through close studies of individual works, from the Victorian aestheticism and indulgent production of Talbot’s literary-inspired images to the fragile, disposable yet paradoxically enduring creations of Ruscha, the photobook in all its manifestations – from fetishised objet d’art to cheaply-printed booklet – is explored and its unique creative and cultural contributions celebrated.

International in scope and encompassing the history of the photobook until the present day, The Photobook demonstrates a variety of critical approaches accessible to academic scholars, the art world and the general reader alike.

Publisher: I. B. Tauris
Size: 234 x 156 mm
288 pages

Publisher's Description
The photograph found a home in the book before it won for itself a place on the gallery wall. Only a few years after the birth of photography, the publication of Henry Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature heralded a new genre in the history of the book, one in which the photograph was the primary vehicle of expression and communication, or stood in equal if sometimes conflicted partnership with the written word. In this book, practicing photographers and writers from different fields of scholarship share a range of new approaches to reading the photobook, developing fresh ways of understanding how meaning is shaped by an image’s interaction with its text and context and engaging with the visual, tactile and interactive experience of the photobook in all its dimensions. Through close studies of individual works, from the Victorian aestheticism and indulgent production of Talbot’s literary-inspired images to the fragile, disposable yet paradoxically enduring creations of Ruscha, the photobook in all its manifestations – from fetishised objet d’art to cheaply-printed booklet – is explored and its unique creative and cultural contributions celebrated.

International in scope and encompassing the history of the photobook until the present day, The Photobook demonstrates a variety of critical approaches accessible to academic scholars, the art world and the general reader alike.

Publisher: I. B. Tauris
Size: 234 x 156 mm
288 pages

Publisher's Description
This book was inspired by a centenary marking the first aerial photographs of an archaeological monument in Britain. Those photographs are inevitably of Stonehenge. How a single balloon flight and the resulting photographs fit into the context of the history of aerial photography is revealed in this fascinating new book. The main emphasis is on how aerial photography came to be such an important tool for archaeologists over the last 100 years. However, the beginnings and development of aerial photography within military and civilian contexts are explored in depth, especially the contribution of pioneering aeronauts and aviators such as Samuel Cody who designed man-lifting kites and J L B Templer who was crucial to the development of military ballooning. During the First World War the true potential of aerial photography as a reconnaissance technique was realised. The Second World War saw even greater resources invested in aerial photography and the training of skilled specialist staff to interpret the millions of photographs taken from aircraft. Nevertheless, after the First World War it was realised how something that had developed within the context of warfare could serve non-military uses, including archaeology. Between the wars, aerial photography had a considerable impact on our understanding of the past, particularly once the significance and extent of cropmarks became apparent - the airborne camera could record sites and landscapes that were often invisible from the ground. As examples of recent and current archaeological work are explored, it becomes apparent just how far we have progressed in the use of aerial photography to record and interpret past landscapes. The book includes nearly 200 colour and black and white photographs, ranging from images of early balloon exploits and intriguing photographs from the Boer War to reconnaissance views from the World Wars and modern aerial shots of archaeological sites.

Publisher: English Heritage
256 Pages, 190 illustrations

Publisher's Description
A growing appreciation of the photobook has inspired a flood of new scholarship and connoisseurship of the form—few as surprising and inspiring as The Latin American Photobook, the culmination of a four-year, cross-continental research effort led by Horacio Fernández, author of the seminal volume, Fotografia Pública. Compiled with the input of a committee of researchers, scholars, and photographers, including Marcelo Brodsky, Iatã Cannabrava, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, and Martin Parr, The Latin American Photobook presents one hundred and fifty volumes from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela.

The Latin American Photobook begins with the 1920s and continues up to today, providing revelatory perspectives on the under-charted history of Latin American photography, and featuring work by great figures such as Claudia Andujar, Barbara Brändli, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Horacio Coppola, Paz Errázuriz, Graciela Iturbide, Sara Facio, Paolo Gasparini, Daniel González, Boris Kossoy, Sergio Larrain, and many others. The book is divided into thematic sections such as The City, Conceptual Art and Photography, and Photography and Literature, a category uniquely important to Latin America. Fernandez’s texts, exhaustively researched and richly illustrated, offer insight not only on each individual title and photographer, but on the multivalent social, political, and artistic histories of the region as well. This book is an unparalleled resource for those interested in Latin American photography or in discovering these here-to-fore unknown gems in the history of the photobook at large.

You can view images from this book on the Aperture website.

Publisher: Aperture
Size: 12 x 9"
256 pages, ca. 350 four-colour images

Publisher's Description
The art of Polaroid – the first presentation of the legendary instant film‘s fascinating range of materials and techniques While the world evaporates into the digital, the anachronistic Polaroid snapshot dominates media and advertising. The recent sale of the photography collection owned by Polaroid’s inventor Edwin Land to the Viennese photography museum WestLicht marks an art-market trend toward the analog. Beginning in the sixties, Polaroid supplied artists around the world, from Ansel Adams to Andy Warhol, with each one of the imperium’s latest products. In return, 4,400 works by 800 photographers found their way into the company’s International Collection at their European headquarters near Frankfurt am Main. In 2008, when the last instant film factory was rescued from demolition by the company Impossible, the founder’s commitment to collecting could be carried on as well. This publication features selected Polaroid masterpieces and new Impossible instant photography by contemporary artists such as Stefanie Schneider and Nobuyoshi Araki.

You can view images from this book on the Hatje Cantz.

Publisher: Hatje Cantz
Size: 253 x 325 mm
192 pages, 230 colour illustrations

Publisher's Description
In Stieglitz: A Beginning Light, Katherine Hoffman presented an account of the early years of the career of Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) and of his European roots. Now, she offers a compelling portrait of his life and art from 1915 to 1946, focusing on his American works, issues of identity, and the rise of modernism in America.

Hoffman explores Stieglitz's roles as photographer, editor, writer, and gallery director; how they intersected with his personal life — including his marriage to artist Georgia O'Keeffe — and his place in the cultural milieu of the 20th century. Excerpts from previously unpublished correspondence between Stieglitz and O'Keeffe reveal the fervor and complexity of their relationship as well as his passion for photography and modern art and his ongoing struggle to have photography recognized as an established artistic medium. These letters, along with his work as an editor and writer of short articles, illuminate Stieglitz's literary side, thus giving a new perspective on his total oeuvre.

Generously illustrated with 300 images, this intriguing, beautifully written book separates the photographer's true personality from the myths surrounding him and highlights his lasting legacy: the works he left behind.

Publisher: Yale University Press
Size: 8 1/2 x 10 1/2"
400 pages, 200 b/w + 80 colour illustrations

Publisher's Description
In a work of spectacular imagination and remarkable synthesis, Robert Crawford celebrates St Andrews, the first town in the English-speaking world to have its people, buildings and natural environment thoroughly documented through photography. The Beginning and the End of the World tells the stories of several pioneering Scottish photographers. Yet it also places them within the extraordinary intellectual life of an eccentric society rich in sometimes apocalyptically-minded Victorian inventors and authors whose work has had an international impact.

Robert Crawford is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at St Andrews University. He received his MA from Glasgow University and his DPhil from Oxford. He is a founding Fellow of the English Association and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has taught at the universities of Oxford and Glasgow, and has been at St Andrews since 1989.

'A work of spectacular imagination and remarkable synthesis,' - British Photographic History

'The kind of intellectually fleet-footed work only a poet and critic could produce' - Scotland on Sunday

Publisher: Birlinn
272 pages