By Ilisa Barbash, Molly Rogers, and Deborah Willis. Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr
Publisher : Aperture
2020 | 488 pages
To Make Their Own Way in the World is a profound consideration of some of the most challenging images in the history of photography: fifteen daguerreotypes of Alfred, Delia, Drana, Fassena, Jack, Jem, and Renty-men and women of African descent who were enslaved in South Carolina.
Photographed by Joseph T. Zealy for Harvard professor Louis Agassiz in 1850, they were rediscovered at Harvard's Peabody Museum in 1976. This groundbreaking multidisciplinary volume features essays by prominent scholars who explore such topics as the identities of the people depicted in the daguerreotypes, the close relationship between photography and race, and visual narratives of slavery and its lasting effects. With over two hundred illustrations, including new photography by Carrie Mae Weems, this book frames the Zealy daguerreotypes as works of urgent engagement.
American photographers documented and defined the twentieth century in a remarkable array of images, the style and content of which evolved dramatically over the course of the century. In Disappearing Witness, photographer and art historian Gretchen Garner chronicles this transformation, from the introduction of the 35-millimeter camera in the 1920s to the digital photography of today. Accompanied by over 125 key works in the history of photography—fine-art, documentary, and editorial—her thoughtful and enlightening discussion traces American photography's aesthetic, commercial, and technological changes, as the medium's primary role of spontaneous witness gradually gave way to contrived arrangement and artistic invention. Garner discusses direct witness as the dominant paradigm for American photographers from the 1920s to the 1960s. During these decades, photographers saw their medium primarily as a vehicle for truthful description and sometimes as a weapon against social injustice. In the 1960s, however, photographic practice and its cultural significance shifted to reflect more personal, idiosyncratic, and staged visions of reality—a trend, Garner notes, that has intensified with digital photography. The major portion of the book is devoted to post-1960s work, exploring how the changes have affected portraiture, documentary, landscape, still life, fashion, and the new genre of self-imagery. In documenting this transformation in American photography, Disappearing Witness forcefully rethinks the history of photography itself.
In 1909 the French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn launched a monumentally ambitious project: to produce a color photographic record of human life on Earth. An internationalist and pacifist, Kahn believed that he could use the new autochrome--the world's first portable, true-color photographic process--to create a global photographic archive that would promote cross-cultural understanding and peace. Over the next twenty years, he sent a group of photographers to more than fifty countries around the world, amassing more than 72,000 images. Until recently his collection was all but forgotten. Now, a century after he began his "Archives of the Planet" project, this book--richly illustrated in color throughout--and the BBC series it follows are bringing Kahn's dazzling early twentieth-century pictures to a wide audience for the first time, and putting color into what we usually think of as a monochrome world.
Kahn's photographers captured times, places, and people we simply do not expect to see in color photographs. They documented age-old cultures on the brink of being changed forever by war, modernization, and Westernization, recording the last years of Ireland's traditional Celtic villages and the late days of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. They photographed First World War soldiers in their trenches as well as the postwar celebrations in London. In the course of their travels, they also took the earliest color photographs in countries as varied as Vietnam and Brazil, Mongolia and Norway, Benin and the United States.
After being financially ruined in the Great Depression, Kahn was forced to bring his project to a premature end, but today his collection of early color photographs is recognized as one of the world's most important. The Dawn of the Color Photograph makes it easy to see why.
The main stem of the Colorado River flows from the Colorado Rocky Mountains to the Mexico border. And while it provides water for almost 40 million people and irrigates 5.5 million acres of farmland throughout the American West, it is also one of the most over-allocated, highly controlled, and endangered rivers. Through extensive research of the historical as well as current day contextual factors and implications, photographer Debbie Bentley presents a comprehensive documentation of the river, its 16 dams, the reservoirs, and people in its path in her new book, Dammed: Birth to Death of the Colorado River (Daylight Books).
Paul Hart’s latest body of work Fragile (2020-23) is a personal reflection on nature and was made in the landscape close to his home in England. The aesthetic is rooted in the notion of a heightened awareness of the natural world, of both a physical engagement and spiritual connection to the land. Whilst becoming absorbed in this instinctual, visceral approach, Hart has become acutely aware of both the physical beauty and delicate vulnerability of these natural forms. Although concerns of the environment and sustainability are present throughout, Fragile departs from the central study of place usually associated with his work, to evoke a more abstract ethereal sensibility.
Der Greif and Shirin Neshat put out an open call, inspired by the line „I am a common pain, scream me“ from Ahmad Shamlou‘s poem “Common Love”, printed on the inner cover of this issue.
In a poignant exploration of humanity, Scot Sothern’s latest project, LOOK AT ME, turns a provocative lens on homelessness, Hollywood tourism, and the unseen struggles of everyday Americans. Through the lens of alternative street photography, Sothern positions himself as a modern-day vagabond, echoing the profiles of those he encounters on his odyssey, coming face to face with humankind, capturing the unfiltered essence of life at its most candid.
God’s Promises Mean Everything spans seven years in the life of Derek, a homeless hostel resident who lives in Teesside in the North East of England – an area that has a rich industrial history and was formerly a major iron and steel hub. After being granted permission by the hostel, he visited Derek 1-2 times a month – to drop off food or hang out, talk or just listen to music. Through these visits, this time spent in each others’ company became essential to the work and allowed a unique fully collaborative project to develop.
Dominoes is a unique and vibrant mosaic of the lives that float in and around a particular corner of Hackney in London’s East End. The book is populated by intimate pictures of people who have experienced addiction and pain as well as the deep joys of the community of which they are a part. Gillett Square was derelict and underdeveloped for years until, in the 1990s it became an experiment in urban regeneration. Just like the dominoes that are now played in the square, those lives are often precarious.
Alongside an exploration of Bayard’s decades-long career and lasting impact, Hippolyte Bayard and the
Invention of Photography (J. Paul Getty Museum, $65) presents—for the first time in print—some of the earliest
photographs in existence. Among the Getty Museum’s rarest and most treasured photographic holdings is an
album containing nearly 200 images, 145 of those by or attributed to Bayard. Few of these prints have ever
been seen in person due to the extreme light sensitivity of Bayard’s experimental processes, making this an
essential reference for scholars and photography enthusiasts alike.
For seven years, American photographer Barbara Peacock crisscrossed the United States photographing people in the spaces they defined as their bedrooms. The bedroom is an inherently personal space where humans are perhaps at their most vulnerable. Whether a room in a house, a camper, or an outdoor space, Peacock presents a body of work that invites the viewer to consider the stories we each carry, and how those unify us all.
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