Articles / Best-Ofs

Destino, meaning "destination" or "destiny" in Spanish, tells the story of undocumented Central American migrants and their perilous journey by freight train across Mexico, as they attempt to enter the United States in pursuit of a better life. In Destino, Michelle Frankfurter seeks to capture the experience of people who struggle to control their own destiny when confronted by extreme circumstances. Destino is both a social commentary on one of the biggest global issues of our times and an epic adventure tale. It conveys the experience of a generation of exiles, driven by poverty and the dysfunction of failed states, traveling across a landscape that has become increasingly dangerous, heading towards a precarious future as a last resort. Frankfurter takes the viewer beyond what is expected. She humanizes the real-life individuals behind the polarizing political debate and draws attention to the underlying causes behind this migration. She wants the viewer to see and feel the humanity of these people who seek no more than the security and prosperity that they imagine we live with in the United States.

One Voice weaves a compelling narrative of man's resolve and spirit when confronted with the loss of nation, family, and identity. Are people defined by their territory or by the culture they construct in their new lives? Photographed in refugee settlements and nomadic regions of India, the large-format portraits of One Voice represent a cross-section of Tibetan exile society; nomads, tradesman, writers, and revolutionaries. Intertwined with the photographic narrative are insights by Tibetan and Western writers, whose poetry and essays convey the exile experience. Ultimately, the Tibetan story is a universal one.

First major retrospective on photographer Stephan Vanfleteren Includes previously unpublished work with expansive personal reflections and stories from three decades of encounters and photography Stephan Vanfleteren (1969) is best known for his probing black and white portraits, but in recent decades he has also produced a wide range of documentary, artistic and personal work. From street photography in global cities like New York to the genocide in Rwanda, from building fronts and shop windows to the mystical landscapes of the Atlantic Wall, from still lifes to penetrating portraits. To mark Vanfleteren's 50th birthday, he is celebrating with a major retrospective which will occupy the entire Antwerp Museum of Photography (FOMU, 25 October 2019 - 1 March 2020) and with this publication Present, in which he looks back over his fascinating career. "I was there, I was present", says the photographer, who always feels himself to be both accomplice and witness. For Present, Vanfleteren has taken a generous selection of more than 400 photos from his ample archive, some of which have become iconic images while others have never been published before. In extensive texts, he reflects on how his own work and photography as a genre have evolved over the past decades and links these developments with a number of major social changes. This superbly illustrated book is an impressive overview of Vanfleteren's work and offers a comprehensive picture of him as a photographer, as an artist and, above all, as a human being living life with empathy, wonder and curiosity.

"Schapiro and Baldwin showed the possibility of what strong writing and photography could achieve in their time. In ours, we'd do well to look to them." - The Guardian, London

First published in 1963, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time stabbed at the heart of America's so-called "Negro problem." As remarkable for its masterful prose as for its frank and personal account of the black experience in the United States, it is considered one of the most passionate and influential explorations of 1960s race relations, weaving thematic threads of love, faith, and family into a candid assault on the hypocrisy of the "land of the free."

Now, James Baldwin's rich, raw, and ever relevant prose is reprinted with more than 100 photographs from Steve Schapiro, who traveled the American South with Baldwin for Life magazine. The encounter thrust Schapiro into the thick of the movement, allowing for vital, often iconic, images both of civil rights leaders-including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Jerome Smith-and such landmark events as the March on Washington and the Selma March.

Rounding out the edition are Schapiro's stories from the field, an original introduction by civil rights legend and U.S. Congressman John Lewis, captions by Marcia Davis of The Washington Post, and an essay by Gloria Baldwin Karefa-Smart, who was with her brother James in Sierra Leone when he started to work on the story. The result is a remarkable visual and textual record of one of the most important and enduring struggles of the American experience.