Monographs & Art Books / Z

Here, French photographer Patrick Zachmann (born 1955), who has documented shifts in Chinese culture since the early 1980s, creates a portrait of the country in both color and black and white, tracing transformations of urban space and the chasms between urban and rural life.

British photographer Tariq Zaidi presents a fashion subculture of Kinshasa & Brazzaville: La Sape, Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes ("Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People"). Its followers are known as 'Sapeurs' ('Sapeuses' for women). Most have ordinary day jobs as taxi-drivers, tailors and gardeners, but as soon as they clock off they transform themselves into debonair dandies. Sashaying through the streets they are treated like rock stars - turning heads, bringing 'joie de vivre' to their communities and defying their circumstances.

Traditionally passed down through the male line, many Congolese women and their children have recently begun donning designer suits. As Papa Wemba (1949-2016, Congolese singer and fashion icon who popularized Sape) once said: "White people invented the clothes, but we make an art of it."

'Kill, rape, control' is the motto of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang (MS-13). The street gang, along with its rival, Barrio 18, has become infamous across Central and North America for its brutal violence and deep control of communities. Particularly well established in El Salvador, both gangs have developed extensive and sophisticated networks of extortion and domination across the region.

Photographer Tariq Zaidi spent three years documenting and traveling across El Salvador with unprecedented access to prisons and holding cells across the country providing a rare look inside the country’s penal system. With the help of the police force, was also able to document the state’s war against the gangs.

A journey through the darker reaches of humankind, Apocalypsis is a record of loss, grief, injustice, violence and death through war in Iraq, the Congo, Darfur, Colombia, Afghanistan and Burma. Photographer Alvaro Ybarra Zavala aims to bring the realities of these regions into our daily lives, and to confront us with what he describes as "the orgy of desperation, blood and despair which human beings are capable of inflicting upon their fellows"; he undertakes to record these darker episodes in our recent history to show that they are omnipresent realities.

"People are moved by what they see," writes Zavala. "They respond emotionally, intellectually and morally. All we have is each other. We create our own problems, and it is up to us to solve them. I want this project to become a part of our visual history, to enter our collective memory and our collective conscience. I hope it will serve to remind us that history's deepest tragedies concern not the great leaders who set events in motion but the countless ordinary people who are caught up in those events and torn apart by their remorseless fury."

Zbierski’s aim is to draw out what he sees as an underlying structure to human existence – something unchanged and unchanging. He believes that this lies within the emotions, and in our traditions of behaviour and ritual – elements shared across all cultures.

"I chose photography because it lets me get very close to people." -- Piotr Zbierski

Liu Zheng (born 1969) is one of the few Chinese photographers whose work has reached the West. The exhibition of his extensive series The Chinese at ICP in New York in 2004 and the accompanying publication indicated he was working on the borders between the documentary tradition and the extended portrait school of August Sander. His background on the Workers’ Daily suggests his grounding as a photojournalist.

Yet Liu Zheng’s vision does not echo the common view of China, characterized by anonymity in the sheer mass of the population, or by the momentum of industry. Frequently the subjects of his portraits are those on the fringes of Chinese society. Dream Shock brings us to another space that exists in the mind itself. Some of the characters, such as a Peking Opera singer, may be half-familiar, but the historical references to occupation and the sexual explicitness take us into unprecedented territory.

In 1994, Chinese artist Liu Zheng conceived of an ambitious photographic project called The Chinese, which occupied him for seven years and carried him throughout China. Inspired by the examples of August Sander and Diane Arbus, he has captured a people and country in a unique time of great flux, providing a startling vision of the deep-rooted historical forces and cultural attitudes that continue to shape China and its people. Liu seeks out moments in which archetypal Chinese characters are encountered in extreme and unexpected situations.

His photographs are divided among a number of topics which betray a dark vision, albeit one that is laced with mordant humor. His main subjects to date have included street eccentrics, homeless children, transvestite performers, provincial drug traffickers, coal miners, Buddhist monks, prison inmates, Taoist priests, waxwork figures in historical museums, and the dead and dying. This is the first monograph of his work to appear outside of China and accompanies Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, a major exhibition at the International Center of Photography, New York.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) remains one of the most catastrophic and complicated political movements of the twentieth century. Almost no visual documentation of the period exists and that which does is biased due to government control over media, arts and cultural institutions. Red-Color News Soldier is a controversial visual record of an infamous, misunderstood period of modern history that has been largely hidden from the public eye, both within China and abroad. Li Zhensheng (b.1940) - a photo journalist living in the northern Chinese province of Heilongjiang - managed, at great personal risk, to hide and preserve for decades over 20,000 stills. As a party-approved photographer for The Heilongjiang Daily , he had been granted unusual access to capture events during the Cultural Revolution. This account has remained unseen until now, except for some eight photographs that were released for publication in 1987. Red-Color News Soldier includes over 400 photographs and a running diary of Li's experience. The images are powerful representations of the turbulent period, including photographs of unruly Red Guard rallies and relentless public denunciations and Mao's rural re-education centres, as well as portraits prominent participants in the Cultural Revolution. Jonathan Spence, Yale Professor and pre-eminient historian of modern China, presents a rigorous introduction. In it, he states: 'Li was tracking human tragedies and personal foibles with a precision that was to create an enduring legacy not only for his contemporaries but for the generations of his countrymen then unborn. As Westerners confront the multiplicity of his images, they too can come to understand something of the agonizing paradoxes that lay at the centre of this protracted human disaster.' This book excels as a volume of both compelling photography and riveting historical record. It is truly unique - in terms of both its artefactual value and its deconstruction - and indispensable for anyone interested in modern Chinese history or the powerful cultural role of photojournalism.

MOMENTO brings together the work of established and well regarded US-born Canadian documentary photographer George S Zimbel. The book is set to coincide with the release of the documentary film of his life’s work, Zimbelism.

George S Zimbel is a key figure in the last generation of photographers faithful to the legacy of the Photo League, who in the 1950s imbued their pictures with their personal commitment towards the people and the social landscapes they documented.

Having studied at Columbia University, Zimbel honed his craft working in New York City with Photo League members such as John Ebstel and Garry Winogrand, as well as under Alexy Brodovitch, providing him the opportunity to work for national magazines such as Look, The New York Times, Redbook, Parents and Architectural Forum. Parallel to his assignments, Zimbel continued his own photographic practice, which included a diverse range of subjects from Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch to politicians such as Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and Truman.

Zimbel continues to refuse the manipulation of his images or any computer intervention, making him one of the few photographers to maintain this commitment to the purity of the medium.

Zimbel’s work can be seen in a number of prestigious collections worldwide including the National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, The International Center of Photography and Musée National d’Histoire d’art de Luxembourg.

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.

Capturing an essence of the ancient and surreal is what drives Chiara Zonca's photography of other-worldly landscapes. Inspired by dramatic terrain and open spaces, Zonca has a deep connection with the sights that she captures. This collection, through warm, pastel tones, has been captured in the Atacama desert of Chile and the Bolivian Altiplano. Those are very extreme and harsh environments with high elevation and lack of water resources. Very few animals and plants are present due to the land's arid nature and that enhances the overall feeling of being in a deserted expanse with no sights or sounds.

The images evoke a sense of immersion into the places Zonca finds herself in and of the freedom and sense of space these desolate, yet visually striking, landscapes provide.