714British 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.'
160A 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."
198Liu 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.
198In 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.
516One 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.
We're delighted that Big Heart, Strong Hands will shortly be back in stock. We published the book in late January this year and within eight weeks it was sold out. Unfortunately Covid delayed our reprint but we can now announce that we expect
to be able to begin shipping orders out to customers from December 18th.
For the past 3 years, photographer Tim Franco based in Seoul, South Korea has been documenting the incredible tales of women and men fleeing the North Korean dictatorship in search of another life. This exclusive project composed of portraits and testimonies of the defectors, as well as landscapes retracing the roads of their exile will be published as a photo book by the Magenta Foundation.
I'm a portrait, travel and documentary photographer based in Denver, Colorado. I travel overseas extensively in pursuit of images that reflect local cultures and people. My most recent project, We Are Santa, was produced a bit closer to home, specifically in photo shoots in eight cities across the United States.
For thirty years, photographer Carole Glauber pointed her Brownie Hawkeye camera at her children as they did what children do -- played outside with the hose, dug in the sand, twirled a hula hoop and as time goes by have a bar mitzvah, graduate from high school, marry. Presented chronologically in the book, the photographs capture the two boys growing up before the viewer's eyes. But the utilization of the Brownie year after year producing images with the camera's signature, ephemeral look, provides a consistent emotional content overlay, even as the sons change and mature.
Charcoal Press is pleased to announce The Locusts, the first major monograph by photographer and publisher Jesse Lenz. After a few years of living and traveling North American in an airstream with his family, Lenz settled down in a farm in rural Ohio. He began photographing his children as they ran wild in fields, built forts in the attic, and fell asleep surrounded by lightsabers and superheroes.
Inspired by the Polaroid SX-70 instant photographs taken by the great Greek American artist, Lucas Samaras, the well-known photographer Harvey Stein, in the mid 1970's bought an SX-70 camera and for the rest of that decade used it to shoot in his signature style, intimate portraits of strangers in the street. This in addition to his major work of street photography in which he simultaneously confronts and collaborates with strangers using his two Leica M-4 film cameras.
India is a strange country. You come back without being fully aware of what you really saw. Everything that seems real is not. And everything that appears as imbued with supernatural well and truly exists. This doubtful situation is in fact the uncertainty of street photography: everything goes too fast, constantly appears and disappears in the viewfinder as visions we try to capture, following the impulses of our unconscious. Nothing is more beautiful than the apparent banality, behind which we sometimes discover another world, invisible if we don't take the time to look at it, to open our eyes to detect its mysteries and symbols that move out of the shadows into the limelight for a moment, before vanishing.
No superhero is a series of work by the acclaimed Scandinavian artist, Ole Marius Joergensen. The work features meticulously staged, cinematic photographs that depict seemingly ordinary situations which are then infused with a juxtaposed narrative. This unlocks an unexpected and unique world that feels both old and new.
Of all the firearms in the world owned by private citizens for non-military purposes, half are in the United States. Numerically they exceed the country’s population: 393 million for 372 million people. This is no coincidence, nor a matter of market alone: but of tradition and Constitutional guarantee. It is the history of the Second Amendment, ratified in 1791 to reassure the inhabitants of the newly independent territories. Two hundred and fifty years later, it is still entrenched in all aspects of American life. This book frames its current status through what are seen as four fundamental American values: Family, Freedom, Passion, Style.
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