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.
In the ongoing evolution of my artistic journey, I find myself engaged in a profound process of self-examination, mental health and sadness - using the camera to explore the essence of who I am and my connection to the art of photography. My roots lie in a small town. Within this space, I grappled with a pervasive sense of loneliness that transcended both the physical boundaries and the emotional confines of my surroundings. Even in the company of others, I felt a profound solitude that echoed within and beyond those walls.
'Work in Progress' is a powerful exploration of Peter Essick's four-year journey capturing aerial photographs of construction sites across the Atlanta Metro area. This body of work offers a dynamic portrayal of human-altered landscapes, where the clash between nature and man-made structures creates a stunning visual narrative. Essick's unique perspective, gained through low-level drone flights, has revealed the ever-changing beauty of construction sites—spaces that are often overlooked or dismissed as mundane.
Aperture announces the release of Robert Frank:
The Americans, marking the centennial of Frank’s birth, and concurrent with a major
exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art this fall. First published in
France in 1958 and then in the US in 1959, Robert Frank: The Americans is one of the
most influential and enduring works of American photography.
When Caroline Furneaux’s father Colin died suddenly in 2011, she discovered an archive of 35mm slides that he had shot during the 1960s. They were a beguiling series of beautiful women photographed in idyllic locations, mostly in Sweden, where he was working and living. It was during this time that he had first met Caroline’s Swedish mother, Barbro, yet hardly any of the photographs were of her.
'Glendalis' is a vivid narrative centered around the youngest daughter of a family, revealing intimate and universal human experiences and a poignant glimpse into the vibrant life of a lower-middle-class family, showcasing resilience, love, and the universal human experience. The photographs resonate deeply, portraying the spirit of Glendalis as she grows from a fierce child into a determined young woman.
Street Walker saunters stylishly with never-before-seen eye-popping photographs spiced with iconic classics from the ‘70s and ‘80s USA cultural hotspots: New York City, San Francisco, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Fire Island, Miami Beach, and more.
For over 25 years, New Yorker E.A. KAHANE has photographed the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from her third-floor apartment window on Central Park West at 64th Street. From this special vantage point, Kahane is able to capture with her camera an unrestricted view of the parade as it passes by her window. Her bold and beautiful images document every aspect of the festivities, including the clowns, Broadway stars, floats, marching bands, cheerleaders, cheering spectators, and the biggest stars of them all - the larger-than-life balloons of our favorite characters from TV and film.
In Orange Blossom Trail, American writer George Saunders and American photographer Joshua Lutz offer an alternately poetic and searing evocation of the cruelty and tender beauty of contemporary American life.
Lutz and Saunders first met on a magazine assignment, where they discovered a shared interest in both the psychological and material conditions of the laboring individual and the Buddhist teachings of attachment and the sacredness of existence.
Acclaimed photographer and Swarthmore College art professor Ron Tarver corrects the
American cowboy narrative with The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America (George F.
Thompson Publishing, 2024). From ranches to city streets, Tarver’s photographs reveal the
beauty, romance, and visual poetry of Black cowboys throughout the country.
