Written by world-renowned photographer, writer, and broadcaster Tom Ang, Photography lavishly celebrates the most iconic photographs and photographers of the past 200 years.
Tracing the history of photography from its origins in the 1800s to the digital age, Photography: The Definitive Visual History is the only book of its kind to give a comprehensive account of the people, the photographs, and the technologies that have shaped the history of photography.
An entertaining and comprehensive compendium packed with fascinating trivia, delightful oddities, and compelling stories that will captivate photographers of all levels and interests!
Dive into photography's rich heritage with A Brief History of Photography, an engaging almanac-style book that offers far more than just the typical and dry historical accounts of the genre. With more than 400 fascinating trivia entries and delightfully odd anecdotes, this book breathes life into the background details, stories, and personalities behind the cameras and processes we know and love.
Meticulously researched and written over two decades, this thoroughly entertaining and highly readable book provides an understanding of photography's evolution, from its beginnings going as far back as the 16th century all the way up to the modern day. Whether you’re dipping into the book for just a few minutes or sitting down for an afternoon of reading, you’ll explore the seminal cameras, lenses, and chemical processes that paved the way, as well as the visionary inventors, influential magazines, and significant photographers who made photography what it is today.
Profusely illustrated with both photographs and line drawings, A Brief History of Photography is an essential addition to any photographer's library. Whether you're a seasoned professional, an avid enthusiast, or simply someone who appreciates the magic of capturing images with your smartphone, this book offers an entertaining and educational look into the genre's rich history. The perfect gift—for either yourself or the photographer on your list—A Brief History of Photography is a must-have for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding and appreciation of this extraordinary art form.
Walter Benjamin's A Little History of Photography offers a fascinating glimpse into the early development of photography and its broader implications, making it as relevant today as when it was first published in 1931. In this essay, Benjamin—a philosopher and cultural critic—demonstrates remarkable foresight about the transformative power of photography. His declaration that "the illiterate of the future ... will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph" underscores his belief that the medium would become essential to modern communication and culture.
Beginning with the pioneering experiments of Louis Daguerre and Nicéphore Niépce, Benjamin traces photography's evolution through to the work of August Sander and Germaine Krull. But his essay goes beyond a simple history of the medium, exploring its artistic, societal, and political potential. In doing so, Benjamin anticipates his later and more famous work, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, where he would further explore the concept of “reproducibility” and its implications for art in the modern age.
A Little History of Photography remains a seminal text for understanding photography as more than just a technical innovation—it’s a tool for analyzing art, culture, and politics. Benjamin’s insights gave early credibility to the medium and its practitioners, shaping the critical frameworks that are still used today. This essay is a must-read for anyone interested in the philosophical and historical dimensions of photography.
From a delivery boy to one of the most important industrialists in American history, George Eastman's career developed in a particularly American way. The founder of Kodak died in 1932, and left his house to the University of Rochester. Since 1949 the site has operated as an international museum of photography and film, and today holds the largest collection of its kind in the world. The continually expanding photography collection contains over 400,000 images and negatives - among them the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams and others - as well as 23,000 cinema films, five million film stills, one of the most important silent film collections, technical equipment and a library with 40,000 books on photography and film. The George Eastman House is a pilgrimage site and a place of worship for researchers, photographers and collectors from all over the world.
This volume shows in chronological order the most impressive images and the most important developments in the art of light that is photography. It provides in its huge collection and themes a unique survey of the medium from its origins until now.
Since its first publication in 1937, this lucid and scholarly chronicle of the history of photography has been hailed as the classic work on the subject. No other book and no other author have managed to relate the aesthetic evolution of the art of photography to its technical innovations with such an absorbing combination of clarity, scholarship and enthusiasm. Through more than 300 works by such master photographers as William Henry Fox Talbot, Timothy O'Sullivan, Julia Margaret Cameron, Eugene Atget, Peter Henry Emerson, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Man Ray, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, Brassai, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harry Callahan, Minor White, Robert Frank and Diane Arbus, author Beaumont Newhall presents a fascinating, comprehensive study of the significant trends and developments in the medium since the first photographs were made in 1839. New selections added to the fifth edition include photographs made in color, from hand-tinted daguerreotypes of 1850 to turn-of-the-century autochromes by Edward Steichen, to works by contemporary masters such as Eliot Porter, Ernst Haas, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel Meyerowitz.Beaumont Newhall (1908-1993) was an influential curator, art historian, writer and photographer. In 1935 he became the Librarian at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1940, he became the first Director of MoMA's Photography Department. He served as Curator of the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House from 1948 to 1958, then as its Director from 1958 to 1971. While at the Eastman House, Newhall was responsible for amassing one of the greatest photographic collections in the world.
For over six years, photographer Michele Zousmer was welcomed into the Irish Traveller community while she photographed, built friendships, and learned about this unique group of people. The resulting book, Mis[s]Understood (Daylight Books, November, 2024), looks at the population as a whole but particularly focuses on the role of females within the culture. Zousmer captures the pride and tenacity of this marginalized community and the daily life struggles and discrimination that the Irish Traveller people endure in Ireland.
Drawn to the ineffable and the curious nature of the real, DeLuise works with a large-format 8x10 camera to produce luminous imagery that explores the visual complexities and everyday poetry of contemporary experience through portraiture, landscape, and still life. DeLuise is moved by the photograph’s uncanny ability to embody the depth and richness of human perception and experience. Her images reveal a great love of the medium, an embrace of light, circumstance, and the beauty and mystery of the quotidian. Emphasizing the etymological root of the word photography as drawing with light, and the collaborative nature of making photographs, The Hands of My Friends represents four decades of elegant and tender images.
For decades, photographer Kate Sterlin has made an artistic practice of examining the boundaries between individual, family, and community. In her first book, Still Life: Photographs & Love Stories, she uses intimacy in all its forms to tell a story of life, death, family, and race in America. Pairing lyrical photography with poetic writings, Still Life is a dreamlike narrative examining kinship and romance, friendships and tragedies, the complexities of Black identity, and personal and generational loss across a lifetime. It is a testament to one artist's commitment to creation and a profound blend of the personal and the universal.
A new photobook, by photographer Juan Brenner, explores the people and culture of the Guatemalan Highlands.
Genesis, published by Guest Editions, is the culmination of five years' work, in which Brenner documented the Highland area and people of his home country.
With a focus on youth culture in the region, Brenner captures a new generation of Guatemalans, the first to establish an intelligible dialogue with their contemporaries around the world.
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.
