History Books / S

Capturing daily life in every corner of the world, this sumptuous collection of great street photography shows the very best of the genre. From pre-war gelatin silver prints to 21st-century digital images, from documentary to abstract, from New York's Central Park to a mountain city in Mongolia, these photographs reveal the many ways street photography moves, informs, and excites us. The book includes work by the likes of Margaret Bourke-White, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Joel Meyerowitz, Gordon Parks, André Kertész, Garry Winogrand, Roger Mayne, and other masters of street photography who pushed the genre's boundaries and continue to innovate today. Each exquisitely reproduced photograph is presented on a double-page spread and accompanied by an informative text. David Gibson's insightful introduction traces the history of street photography, reflects on its broad appeal, and looks toward the future of the genre.

The form of the photo book allows for narrative meaning to arise from the images, and as such, has been used by many of the most preeminent photographers to present and communicate their works. In Spain particularly, the photo book is colored by a complex national history: the Civil War, the transition to democracy, the social and cultural role of the peasantry and the evolving role of women have all been significantly documented via the photo book. The relationship of Spanish culture and photography to the photo book is comprehensively explored in this volume, published to accompany an exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. This volume collects the work of not only well-known photographers such as José Ortiz Echagüe, Alfonso, Francesc Català-Roca, Ramón Masats, Xavier Miserachs, Francisco Ontañón and Colita, but also relatively unknown figures, such as Antonio Cánovas, the collective work of Misiones Pedagógicas (Teaching Missions), José Compte, Enrique Palazuelo, Luis Acosta Moro and Salvador Costa. Text by Horacio Fernández explains the cultural significance of these artists' works and further delves into the complex relationship between the Spanish photo book and literature.

Today's photography is part of our own cultural moment, but it also arises from artistic traditions of the past. Seduced by Art looks at the effects of art and its history on the creation of photographs, tracing continuities in aims, visual style, and technical experimentation. This sumptuous book shows how photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron sought to elevate the status of their work by referencing Old Masters. Similarly, contemporary practitioners look to their photographic predecessors, as well as art history, for inspiration. Among the many photographers featured are Ori Gersht, Luc Delahaye, Thomas Struth, Tom Hunter, and Helen Chadwick, and paintings from Caravaggio, Zurbarán, Delacroix, Ingres, Constable, and others. Each chapter takes a genre—portraiture, the nude, still life, and landscape—and discusses the challenges that each poses for photographers. Interviews with Tina Barney, Rineke Dijkstra, Richard Billingham, Richard Learoyd, Sarah Jones, and Maisie Maud Broadhead focus in-depth on contemporary working practices.

Seizing the Light: A Social History of Photography provides a thought-provoking, accurate, and accessible introduction to the photographic arts for all readers. With stunning images and commentary by hundreds of international artists, the text clearly and concisely provides the building blocks necessary to critically explore photographic history from the photographers' eye, an aesthetic point of view.

The advent of the Kodak camera in 1888 made photography accessible to amateurs as well as to professionals. Artists were not immune to its allure, and many began experimenting with the camera as a means of observing the world and capturing their own images of it. Snapshot investigates seven Post-Impressionist painters and printmakers: Pierre Bonnard, George Hendrik Breitner, Maurice Denis, Henri Evenepoel, Henri Rivière, Félix Vallotton, and Edouard Vuillard. Although celebrated for their works on canvas and paper, these artists also made many personal and informal snapshots. Depicting interiors, city streets, nudes, and portraits, these photographs were kept private and never exhibited. As a result, most have never been seen by the public. Juxtaposing personal photographs with related paintings and prints by these Post-Impressionist artists, Snapshot offers a new perspective on early photography and on the synthesis of painting, printmaking, and photography at the end of the 19th century.

Street photography is perhaps the best-loved and most widely known of all photographic genres, with names like Cartier-Bresson, Brassai and Doisneau familiar even to those with a fleeting knowledge of the medium. Yet what exactly is street photography? From what viewpoint does it present its subjects, and how does this viewpoint differ from that of documentary photography? Looking closely at the work Atget, Kertesz, Bovis, Rene-Jacques, Brassai, Doisneau, Cartier- Bresson and more, this elegantly written book unpicks Parisian street photography's complex relationship with parallel literary trends -- from Baudelaire to Soupault -- as well as its more evident affinity with Impressionist art. Street Photography reveals the genre to be poetic, even "picturesque," looking not to the type but to the individual, not to the reality of the street but to its "romance."