Tips & Technique Books / Z

In Jenny Sampson's follow-up monograph to Skaters (Daylight, 2017) featuring her acclaimed collection of tintype portraits of male and female skateboarders, the American photographer, who is based in Berkeley, California, chose to focus exclusively on female skateboarders. Although historically a male-dominated sport, there have always been girls in the skateboarding landscape. By turning her lens on these fearless females in skate parks and at events all over California, Washington and Oregon, Sampson hopes Skater Girls (Daylight, September, 2020) will increase visibility and celebrate these girls and non-binary people, young and older, who have been breaking down this gender wall with their skater girl power.

In good times and bad, our best friends are there for support, therapy, and unconditional love. Especially now -- where would we be without our dogs? Although the so-called modernists of Palm Springs embrace the serenity of life in post-WWII America, the sometimes-harsh realities of contemporary life are impossible to ignore. These mid-twentieth-century reenactors are often transplants, enjoying the Palm Springs lifestyle with their dogs and friends as their chosen family.

This book offers a unique introduction to the Zen path through words, photos and poetry. More than a guidebook, it provides a space for reflection on our current situation and talks about Zen in relation to both photography and the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

Award-winning photographer Dotan Saguy first met the Reis family, Mormons from Brazil, the day they arrived in Los Angeles in a converted yellow school bus they call home with their three children ages 10, 5 and 2. They had come to the United States two years prior to chase the American Dream. While they quickly found financial footing in the US and acquired all the material things they wanted, they were still not happy. Inspired by a YouTube video by a Brazilian artist who quit everything to travel and sell his art, they decided to explore an alternative lifestyle that would allow them to spend more time as a family and discover the world together through travel.

American photographer Jamie Johnson has devoted her over 20-year career to photographing children around the world. In 2014 she was invited to Ireland to document the Irish Travellers, a nomadic, ethnic minority that have lived on the margins of mainstream Irish society for centuries. She was introduced to a group of Travellers at the Ballinasloe Horse Fair and Festival, an annual event in County Galway where Travellers from Ireland and Europe come to set up camps, reunite with family and friends, and sell puppies and ponies. The children are left to run footloose and fancy free with dolls, animals, and candy cigarettes. While the Travellers don't usually like outsiders, Johnson's warmth, kindness and show of respect won them over and she was granted full access to photograph their lives and culture.

Tango in the Big Mango photo book is a mixture of documentary/street and conceptual images. The series consists of four parts: documentary/street photography, and conceptual themes of greed, growth, and angst. Tango in the Big Mango captures the intensity of urban life and barrage of consumption, culture and eccentricity in Bangkok.

Swahili is Gilles Nicolet's first book, a personal, melancholic, sometimes contemplative vision of a world which is dear to him but slowly disappearing.

Allen Wheatcroft's first monograph, Body Language (Damiani) explores the delicate balance between connection and dislocation, which he keenly observes while roaming city streets in the U.S. and Europe, with his Leica camera on hand. Taken from 2014-2018 in Chicago, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris and Stockholm and Uppsala, Sweden, the photographs emphasize gestures, movements, and expressions - a visual language without words. These pictures prompt the viewer to wonder about, and empathize with, the bankers and doormen, loners and gym rats, tourists and sun bathers - eager, perplexed, hurting - who inhabit our modern cities. With a focus on tension, loneliness, and synchronicity in contemporary life, this project artfully captures the universal language of the body in the street.

Atlantic City, at one time known as "The World's Playground" with its glittering casino hotels and night clubs, and legendary boardwalk and beach, looms large in the American imagination. It has been the subject of many movies, including the 1980 Louis Malle classic "Atlantic City" starring Susan Sarandon and Burt Lancaster, and the hit HBO series "Boardwalk Empire" set in the era of Prohibition. Historically the city was a refuge for those fleeing Prohibition. The casinos offered the unsleeping promise of redemption at the pull of a lever or roll of the dice.