As Daniel Handler ironically comments in Girls Standing on Lawns reviewed below, “None of this is there, not anymore. And yet we are still standing.”. By nature, photography takes us to a past, immediate or more distant, but always makes us observe what has been. In this month’s selection in particular, we ponder about some big names of last century, with nostalgia but also admiration.
Family in the picture, 1958-2013
“Over the past half century, Friedlander has widely exhibited his distinctive images and become one of America’s best-known photographers. He has also published numerous collections of his work and this volume is arguably among his best. Intended as a companion volume to the recently published In the Picture: Self-Portraits 1958-2011, this substantial book includes more than 350 black-and-white images. There is virtually no text, simply a short identifying caption and date. Friedlander begins with pictures of his wife, Maria, and weaves a chronology of the key moments-births, childhood, coming of age, marriage, and death-of their family’s life over the decades. Among the great strengths of the book are its cohesion and personal tone.” (Syndetics)
Snowdon : a life in view
“A personal and complete retrospective by one of the most important twentieth-century photographers. Elegantly curated by the legendary photographer and his youngest daughter Frances von Hofmannsthal, Snowdon looks back at an exceptional life and features a selection of 175 full-colour and black-and-white stylish fashion photographs and iconic portraits taken throughout his expansive and influential career. Having started photographing at a young age, Snowdon focused primarily on theater, fashion, and society photography before becoming the official Royal photographer and starting a six-decade working relationship with Vogue. In 1960, he married Princess Margaret, the sister of Queen Elizabeth II, and in 1961 he began his illustrious career with The Sunday Times magazine. Known for his expressive and candid portraits, using both subtle humour and quiet sincerity, Snowdon’s work evokes a sense of familiarity met with extreme beauty.” (Syndetics)
Photographers’ sketchbooks
“Find out how Alec Soth constructs his projects, why Trent Parke relies on old-fashioned Polaroids and hand-made books, and how forty-one other photographers experiment with new and old technologies, turn their photo-diaries into exhibitions, and attract audiences of millions via online platforms. This book celebrates the creative processes of the modern photographic era, in which blogs and Instagram streams function alongside analog albums and contact sheets, and the traditional notebook takes the form of Polaroid studies, smartphone pictures, found photography, experimental image-making, and self-published photo-zines. These intimate, one off presentations are accompanied by engaging interviews that reveal how the simple act of pressing a shutter can capture and express a fully realized personal vision.” (Syndetics)
Photography : the definitive visual history
“This book covers the history of photography by examining processes, equipment, and artists, moving the reader chronologically from the daguerreotype to today’s smartphone camera technology. Each spread tackles a topic relevant to the time period, and interspersed throughout are profiles of important photographers and in-depth examinations of historically significant photographs. The text is simple yet thorough, but it is the well-reproduced images that will draw in the reader. This volume will appeal to photo enthusiasts and general readers.” (Syndetics)
The world atlas of street photography
“This book focuses on the abundance of photography that has been created on street corners around the globe; it includes classic documentary street photography, as well as images of urban landscapes, staged performances, and sculptures. From New York to New Delhi, Beijing to Brighton, Havana to Hamburg, and Sydney to Seoul, this magnificently illustrated book presents an international cast of more than one hundred established and emerging contemporary photographers.” (Syndetics)
Taking shots : the photography of William S. Burroughs
“Renowned and highly regarded for his experiments with literature, painting, film, and music, William S. Burroughs was also a prolific photographer. However, his photographic work, consisting of several thousand images, has so far received litte critical attention or sustained public exposure. This book reproduces many unseen photographs and offers insights into his photographic practices”. (Syndetics)
Sue Ford
Features photographs, digital prints, collages and films an significant archival material from Ford’s long career. Texts by Maggie Finch, Virginia Fraser, Shaune Lakin, Marcia Langton and Helen Ennis provide a multifaceted look back to Ford’s career overarching themes in her work: identity, time, feminism, gender issues, Australian history and politics. (Syndetics)
Horst : photographer of style
“The first major book to celebrate the entire career of legendary fashion photographer Horst P. Horst. The first comprehensive book on Horst P. Horst, this richly illustrated survey accompanies a retrospective of the photographer’s career, spanning fashion, nudes, portraiture, interiors, and art, at the Victoria and Albert Museum. For an incredible six decades, Horst’s work graced the pages and covers of Vogue, beginning in the 1930s alongside luminaries such as Cecil Beaton and George Hoyningen-Huene. Horst also left his mark on interior and lifestyle photography with his work in House & Garden. This survey traces a career remarkable for its range, daring, and depth.” (Syndetics)
Bailey’s stardust
“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer, it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.” (David Bailey).
The portraits in this book have been personally selected by Bailey from the wide range of subjects and groups that he has captured so brilliantly over the last five decades: actors, writers, musicians, politicians, film-makers, models, artists and people encountered on his travels to Australia, India, Sudan and Papua New Guinea; many of them famous, some unknown, all of them engaging and memorable. Antonionis cult film Blow-up (1966), about a London fashion photographer, was inspired by Bailey, whose life was also dramatised recently in the BBC film We’ll Take Manhattan (2012), which tells the story of his 1962 New York fashion shoot with the model Jean Shrimpton.” (Syndetics)
Henri Cartier-Bresson : here and now
“Substantial and inclusive, this volume of artist Cartier-Bresson’s life work positions the photographer as a major 20th century social, political, and artistic force. Cartier-Bresson helped found Magnum Photos, was a pioneer of photojournalism and street photography, and spent a great deal of his life traveling and documenting the shifting political and material contexts of the time with the assistance of his camera. The volume comes in conjunction with the first retrospective of his work following his 2004 death, with Cheroux both curating the Centre Pompidou exhibition and providing the monograph’s text. The expansive range of images presents a smartly nuanced Cartier-Bresson, allowing the text to likewise explore the philosophy, aesthetics, and politics that drove the work.” (Syndetics)
Girls standing on lawns
“Handler and Kalman (Why We Broke Up) explore photographs held by the Museum of Modern Art, a selection of mostly black & white vintage snapshots of young women posing on lawns. The girls look decorative, awkward, sometimes grim (like the woman in the grass skirt in front of bare winter trees), sometimes hilarious (a pair of fashionably shod legs stick out of a hedge). Handler’s commentary wanders between the voices of the subjects (“My whole life I have not known where to put my hands”) and that of a wise, older-brotherish commentator (“You don’t have to be self-conscious. We’re all fools”). Kalman contributes her own inimitable paintings: a girl in a dance costume flanked by two terriers, a jaunty woman perched on a gate.” (Syndetics)