Photography

In Re:viewing Egypt, Xavier Roy’s breathtaking photographs of Egypt offer us a haunting vision of a country and its people. They are also a lesson in the art of photography itself, inviting us to experience images as metaphor, to extend our notions of reality. Roy draws us into Egypt’s mystique, its scintillating waters, bucolic vistas, ruins, and places of worship. We observe the correspondences of shape and texture, perspective and repetition, light and shadow, and the vitality in the mundane and commonplace. A photograph of an acacia tree is juxtaposed with one of birds in flight, their formation and movement echoing the outline and feather-like aspect of the tree. Each photograph is at once an offer of tranquility and a call to interpret.
Gamal al-Ghitani’s profoundly contemplative introduction is both inspiring and inspired by Roy’s gallery of one hundred images, compelling us to observe Egypt’s riches not as passive onlookers, but as engaged, reflective beings.

The diaries of Muhammad ‘Ali Effendi Sa‘udi, a civil servant and accomplished photographer, offer a rare glimpse of the Hajj through Egyptian eyes at the beginning of the twentieth century when the Ottoman Empire was on the wane and the advance of the Hijaz railway threatened to upset vested interests in the old pattern of pilgrimage.
Sa‘udi twice accompanied the Amir al-Hajj, Ibrahim Rif‘at Pasha, attached to the official Egyptian caravan. His story of these journeys combines the thoughts of a devout Muslim with fine detail on the hardships and health hazards facing pilgrims, the high-level intrigues, and the ever-present dangers of taking photographs.
The authors have compressed the diaries into a highly readable narrative with selected quotations, lavishly illustrated with Sa‘udi’s remarkable photographs.

In 2008, Manchester decided to embark on a counter-cyclical project, much as the city fathers had done in the last great recession, and invest significantly in two civic buildings, two buildings that were cornerstones of the making of the first modern industrialised city: Manchester Town Hall Extension and Manchester Central Library.

Early on in this major redevelopment project, artists Dan Dubowitz and Alan Ward were given privileged and open access to witness this transformational period in the life of these two iconic buildings. Through large-format photographs and interviews taken and conducted over a period of eighteen months, they captured the moment when the city’s citizens and workers had been locked out and the spaces were being stripped bare; revealing both a glimpse of what they had been and what they might become.

The artwork provides insights on the reciprocal relationship between people and place, and reveals how the refurbishment of a building can go far beyond physical refurbishment, questioning the relationships between a city, its citizens and place.

In his previous book City Gorged with Dreams (2002), Ian Walker challenged established ideas about Surrealist photography by emphasising the key role played by documentary photographs in Parisian Surrealism. Now Walker turns his attention to the arrival of Surrealism in England in 1936. Examining for the first time the surprising relationship between Surrealism and English documentary photography and film, the book shows that some of the most interesting work of the period was made in the ambiguous spaces between them.

One of the key themes in this book is the relationship between the ‘homely’ and the ‘exotic’, in the innovative mix of poetry and ethnography in Mass-Observation for example, or the shadowed England constructed in the work of Bill Brandt.

Based on extensive archival research, interviews and visits to sites where the photographs were made, this book is rich in detailed analysis yet written in an accessible and often witty style.

Photographic realism: Late twentieth-century aesthetics provides an accessible and useful introduction to uses of photography in art practice, and relates them to wider cultural ideas. Focusing on conceptual and political projects between 1970 and the turn of the century, it draws parallels between issues discussed in theory and those displayed visually in practice. Tormey discusses a dynamic era in photography’s history, which follows the influences of conceptual art and shifts in thinking about representation and subjectivity. The author moves away from the preoccupations of modernist photography to outline a photographic aesthetic that signals a direction for development in the twenty-first century, exampled here by the complex practices of Chinese photography.

This book emphasises how photographs construct ideas, make comments and promote thought – philosophically, culturally and politically. It will be particularly useful in post-graduate courses on fine art and photography, but it will also appeal to students and lecturers of art history, visual culture and media studies.

Born into a civil service family in India in 1907, Helen Muspratt was a lifelong communist, a member of the Cambridge intellectual milieu of the 1930s, and a working mother at a time when such a role was unusual for women of her class. She was also a pioneering photographer, creating an extraordinary body of work in many different styles and genres. In partnership with Lettice Ramsey she made portraits of many notable figures of the 1930s in the fields of science and culture. Her experimental photography, using techniques such as solarisation and multiple exposure, bears comparison with the innovations of Man Ray and Lee Miller.

This book reproduces some of Helen Muspratt's most important photographic images, including documentary records of the Soviet Union and the Welsh valleys. The accompanying text by Jessica Sutcliffe is an intimate and revealing memoir of her mother that offers a fascinating insight into her life, work and politics.

Julia Margaret Cameron's 'fancy subjects' is the first study of Cameron's allegorical photographs and the first to examine the intellectual connections of this imagery to British culture and politics of the 1860s and 1870s. In these photographs, Cameron depicted passages from classical mythology, the Old and New Testament, and historical and contemporary literature. She costumed her friends, domestic help, and village children in dramatic poses, turning them into goddesses and nymphs, biblical kings and medieval knights; she photographed young women in the style of the Elgin marbles, making sculpture come alive, and re-imagined scenes depicted in the poetry of Byron and Tennyson.

Cameron chose allegory as her primary artistic device because it allowed her to use popular iconography to convey a latent or secondary meaning. In her photographs, a primary meaning is first conveyed by the title of the image; then, social and political ideas that the artist implanted in the image begin to emerge, contributing to and commenting on the contemporary cultural, religious and political debates of the time. Cameron used the term 'fancy subjects' to embed these moral, intellectual and political narratives in her photographs. This book reconnects her to the prominent minds in her circle who influenced her thinking, including Benjamin Jowett, George Grote and Henry Taylor, and demonstrates her awareness and responsiveness to popular graphic art, including textiles and wall paper, book illustrations and engravings from period folios, cartoons from Punch and line drawings from the Illustrated London News, cabinet photographs and autotype prints.

Nominated for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2017.

The Victorians admired Julia Margaret Cameron for her evocative photographic portraits of eminent men like Tennyson, Carlyle and Darwin. However, Cameron also made numerous photographs that she called 'Fancy subjects', depicting scenes from literature, personifications from classical mythology, and Biblical parables from the Old and New Testament. This book is the first comprehensive study of these works, examining Cameron's use of historical allegories and popular iconography to embed moral, intellectual and political narratives in her photographs. A work of cultural history as much as art history, this book examines cartoons from Punch and line drawings from the Illustrated London News, cabinet photographs and autotype prints, textiles and wall paper, book illustrations and lithographs from period folios, all as a way to contextualise the allegorical subjects that Cameron represented, revealing connections between her 'Fancy subjects' and popular debates about such topics as Biblical interpretation, democratic government and colonial expansion.

Ancoats, in Manchester, was once unimaginably different. One of the world's earliest industrial suburbs, it was dark and dense, noisy, frenetic, violent and unhealthy. It was also vibrant and creative. It had a striking vapour, sound and feel.

The area today has undergone a striking regeneration. New streets, pavements and civic spaces have been laid down. A series of installations, known as The Peeps, have been created for the area. Built into the fabric of the buildings, the brass peep holes offer a fleeting glimpse of a walled-in space, a tunnel, a disused toilet, a bell tower, a gauge.

Dan Dubowitz, given the title of 'cultural masterplanner', records through photographs, interviews, commentary and contemporaneous texts, the recent past and the current regeneration of the suburb. It is a fascinating, beautifully illustrated and designed volume that eloquently depicts the common narrative of industrialisation, slow decay and rebirth.

Attend this on-the-page digital photography school . . . and become a better photographer!

Created by an editor for Practical Photography magazine, How to Shoot Like a Pro offers a unique photography course that’s designed for both beginners and experts. Illustrated with more than 400 photographs, it features 20 subject-based projects that start simple and become more challenging. 

You’ll learn all the basic skills needed to shoot fantastic images, from understanding your DSLR and essential camera settings to image editing. Individual modules cover:

• Self-portraits
• Artistic light paintings
• Landscapes
• Night photography
• Nature
• Reflections
• Action shots
• And much more, so you can hone both your technique and your artistry

New in paperback edition of Digital Camera School.

Following on from Terence Donovan: 100 Fashion Photos, this new compact edition of collected photographs features over 100 of Terence Donovan's best portraits.

Terence Donovan (1936–1996) was one of the foremost photographers of his generation, with a career spanning four decades. He came to prominence as part of a post-war cultural renaissance in Britain, representing a new force in photography. Donovan had an eye for taking captivating portraits, and this book is a collection of one hundred of his best, from royalty to musicians, politicians, actors and more.

Gifted with an unerring eye for the iconic as well as the transformative, Donovan was a master of his craft and was an acclaimed portrait photographer. Featuring some of his most striking and memorable portraits from a vast array of people, including iconic images of Sophia Loren, Jimi Hendrix, Jazzy B, Bryan Ferry and Mary Quant, this small edition is an affordable yet luxurious introduction to Donovan's work, perfect for lovers of photography.

Terence Donovan was part of the English movement in fashion photography in the sixties and, together with Bailey and Duffy, was a photographer who made the world look at London for inspiration. His refusal to conform to expectation turned the fashion world on its head and left a lasting impact on fashion photography today.

Born in East London in 1936 to a working-class family, Donovan opened his first photographic studio in 1959, and soon became known for doing things that were edgy and original.

Terence Donovan: Fashion is a celebration of his best fashion photography, from his ground-breaking work in the sixties to his famous supermodel shots of the nineties.

Beloved by fashion magazines, from Vogue to Elle, Marie-Claire and Harper's Bazaar, Terence Donovan had been at the top of his profession for over thirty years when he died in 1996. This is a stylish gift book containing some of his most famous shots, perfect for anyone who loves his work, and lovers of fashion photography.

Picture Your Profit shows managers how to create and increase awareness about their company’s products and services using photography in a strategic marketing plan. Using her years of photography and marketing experience, Pam Reid uses Picture Your Profit to teach any media, marketing, and communications manager:

Baseball Photography Classics

“It’s a great addition to your coffee table, or as a gift to the baseball fan in your life.” ―baseballmusings.com

#1 New Release in Photojournalism, Photo Essays, Statistics, History, Sports Photography, and Sports

Preserving History, Honoring Excellence, Connecting Generations is the mission of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Now, with this unequaled collection of photos from baseball history, you can revel in the moments we share at the ballpark, the grand sweep of the stadium, the drama of the game, and classic images of baseball greats.

Celebrate the history of baseball and baseball photography. Go beyond the standard highlights of baseball history in this collection of rarely seen photos that reveals the full landscape of our national pastime as no other collection can. Selected by the historians and curators at the Baseball Hall of Fame, the photographs reveal the rich relationship between photography and the game.  Each image includes an historic quote and a detailed caption, often highlighting little-known information about the photographers and techniques used across the 150 plus years covered in the book.

Experience the storied history of this great game through iconic images:

• Panoramic photos of historic stadiums
• A thoughtful Honus Wagner studying his bat
• Early African American team portraits and photos of such greats as Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, and Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso
• And much more!

If you have enjoyed baseball photography books such as The Story of Baseball: In 100 Photographs, 100 Year in Pinstripes: The New York Yankees in Photographs, or Baseball: An Illustrated History, you will love The National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Picturing America’s Pastime.

# 1 Best Seller in Photography Lighting ─ The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos

Learn the secrets to composition: There's a common misconception that composition is mysterious and that only certain people have that natural gift for the techniques involved. The truth is that composition involves a set of skills that you can master. Just as you can use cookbook recipes to make your favorite meal―you don't have to be a famous French chef―you also can take amazing photos by just following a recipe!

Easy-to-follow photography composition recipes: Marc Silber has spent years studying the works of masters and interviewing some of the biggest names in photography. Now he can provide you with simple and easy-to-follow recipes for creating photographs that you and others will love! The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos puts at your fingertips ideas for improving your skills by giving you easy-to-follow "recipes" that will improve your photography right now! Take your photography to the next level: Composition is one of the biggest keys to creating photos that others will love. No matter what kind of camera or smartphone you're using, you can take your photography to the next level and beyond by learning composition tools and secrets known to the masters of the art.

Carry The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos in your camera bag: The book is compact in size and easy to carry with you, so you can flip to the look you want and follow the recipe for creating an image that inspires you. Use it when you're out photographing to get new ideas and inspiration. You'll be able to rapidly up you photography game by learning the skills in Picture Perfect Processes.

Key benefits of owning The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos include:

• Taking better photographs today by learning the keys to composition
• Having quick and easy to follow "recipes" for composition at your fingertips
• Learning the secrets of composition from the masters of classical art and photography

Learn How the Photography Pros Do it!

"Marc's new book is an all-in-one, easily accessible handbook drawn from his huge library of interviews with top photographers─and packed with information that can be put into action immediately." ─Chase Jarvis, Multi-award-winning photographer and CEO/Founder of CreativeLive.

#1 Best Seller in Photography

Photography tips from professional photography masters. Easy-to-understand photography tips for beginners and amateurs─all in one compact book that fits into your camera bag. Included are tips on landscape, wedding, lifestyle, sports, animal, portrait, still life, and iPhone photography.

Take stunning pictures. Learn professional photography tips and tricks from masters of this art form. In Advancing Your Photography, Marc Silber provides the definitive handbook that takes you through the entire process of becoming an accomplished photographer. From teaching you the basics to exploring the stages of the full "cycle of photography," he makes it easy for you to master the art form and create stunning pictures.

Begin a lifetime of enjoyment and satisfaction. Photography and the technology associated with it is constantly evolving, but the fundamentals remain the same. Advancing Your Photography can start you on a lifetime of enjoying the art of photography.

Advancing Your Photography features:

• Top tips from iconic photographers and many other leading professional photography masters of today
• Numerous step-by-step examples
• Guidance on training your eye to see composition with emotional impact
• Tips on mastering the key points of operating your camera like a pro
• Secrets to processing your images to professional standards

If you have enjoyed photography books such as Understanding Exposure, Extraordinary Everyday Photography, Learning to See Creatively, or Marc Silber's Create, you will love Advancing Your Photography.

Portal: The Curious Account of Achintya Bose, conceptualized, compiled and reproduced by Shan Bhattacharya, recipient of the Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Grant for Photography, 2015 (instituted by the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation), presents the personal diary of the owner of a small photography studio in Calcutta, India, maintained sporadically from 1994 to 1996, before his sudden unexplained disappearance. The diary is a fictional ‘found archive’ that contains his collection of photographic prints, letters, torn pages from books, newspaper and magazine cuttings, declassified police records, polaroids and print advertisements obtained from different sources. Through these documents spanning the twentieth century, he attempts to trace photographic ‘evidence’ and information about an elusive woman who seemingly does not age through a century. Mr Bose’s search is also a journey through the local history of vernacular photography and regional publications that reflect popular culture, politics, fashion, design, advertising and other iconography, and their transformations over time.

In this book, images serve both as the primary objects of interest and a narrative device. The cover plot interrogates the veracity of photographs – the way they are used as indices and evidence of a person’s existence in spatio-temporal reality. These images are staged in variously contrived scenarios, often taking cues from the several utilitarian subsets of twentieth-century photography–the wedding portrait, the convocation photo, the vacation/holiday photo, candid snapshots, product advertisements–as though taken by different fictional photographers using different image-making aesthetics, techniques and formats appropriate to the time/place/visual cultures that those prototypes historically belong to. Referring to the genre of historiographic metafiction, fictional text and visual elements based on real events and characters are introduced to enable this ‘found archive’ assume certain characteristics of a hoax.

Published in association with Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation

ambiguity revisited is concerned with the manner in which pictures communicate with the spectator. Its focus lies in those fluid, indeterminate spaces where our reading of images, in art and photography, exercises and draws upon our imagination, memory, and experience. Sir William Empson’s seminal (1930) text: Seven Types of Ambiguity is used as a springboard to discussion, towards a fresh way of exploring ambiguity beyond English literature, and in a broader framework to that contained in John Berger’s (1989) Another Way of Telling.

The use of ambiguity in art and photography, as in literature, is both a conscious and an unconscious act; and ambiguity influences the way in which we respond to work, from Leonardo da Vinci’s portraits to the photographer William Eggleston’s engaging and idiosyncratic reflections on America’s Deep South. This ambiguity is a force for good, or at least one to be reckoned with, due to its participatory nature in actively engaging with, or masking itself from, the viewer.

Ambiguity is infrequently discussed but is highly relevant as an expressive device. It holds a position at the core of communication within the visual arts. As society becomes influenced increasingly by communications delivered in a visual form, so we, the consumers, require tools, more than ever, to engage with the work.

Tibet was once home to thousands of thriving Buddhist monasteries. But in 1959, following a Tibetan uprising against China's long occupation, nearly all were destroyed by the Chinese military, the practice of Buddhism was outlawed, and the Dalai Lama was forced into exile. In March of that year, Chinese tanks bombarded the 540-year-old Sera Jey Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, killing hundreds of monks and destroying ancient texts and invaluable artifacts that had been collected over centuries. Thousands of survivors fled over perilous mountain passes to neighboring India, many with only thin robes and light footwear to shield them from the harsh winter conditions of the Himalayas.

The Sera Jey Monastery, reestablished near Mysore, India, now houses 5,000 Buddhist monks living in exile-including many who escaped the attack on the Tibetan monastery in 1959, and many more who have never known their ancestral homeland. Providing an intimate glimpse of this rarely seen world, Sera: The Way of the Tibetan Monk evokes the subtle moods and rhythms of this Buddhist community that has steadfastly carried on the legacy of the original Sera Jey. More than 100 duotone photographs capture daily rituals and sacred ceremonies, serious moments and playful gestures, compassionate faces and expressions of inspired serenity. Moving and unforgettable, Sheila Rock's portraits celebrate the tranquility, simple joys, and unadorned beauty of the ascetic life, offering a powerful testament to the strength and resilience of a persecuted people.

A percentage of the royalties from this book go to the Sera Jhe Health Care Committee in aid of various humanitarian projects

Riverside Park is an illustrated tribute to Frederick Law Olmsted's "other" New York City sanctuary. Since its conception in the 1870s, the park has undergone a number of transformations and suffered from periods of misuse and neglect, but in 1984, much-needed renovations turned this city oasis into what is today one of Manhattan's most beautiful attractions.

"If the West Side does not stir you, you are a clod, past redemption."-Robert Moses

Millions visit the Upper West Side landmark annually, and despite the heavy use, thousands of volunteers keep the grounds pristine. The park is now being extended southward as part of Manhattan's plan to reclaim the island's six hundred miles of waterfront, and Riverside Drive-Olmsted's curving thoroughfare flanking the park-has long been one of Manhattan's premier addresses.

"I often feel drawn to the Hudson River.... I never get tired of looking at it; it hypnotizes me."-Joseph Mitchell, from The Rivermen

From the time it was carved out of an unpromising landscape, Riverside Park has continued to reinvent itself. Using photographs (both contemporary and historical), illustrations, poems, and original and excerpted narrative, Edward Grimm and E. Peter Schroeder tell the intriguing story of a symbol of the modern revitalization of New York City.

"Riverside Park will be a genuine riverside reservation, dedicated forever to the use of the people, beautiful in the highest sense."-The New York World, April 24, 1892

*Includes the official Riverside Park Fund Map of 2007*

South Street is Barbara G. Mensch's evocative tribute to the lost world of Lower Manhattan's Fulton Fish Market. For more than a century, a colorful, tightly knit community of fishmongers, many of them recent immigrants and children of immigrants, thrived under the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Resistant to government regulations and corporate encroachment, these men lived in a closed, internally policed world that was deeply hostile to outsiders.

As a young photographer in the early 1980s, Mensch bonded with this particular group of "authentic New Yorkers," becoming a confidante for their life stories, which were often filled with hardship, mystery, and misadventures. These striking photographs capture the unique personality and fierce secrecy of their vibrant working-class culture. Combined with lively commentary—reminiscent of Studs Terkel's riveting oral histories—the images offer a rare peek inside a society described by Philip Lopate as "a precious last vestige of historic Gotham."

Mensch's story ends with the closure of the docks and the opening of the Seaport mall, a symbolic victory of corporate interests over more than a century of mob rule. Her visual essay recounts the driving forces and the effects of this urban transformation on the entrenched community of fishmongers, creating an enduring historical document. Though the Fulton Fish Market no longer resides below the Brooklyn Bridge, the history and energy of this cherished New York City landmark are beautifully preserved in this book.

South Street is Barbara G. Mensch's evocative tribute to the lost world of Lower Manhattan's Fulton Fish Market. For more than a century, a colorful, tightly knit community of fishmongers, many of them recent immigrants and children of immigrants, thrived under the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Resistant to government regulations and corporate encroachment, these men lived in a closed, internally policed world that was deeply hostile to outsiders.

As a young photographer in the early 1980s, Mensch bonded with this particular group of "authentic New Yorkers," becoming a confidante for their life stories, which were often filled with hardship, mystery, and misadventures. These striking photographs capture the unique personality and fierce secrecy of their vibrant working-class culture. Combined with lively commentary—reminiscent of Studs Terkel's riveting oral histories—the images offer a rare peek inside a society described by Philip Lopate as "a precious last vestige of historic Gotham."

Mensch's story ends with the closure of the docks and the opening of the Seaport mall, a symbolic victory of corporate interests over more than a century of mob rule. Her visual essay recounts the driving forces and the effects of this urban transformation on the entrenched community of fishmongers, creating an enduring historical document. Though the Fulton Fish Market no longer resides below the Brooklyn Bridge, the history and energy of this cherished New York City landmark are beautifully preserved in this book.

Allen Ellenzweig traces the male gaze upon men as captured by the camera throughout the history of photography. More than one hundred striking, provocative duotone photographs reflect a wide-ranging history of photographic male homoeroticism and the spiritual, physical, and intellectual exchange among men. Accompanying these images is a detailed account of the multiple, complex meanings of the homoerotic that have taken shape from the 1850s to today.

Ellenzweig situates each of his artists within their historical context, with chapters devoted to specific photographers and eras. He begins with nineteenth-century French photographer Eugène Durieu and his studies of the male nude, created under the direction of painter Eugène Delacroix. He then takes readers all the way through the rebellious 1960s and the disputes surrounding Robert Mapplethorpe's controversial retrospective in 1989 and 1990. Showing that homoeroticism in photography is anything but a contemporary invention, Ellenzweig unites photographers across the stylistic spectrum within a theme that came to inspire a host of larger spiritual, physical, and intellectual ideals.

The numbers of farms and farmers on the Great Plains are dwindling. Disappearing even faster are the farm places—the houses, barns, and outbuildings that made the rural landscape a place of habitation. Nancy Warner's photographs tell the stories of buildings that were once loved yet have now been abandoned. Her evocative images are juxtaposed with the voices of Nebraska farm people, lovingly recorded by sociologist David Stark. These plainspoken recollections tell of a way of life that continues to evolve in the face of wrenching change.

Warner's spare, formal photographs invite readers to listen to the cadences and tough-minded humor of everyday speech in the Great Plains. Stark's afterword grounds the project in the historical relationship between people and their land. In the tradition of Wright Morris, this combination of words and images is both art and document, evoking memories, emotions, and questions for anyone with rural American roots.

According to Walter Benjamin, the past that is not recognized by the present threatens to disappear irretrievably. As a consequence, photographs cannot save the moment from oblivion by pure depiction alone, but only by keeping the depicted moment actual at every present moment.
Instead of counting on the documentary quality of photography that speaks in the past tense of "what has been", Silke Helmerdig suggests a different approach to photography: an extension of a future subjunctive (photographic) tense speaking of "what could be, if", allowing one to think possible futures instead of harking back to the past.

The Blind Man: A Phantasmography examines the complicated forces of perception, imagination, and phantasms of encounter in the contemporary world. In considering photographs he took while he was traveling in France, anthropologist and writer Robert Desjarlais reflects on a few pictures that show the features of a man, apparently blind, who begs for money at a religious site in Paris, frequented by tourists. In perceiving this stranger and the images his appearance projects, he begins to imagine what this man’s life is like and how he perceives the world around him.

Written in journal form, the book narrates Desjarlais’s pursuit of the man portrayed in the photographs. He travels to Paris and tries to meet with him. Eventually, Desjarlais becomes unsure as to what he sees, hears, or remembers. Through these interpretive dilemmas he senses the complexities of perception, where all is multiple, shifting, spectral, a surge of phantasms in which the actual and the imagined are endlessly blurred and intertwined. His mind shifts from thinking about photographs and images to being fixed on the visceral force of apparitions. His own vision is affected in a troubling way.

Composed of an intricate weave of text and image, The Blind Man attends to pressing issues in contemporary life: the fraught dimensions of photographic capture; encounters with others and alterity; the politics of looking; media images of violence and abjection; and the nature of fantasy and imaginative construal. Through a wide-ranging inquiry into histories of imagination, Desjarlais inscribes the need for a “phantasmography”—a writing of phantasms, a graphic inscription of the flows and currents of fantasy and fabulation.

A compelling and innovative reflection on the way photography captures and condenses time

Two photographs, connected by a ladder, separated by a century. First, William Henry Fox Talbot photographed a faithfully realistic image of a ladder against a haystack in the English countryside.One hundred years later, an anonymous photographer captured another ladder, “photographed” alongside an incinerated man by the blinding light of the atomic bomb. These two images underpin a poetic and theoretical reflection on the origins of photographic technique, the imaginative power of montage, and the relation of photography to time itself in Jean-Christophe Bailly’s The Instant and Its Shadow, translated into English for the very first time.

A rare find of intellectual caliber and theoretical rigor, The Instant and Its Shadow pursues a unique and powerful reflection on the first hundred years of photography’s history and on the essence of the photographic art in general. Inspired by the unexpected coming together of these two iconic images, the book begins by retracing Talbot’s invention of the photographic calotype in the early nineteenthcentury, highlighting the paradox that saw Talbot wishing to imitate the representative arts of painting and drawing while simultaneously liberating the image from any imitative paradigm. This analysis leads Bailly to elucidate photography’s relation to material and visual reality. A meditation on photography’s seeming ability to stop time follows, concluding with the photographs of Hiroshima and the photographic nature of the atomic bomb.

Building on an inspired juxtaposition of The Haystack with the Hiroshima photographs, the book becomes a testament to the potency of photomontage, arguing that “the more singular an image, the greater its connective power.” Bailly’s book is at once a lyrical homage to some of the founding texts of photographic theory and a startling reminder of the uncanny power of photography itself. Part theoretical reflection, part lyrical reverie, The Instant and Its Shadow is packed with profound and stellar insights about the medium.

A compelling and innovative reflection on the way photography captures and condenses time

Two photographs, connected by a ladder, separated by a century. First, William Henry Fox Talbot photographed a faithfully realistic image of a ladder against a haystack in the English countryside.One hundred years later, an anonymous photographer captured another ladder, “photographed” alongside an incinerated man by the blinding light of the atomic bomb. These two images underpin a poetic and theoretical reflection on the origins of photographic technique, the imaginative power of montage, and the relation of photography to time itself in Jean-Christophe Bailly’s The Instant and Its Shadow, translated into English for the very first time.

A rare find of intellectual caliber and theoretical rigor, The Instant and Its Shadow pursues a unique and powerful reflection on the first hundred years of photography’s history and on the essence of the photographic art in general. Inspired by the unexpected coming together of these two iconic images, the book begins by retracing Talbot’s invention of the photographic calotype in the early nineteenthcentury, highlighting the paradox that saw Talbot wishing to imitate the representative arts of painting and drawing while simultaneously liberating the image from any imitative paradigm. This analysis leads Bailly to elucidate photography’s relation to material and visual reality. A meditation on photography’s seeming ability to stop time follows, concluding with the photographs of Hiroshima and the photographic nature of the atomic bomb.

Building on an inspired juxtaposition of The Haystack with the Hiroshima photographs, the book becomes a testament to the potency of photomontage, arguing that “the more singular an image, the greater its connective power.” Bailly’s book is at once a lyrical homage to some of the founding texts of photographic theory and a startling reminder of the uncanny power of photography itself. Part theoretical reflection, part lyrical reverie, The Instant and Its Shadow is packed with profound and stellar insights about the medium.

The Blind Man: A Phantasmography examines the complicated forces of perception, imagination, and phantasms of encounter in the contemporary world. In considering photographs he took while he was traveling in France, anthropologist and writer Robert Desjarlais reflects on a few pictures that show the features of a man, apparently blind, who begs for money at a religious site in Paris, frequented by tourists. In perceiving this stranger and the images his appearance projects, he begins to imagine what this man’s life is like and how he perceives the world around him.

Written in journal form, the book narrates Desjarlais’s pursuit of the man portrayed in the photographs. He travels to Paris and tries to meet with him. Eventually, Desjarlais becomes unsure as to what he sees, hears, or remembers. Through these interpretive dilemmas he senses the complexities of perception, where all is multiple, shifting, spectral, a surge of phantasms in which the actual and the imagined are endlessly blurred and intertwined. His mind shifts from thinking about photographs and images to being fixed on the visceral force of apparitions. His own vision is affected in a troubling way.

Composed of an intricate weave of text and image, The Blind Man attends to pressing issues in contemporary life: the fraught dimensions of photographic capture; encounters with others and alterity; the politics of looking; media images of violence and abjection; and the nature of fantasy and imaginative construal. Through a wide-ranging inquiry into histories of imagination, Desjarlais inscribes the need for a “phantasmography”—a writing of phantasms, a graphic inscription of the flows and currents of fantasy and fabulation.

Named a Gift Book for the Discerning New Yorker by The New York Times

In the Shadow of Genius is the newest book by photographer and author Barbara Mensch. The author combines her striking photographs with a powerful first-person narrative. She takes the reader on a unique journey by recalling her experiences living alongside the bridge for more than 30 years, and then by tracing her own curious path to understand the brilliant minds and remarkable lives of those who built it: John, Washington, and Emily Roebling.

Many of Mensch’s photographs were inspired by her visits to the Roebling archives housed at Rutgers University, where she pieced together through notebooks, diaries, letters, and drawings the seminal locations and events that affected their lives. Following in their footsteps, Mensch traveled to Mühlhausen, Germany, the birthplace of John Roebling; to Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, where Roebling established a utopian community in 1831; to Roebling aqueducts and bridges in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York; and to the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where Washington Roebling, the son of the famous engineer, valiantly served as a Union soldier. The book begins and ends with Mensch’s unique photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge, including never-before-seen images captured deep within the structure. The book creatively fuses contemporary photography with the historical record, giving the reader a new perspective on contemplating the masterwork.

Fernanda Perrone, Curator of Special Collections and the Roebling Family Archive at Rutgers University, has contributed a Foreword.

Compelling and prophetic, Dorothy Day is one of the most enduring icons of American Catholicism. In the depths of the Great Depression and guided by the Works of Mercy, Day, a journalist at the time, published a newspaper, the Catholic Worker, and co-founded a movement dedicated to the poorest of the poor, while living with them and sharing their poverty.

In 1955, Vivian Cherry, a documentary photographer known for her disturbing and insightful work portraying social issues, was given unprecedented access to the Catholic Worker house of hospitality in New York City, its two farms, and to Day herself. While much has been written about Day, the portrait that emerges from Cherry’s intimate lens is unrivaled. From the image of the line of men waiting for soup outside St. Joseph’s on Chrystie Street to pictures of Day and others at work and in prayer, Cherry’s photographs offer a uniquely personal and poetic glimpse into the life of the movement and its founder.

In this beautiful new book, more than sixty photographs—many published here for the first time—are accompanied by excerpts of Day’s writings gleaned from her column “On Pilgrimage” and other articles published in the Catholic Worker between 1933 and 1980. The result is a powerful visual and textual memoir capturing the life and times of one of the most significant and influential North American Catholics of the twentieth century. The aptly paired images and words bring new life to Day’s political and personal passions and reflect with clarity and simplicity the essential work and philosophies of the Catholic Worker, which continue to thrive today. The Introduction and additional commentary by Day’s granddaughter Kate Hennessy
provides rich contextual information about the two women and what she sees as their collaboration in this book.

In 2000, twenty years after her death, Archbishop of New York John J. O’Connor of New York City opened the cause for Dorothy Day’s canonization, and the Vatican conferred on her the title of Servant of God. The Catholic Worker continues to flourish, with more than 200 affiliated houses in the United States and overseas. The miracle of this enduring appeal lies in Day’s unique paradigm of vision, conscience, and a life of sacrifice that is one not of martyrdom but of joy, richness, and generosity—vividly portrayed through these photographs and excerpts.

Hyperrealist photographer Amir Zaki’s new monograph covers 20+ years of photographic work, following his widely reviewed book California Concrete: A Landscape of Skateparks. Includes an essay and interview.

A double gatefold sculptural monograph with no singular entry or exit and three spines, Amir Zaki, Building + Becoming opens to a full width of roughly 40 inches and brings multiple series into focus: suspended landscapes, rocks, carvings, and hyper-realist California beach architecture, which like his skateparks (also included), are uncannily quiet and devoid of people. “I am looking for a kind of strangeness within the commonplace … where something familiar and unfamiliar is initially welcoming yet alienating, using digital technology as a means to an end.”

Literary critics Walter Benn Michaels and Jennifer Ashton discuss Zaki’s manipulation of space through evenness, which is accomplished by creating a perfectly technically focused object: “The point is not that the pictures overcome physical limits, but that they violate the logic of our eyesight.” Referencing the history of landscape and modern photography in California (Edward Weston, Ansel Adams), Michaels and Ashton show that Zaki’s insistence on marrying technology seamlessly with this tradition results in continuity, an “addition through subtraction” of the third-dimension. 

Zaki has been interviewed for NPR online and featured or reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, as well as having been interviewed in Dezeen, Wallpaper, The New Order, Elle Decor, Hypebeast, GUP Magazine, and Aramco World. His last book, California Concrete is in the top 50 in Skateboarding books and top 150 in Individual Photographer books on Amazon.

What makes Waterloo Region unique? What defines a sense of place?
Seventy-five carefully chosen photographs depict the elements that collectively make Waterloo Region's urban landscape different from any other Ontario city, for example, the predominance of industrial architecture in the heart of the city, the Pennsylvania-German influences, and the Mid-Century Modernist buildings, which University of Waterloo Architecture Professor Rick Haldenby calls “the vernacular architecture of Waterloo Region.”
Sense of place has been defined as our relationship with places in terms of the emotions, personal experiences, stories they evoke. Elsworthy's photographs dramatically illustrate how the built form can attract or repel. He invites us into each of his photographs to experience and interpret each scene for ourselves. Over the course of the book, we come to see how community and sense of place are intrinsically and vitally connected.

Black and White is a book of 32 evocative images of political conflict and confrontations in the streets taken by Howard Epstein when he was a photographer for Liberation News Service.

The collection of images is a visceral flashback to the political turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Epstein’s photographs will resonate both for people who lived through those struggles and those organizing and protesting today.

A practical, accessible guide to the ingenious and creative things that can be done with a digital compact or camera phone. Clever Digital Photography Ideas: Extending and enhancing your camera skills and more clever ideas is an extract from the book 100 Clever Digital Photography Ideas and provides a variety of simples ideas for pushing your camera skills that little but further. From how you can shoot when conditions get a bit extreme, to creating breath-taking panoramas, and even three-dimensional photos. Shooting movies is also covered, with some ingenious ideas to become more creative in the movie-making arena. There are also clever ideas for protecting your photos for the future, including shooting in RAW. The second part of the eBook covers getting more from your camera and camera phone, guiding you through what all the buttons and jargon mean, as well as clever ideas for extending your battery life and fun ways to use your old camera.
All ideas and projects are presented with easy to follow instructions and striking photographs across colourful pages. Open your eyes to the creative possibilities with your digital photo technology, from using a basic compact camera to the latest smart phone. Whether a novice or a pro, Clever Digital Photography Ideas: Extending and enhancing your camera skills and more clever ideast will show you how to break out of your comfort zone and try something exciting and new.

Whether you want to get more from your DSLR or are simply looking for new creative avenues to explore, 50 Photo Projects shows you how to break out of your comfort zone and try something new.

Packed with invaluable tips on how to create stunning photographs, Lee Frost provides the bright ideas that will reinvigorate your photography, from inspiration on what to photograph, to inventive projects with vintage, pinhole and toy cameras.

Packed with invaluable tips on how to create stunning photographs, Lee Frost provides the bright ideas that will reinvigorate your photography, from inspiration on what to photograph, to inventive projects with vintage, pinhole and toy cameras.

A practical, accessible guide to the ingenious and creative things that can be done with a digital compact or camera phone. Clever Digital Photography Ideas: Starting to make the most of your camera or camera phone is a chapter from the book 100 Clever Digital Photography Ideas and provides a variety of simples ideas for getting even more from your camera or camera phone than just a record of those memorable moments. This includes exploring the camera's functions, ingenious ways to record information and photography your hobbies and interests.
All ideas and projects are presented with easy to follow instructions and striking photographs across colourful pages. Open your eyes to the creative possibilities with your digital photo technology, from using a basic compact camera to the latest smart phone. Whether a novice or a pro, Clever Digital Photography Ideas: Starting to make the most of your camera or camera phone will show you how to break out of your comfort zone and try something exciting and new.

A practical, accessible guide to the ingenious and creative things that can be done with a digital compact or camera phone. Clever Digital Photography Ideas: Using Your Camera Out and About is a chapter from the book 100 Clever Digital Photography Ideas and provides a variety of simples ideas for getting more from your camera or camera phone when you are out and about, beyond your travels and holidays. Some ideas might be obvious, like tips for shooting landscapes, but many are more obscure and fun, like creating a visual gift list and using your camera as binoculars. With so many people owning camera phones these days, there's no excuse not to be taking photographs whilst you are out and about.
All ideas and projects are presented with easy to follow instructions and striking photographs across colourful pages. Open your eyes to the creative possibilities with your digital photo technology, from using a basic compact camera to the latest smart phone. Whether a novice or a pro, Clever Digital Photography Ideas: Using Your Camera Out and About will show you how to break out of your comfort zone and try something exciting and new.

FEATURED IN THE NEW YORKER: The Faces of Americans Living in Debt

Finalist for the Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize in Documentary.

Featured on Politico, in the Washington Post, the Daily Mail, and the Huffington Post, USA Today, Business Insider, Refinery29, and Fast Company.

Based on the popular online photo series and now published in print for the first time, The Debt Project collects 99 portraits of debt across the United States, featuring people of all different backgrounds and stories, to recontextualize an often stigmatized experience.

In 2013, Brittany Powell made the difficult decision to file for bankruptcy for her photography business. In the years following the 2008 economic collapse, she found herself in a significant amount of debt, a position many Americans across the country still share, a common yet isolating and private experience often steeped in shame.

Her personal experience, bolstered by the We Are the 99% slogan that came out of the Occupy movement, brought her to start The Debt Project, an exploration of the role debt and finance plays in our personal identity and social structure. This book presents an intimate look into 99 different lives: each shares an arrestingly honest portrait in the person’s home, surrounded by all their belongings, accompanied by a handwritten note of the amount of debt that person is in and the story behind the numbers.

The Debt Project, with a foreword by writer and filmmaker Astra Taylor plus resources at the back of the book to support people in debt, examines the social and personal hold financial debt has on us and invites others into a private world, while at the same empowering people to share their stories and overcome the shame they may feel.

”Doyle’s modesty of language conceals a profound tolerance of the human complexity”-John Le Carré

“Every Writer owes something to Holmes.” -T.S. Eliot

While the controversy of Psychic Photography was gripping the early 20th Century United Kingdom, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set out to investigate the most notable cases. In The Case for Spirit Photography, he aimed to defend the validity of capturing images of spirits with a camera. The spectacle of spirit photography had become popular in the late 19th Century, but by the 1920’s The Crewe Circle, an infamous English spiritualist group had become the center of a national controversy attacking spirit photography as a hoax.

Doyle, a leader of the Spiritualist movement, wrote this investigation in defense of the group, and conjointly looks at other cases of supernatural incidences. As we face current public figures dismissive of empirical scientific evidence, this is a fascinating look at the intrigue of conviction. As the writer of one of fictions most colorful and abiding detectives, Doyle’s deductions in The Case for Spirit Photography are enthralling.

With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Case is both modern and readable.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

”Doyle’s modesty of language conceals a profound tolerance of the human complexity”-John Le Carré

“Every Writer owes something to Holmes.” -T.S. Eliot

While the controversy of Psychic Photography was gripping the early 20th Century United Kingdom, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set out to investigate the most notable cases. In The Case for Spirit Photography, he aimed to defend the validity of capturing images of spirits with a camera. The spectacle of spirit photography had become popular in the late 19th Century, but by the 1920’s The Crewe Circle, an infamous English spiritualist group had become the center of a national controversy attacking spirit photography as a hoax.

Doyle, a leader of the Spiritualist movement, wrote this investigation in defense of the group, and conjointly looks at other cases of supernatural incidences. As we face current public figures dismissive of empirical scientific evidence, this is a fascinating look at the intrigue of conviction. As the writer of one of fictions most colorful and abiding detectives, Doyle’s deductions in The Case for Spirit Photography are enthralling.

With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Case is both modern and readable.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

People magazine's top reason for Hope in America.

Curated from a grassroots social movement, The Front Steps Project is an inspiring, uplifting portrait series capturing how people coped with living in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Front Steps Project™ demonstrates that even in the most challenging of circumstances, kindness, love, courage, and hope exist to build, bind, and connect communities around the globe.

Created on March 18, 2020, The Front Steps Project™ began when friends Kristen Collins and Cara Soulia sought out to unite their neighbors through photographs of life in quarantine. In addition to incorporating work from other local photographers, the women traveled to neighborhoods around Needham, Massachusetts to photograph residents in front of their homes in exchange for donations to their local food pantry.

Within days, #TheFrontStepsProject became a grassroots social mission, connecting thousands of people across the globe and raising over $3,250,000 for vital non-profit organizations and local businesses including food pantries, frontline workers, homeless and animal shelters, hospitals and so much more. Through their noble efforts, hundreds of thousands of images and stories of love, sacrifice, compassion, kindness, perseverance, and – ultimately hope – flooded social media.

Featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show, People Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and more, The Front Steps Project brings communities together virtually, despite being – and maybe feeling – isolated.

The Front Steps Project contains over 400 photographs and dozens of stories of families during the COVID-19 pandemic. This heartwarming keepsake commemorates a massive effort of courage, unity, and goodwill.

As a tribute to the good work of The Front Steps Project, a portion of book sales will be donated to The United Way to help people impacted by the pandemic.

This book chronicles the great state of California through 100 powerful, evocative color photographs with scenes from north to south.

From the fruitful cornucopia of the Central Valley and the solitary ancient pillars of redwood old-growth forests; the soaring granite cliffs of Yosemite Valley and Death Valley's heat-blasted wastes; the sun-drenched meadows of the High Sierra and breathtaking sunsets and coastal mists. Master photographer David Muench and his son, David apply their decades of on-location photographic skills to the making of interpretive views embracing all aspects of the great state.