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MONOGRAPHS - C


The books in this section are monographs by individual photographers. The books are available through our association with Amazon.com If you are interested in a book that is not available through Amazon.com, we most likely have an alternative source or a copy in our collection that you may inquire about.
NOTE: The prices of the books listed on this web site are the publishers list prices. Most books are available at significantly less than the posted list price.

The listing here is alphabetical by the photographer's last name.

A B C D E F G H I J K L Ma Mo N O P Q R Sa Sk T U V W X Y Z

   
Debbie Flemming Caffery
Spirit and the Flesh
Debbie Flemming Caffery
12" x 11", 112
pp
2009, Radius Books
List price: $60.00
For several years during the mid-1990s, Debbie Fleming Caffery spent time photographing in a small village in northeastern Mexico, living on the grounds of the local Catholic church, and using the tortilla shack as her studio. In Mexico, the church is the center of village life, and she became accustomed to the flow of life surrounding it, replete with celebrations of religious feasts and the mysteries and secrets of community life. More »
   
Elemental Landscapes
Elemental Landscapes,
Harry Callahan
2001, Philadelphia Museum of Art
12.06" x 9", 56 pgs.
List price: $20.00
"Elemental Landscapes" accompanies an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that concentrates exclusively on the landscape photographs of the late American photographer Harry Callahan. The natural landscape was a subject that occupied Callahan throughout his career, and examples range in time from the early 1940s to the early 1990s, providing an in-depth look at the artist's evolution. Callahan was fascinated not by the wide, sweeping landscapes of photographers like Ansel Adams but by more intimate pictures, which often remove the context of earth and sky from the scene, creating abstractions that challenge our notions of landscape by presenting a small slice of the world in all its infinite detail.
Essay by Katherine Ware. Foreword by Anne d'Harnoncourt.
Photographs by Harry Callahan

Photographs by Harry Callahan
Harry Callahan
2001, Bulfinch Press
11.13" x 9.16", 200 pgs.

List price: 35.00

 
     
 
Julia Margaret Cameron's Women
Julia Margaret Cameron's Women
Sylvia Wolf, et al.
1998, Yale University Press
12.85" x 9.78", 216 pgs.
List price: $27.50

Introduction by Sylvia Wolf, essays by Phyllis Rose, Debra N. Mancoff, Stephanie Lipscomb

The New York Times Book Review, Andy Grundberg
The is the book that Julia Margaret Cameron, the premier photographer of the Victorian era, has long deserved. Not only are the 63 full-page plates well chosen and superbly printed, but the texts ... place Cameron's work in arresting contexts.

Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs

Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs,
Julian Cox, et al.
2003, Getty Trust Publication
12" x 10", 532 pgs.
List price: $150.00

For the first time, all known images by Cameron, one of the most important nineteenth-century artists in any medium, are gathered together in a catalogue raisonne. In addition to a complete catalogue of Cameron's photographs, the book contains information on her photographic experiments and techniques, artistic approach, small-format photographs, albums, commercial strategies, sitters, and sources of inspiration. Also provided is a selected bibliography of all major Cameron publications, a list of exhibitions of her work, and a summary of important Cameron collections worldwide. This catalogue is published in conjunction with a traveling exhibition of Cameron's photographs that opens in England in spring 2003 and will be on view at the Getty Museum in autumn 2003.

Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum

Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum,
Julia Margaret Cameron
1996, J. Paul Getty Museum Publications
7.68" x 6", 144 pgs.
List price: $17.50

The first volume in the In Focus series to examine the work of a nineteenth-century photographer, this beautiful volume examines Cameron's passion for the "divine art" and her "deeply seated love of the beautiful" that are clearly revealed by her compelling pictures.

   
Campeau

Darkroom
Michel Campeau
2007, Nazraeli Press
12" x 12", 80 pp
List price: $60.00

"For a photographer like myself, who in fact has not worked in a darkroom for over 20 years, these images are horribly familiar. Those fix stains in the sink, the eerie red light, reminiscent of a brothel, the wonky enlarger and a profusion of different tapes holding the whole thing together...I feel lucky to have escaped and yet there is something very alluring about these images..." - from the introduction by Martin Parr More »
   
Robert Capa, War
This is War, Photographs 1936-1945
8" x 10", 300 pp
illustrations
2007,
Steidl/ICP
List price: $70.00
At the heart of the great Magnum photographer Robert Capa's life's work are his photojournalistic images of war. This collection examines in detail six of the most important moments he covered as a young man ... More »
 
No Picture
Paul Caponigro, Masterworks from Forty Years,
Paul Caponigro
1993, Photography West Graphics
12.5" x 13.25", 140 pgs.,
List price: $176.47

Essay by David Stroud - 61 plates

This is a stunning volume of one of the greatest landscape photographers in the history of the medium. This work "presents the first chronological overview of Caponigro's photographic career in a single beautifully bound monograph. Each photograph has been reproduced to facsimile quality for this fine edition."

New England Days
New England Days,
Paul Caponigro
2002, David R. Godine
9.02" x 9.94", 79 pgs.
List price: $35.00
 
Meditations in Light
Meditations in Light,
Paul Caponigro
1996, Twin Palms Publishers
36 pgs.
(out of print, used copies available)

There is also an 1998 edition publisghed by The Morris Press, used copies also exist.

 
Henri Cartier-Bresson
The Modern Century
Henri Cartier-Bresson
2010 Museum of Modern Art
9½" x 12", 376
pp
List price: $75.00
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) is one of the most influential and beloved figures in the history of photography. His inventive work of the early 1930s helped define the creative potential of modern photography. FollowingWorld War II, he helped found the Magnum photo agency,which enabled photojournalists to reach a broad audience through magazines such as Life while retaining control over their work. More »
Bresson Paris
Henri Cartier-Bresson, à propos de Paris,
Henri Cartier-Bresson
1999, Bulfinch Press
10.5" x 9.75", 167 pgs.
List price: $35.00 (soft bound edition)
Hardbound edition available upon request.
Introduction by Vera Feyder
Cartier-Bresson personally selected the more than 130 black-and-white photographs of Paris for this publication. With photographs taken over a period of 50 years, the work is beautifully and generously printed in duotone. The accompanying essays, both short and unobtrusive, are also familiar and personal. One essayist captures the essence of Cartier-Bresson's camera work: "When life calls, he is always there, to assist, or to admire; to rebel, or to say no to exploiters and imposters, and to all those who demean its value." --Manine Golden
Bresson Man, Image, World

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, the Image and the World: A Retrospective
by Philippe Arbaizar, et al
2003, Thames & Hudson; Reissue edition
10.52" x 11.38", 432 pgs.

List price: $75.00

This new collection of work by Cartier-Bresson, created on the occasion of his ninety-fifth birthday, provides the ultimate retrospective look at a lifetime's achievement. It includes the first photographs taken by him, some of which have never been published, rarely seen work from all periods of his life, classic photographs that have become icons of the medium, and a generous selection of drawings, paintings, and film stills. The book also features personal souvenirs of Cartier-Bresson's youth, his family, and the founding of Magnum.
Bresson, Photographer
Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer
Henri Cartier-Bresson
1992, Bulfinch Press
11.54" x 11.97", 338 pgs.
List price: 125.00
For more than 45 years, Henri Cartier-Bresson's camera has glorified the decisive moment in images of unique beauty and lyrical compassion. From the cities of war-torn Europe to the rural landscape of the American South, this retrospective volume shows the lifework of a legendary photographer. 155 duotone illustrations.
Bresson, Artless Art
Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art,
Henri Cartier-Bresson
1996, Bulfinch Press
13.5" x 9.8", 320 pgs.
List price: $75.00
Montier's doctoral thesis makes up the text of this important book, which is part biography, part catalog, and part critical explication. The text, supplemented with images of Cartier-Bresson's nonphotographic work, shows the varied sides of the photographer.

 

Keith Carter
A Certain Alchemy
Keith Carter
2008, Universtity of Texas Press
12" x 12", 184 pp
List price: $50.00
In A Certain Alchemy, his tenth book, Keith Carter explores relationships that are timeless, enigmatic, and mythological. Drawing from the animal world, popular culture, folklore, and religion, Carter presents photographs that attempt to reflect hidden meanings in the real world. More »
Keith Carter Photography
Keith Carter Photographs, Twenty Five Years,
Keith Carter
1997, University of Texas Press
13.44" x 11.72", 168 pgs.
List price: $50.00

.Introduction by A. D. Coleman
This book brings together seventy-five photographs chosen by Carter to represent the range of his work since the 1970s. Many of the images in this book have never been published before, while others come from Carter's previous books. Superb reproductions.

Bones
Bones,
Keith Carter
10.11" x 10.11"
1996, Chronicle Books
(out of print, used copies available)
 
Holding Venus

Keith Carter, Holding Venus,
Keith Carter
2000, Arena Editions
11.75" x 10", 156 pgs.
(out of print, used copies available)

Essay by John Wood.
"In his most recent series, Holding Venus, Keith Carter continues to explore what he has referred to as the poetry of the ordinary, that moment of transcendence when the commonplace becomes the extraordinary. Myth and metaphor form the foundation of Carters imagery, which transforms the literal into the symbolic. In this sense, the notion of holding Venus remarks upon the connection between the earthly and the celestial at the same time that it attests to the fundamental human aspiration to realize that which is seemingly unattainable.

While his early work concentrated on evoking a sense of place and spirit in his native East Texas, Carter has more recently turned his distinct perspective outward, photographing in Italy, France, England, and elsewhere. Yet, he approaches his subject matter with humor and celebration and with a probing eye for the human spirit, regardless of time and place. Often, his subjects are merely apparitions, whose forms are slightly obscured by opt! ical distortions. The imagery of Carters enigmatic worldexplores the mythological, the surreal, and the intangible that infuse everyday rituals and moments." - J. Wood

   
Mexico. The Revolution and Beyond
Mexico. The Revolution and Beyond,
Austin Victor Casasola
2003, Aperture
13" x 9.75", 220 pp.
List price: $50.00
Order this book
"Agustín Victor Casasola photographed everyone of consequence in Mexico at the time of the revolution, from Francisco (Pancho) Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and the exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky to artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. For this splendid collection of Casasola’s work, the noted American author Pete Hamill has written a rich essay on the photographer and the Mexico he pictured so well." - publisher

 

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Spacial Uncanny
James Casebere, The Spacial Uncanny,
James Casebere
2001, Charta
12.34" x 9.8", 176 pgs.
List price: $49.95

Essays by Anthony Vidler, Chris Chang, and Jeffrey Eugenides

For the last twenty years, James Casebere has constructed increasingly complex small-scale architectural models that are carefully built and then subtly lit and photographed in the studio. These table-sized models are made of simple materials, pared down to essential forms, empty of both extraneous detail and action.

 
Tuscany: Wandering the Back Roads-Vol. 1
Tuscany: Wandering the Back Roads-Vol. 1
Paula Chamlee
2004, Lodima Press
9.6" x 11.5", 160 pp
List price: $75.00
 The land of Tuscany has nurtured and inspired artists for centuries. In Tuscany: Wandering the Back Roads, Volume I, by Paula Chamlee, and Volume II, by Michael A. Smith, the glorious tradition continues and is even enhanced in their deeply personal and beautiful photographs of one of the most alluring and romantic places in the world. - pubvlisher
Read more about this book
Madonnina Madonnina,
Paula Chamlee
2004, Lodima Press
10" x 9", 96 pp.
List price: $60.00

Forward by Steven Maklansky
Essay by Giuliana Bianchi Caleri
While photographing throughout Tuscany in 2000 and 2001, Paula Chamlee found herself drawn to the great beauty, variety, and extraordinary craftsmanship of the Madonnina shrines that can be found everywhere in Tuscany. Throughout the countryside and in towns and villages, these lovingly crafted personal shrines to the Virgin Mary bear witness to a deep-seated and popular faith in the Holy Virgin and the humanity she embodies. With a tradition dating back to antiquity, these cultural and religious objects continue to be created even today as protection for personal property, homes and their inhabitants. Whether sophisticated or primitive in design, the shrines represent a spirit of devotion expressed quietly and simply. They hold profound significance for a great number of the Italian people. ... - publisher

The superb reproductions of the photographs, in 600-line screen quadtone, printed on heavy cover stock, are at the limits of what is technically possible in photographic reproduction. Read more about this book

   
Ambiguous Ambassador

Ambiguous Ambassador,
Tseng Kwong Chi
2004, Nazareli Press
12" x 13", 120 pp
List price: $65.00

 Essay by Dan Cammeron
95 four-color plates
In the late 1970s in New York, Joseph Tseng, fresh from Paris art school after a Hong Kong childhood and an adolescence in Canada, chose to don a second-hand Mao suit for a family outing which required formal wear, and was surprised at the reactions the uniform provoked: deference, scorn, curiosity, but never indifference. It was a pivotal moment in the artist’s life, transforming him from overseas visitor to formal representative of a different culture. It was also the start of his series of self-portraits in which Tseng Kwong Chi (he reverted to his birth name) posed in front of a wide range of world landmarks and iconic nature sites beloved by snapshot taking tourists, such as the Statue of Liberty, London Bridge, Notre Dame, Disneyland, Canadian Rockies and the Grand Canyon. ... publisher
Read more about this book
   
Grace,
Yasuda Chie
2002, Wides Shuppan
9.5" x 7.5", 84 pp.
(order this book)
"In carefully crafted shots Yasuda captures mystical moments of nothing in particular – though, at a push you could categorize her subject as plants in misty botanical houses. It sounds banal, but the effect of her sensitive rendition is far from empty. It is as if she manages to freeze frame a sigh. Coloured plates, one to a spread, are printed on iridescent paper, and black and white plates on thick absorbent mat paper."
   
The Peace Warriors of Two Thousand and Thre
The Peace Warriors of Two Thousand and Three,
Carl Chiarenza
2005, Nazraeli
14" x 17", 40 pp
List price: $150.00
He made these powerful collages in 2003, a time when, he says, “the world once again went mad.” Coming out of his sense of impotence and frustration at world events, these collages shed their abstraction and do indeed resemble warriors, but these are warriors for peace. - publisher
Read more about this book
 
Echo
Echo
Chan Chao
2004, Nazraeli
11" x 14", 56 pp.
List price: $100.00
 Burmese-born artist Chan Chao received wide critical acclaim for his first publication, Burma: Something Went Wrong (Nazraeli Press, 2000). His portraits of soldiers and civilians put a face to one of the most troubling and least understood countries of our world. The inclusion of these photographs in the 2002 Whitney Bienniale was widely praised as a highlight of that exhibition. ... -publisher - Read more about this book.
 
Ancestral Dialogue
Ancestral Dialogues, the Photographs of Albert Chong
Albert Chong
1994, Friends of Photography
12" x 9"
(out of print, used copies available)

Friends of Photography publication, Untitled, No 57.
Introduction by Quincy Troupe

"There is magic, music, myth and mystery in the photographs of Albert Chong because he sees and creates it within his frames; after all, the whole point of photography is seeing and Albert Chong sees very well."
- Q. Troupe.

Contact Sheet 105
Contact Sheet 105 - Albert Chong Across the Void,
Albert Chong
2000, Light Work
32 pgs.
List price: $10.00
An exhibition catalogue of photographs by Albert Chong.
   
No Picture
Ed Cismondi Photographs,
Ed Cismondi
1981, Photo Mondi Publications
10.25" x 8.75", 50 plates
(out of print, used copies available)
Photographs spanning two decades from the 1950's to 1970's. Cismondi looks closely at his environment and presents images with great care and subtlety. The book is a collection of photographs from a photographer with a discerning eye. - Ed.
 
Along the Way
Along the Way,
Mark Citret
1998, Cutom & Ltd Editions
12.75" x 11.75", 63 plates
(out of print, used copies available)

Introduction by Ruth Bernhard, essay by Maerrily Page

This is a very remarkable photography book. Citret provides us his personal and insightful perception of the world around us. This volume is very well thought out with superb reproductions. -Ed.

   
Chuck Close

Chuck Close
Work
,
2007, Prestel

11.5" x 13.5", 440 pp
List price:$85.00

The first comprehensive critical examination of one of America's most celebrated living artists. Chuck Close reinvented portraiture almost four decades ago with a series of nine-foot-tall, black-and-white likenesses of himself and fellow artists, which astonished an art world dominated by minimalism and conceptualism.
More about this book »
   
Tulsa
Tulsa,
Larry Clark
2000, Grove Press
12" x 9.25", 64 pp.
(used copies available)

"When it first appeared in 1971, Larry Clark's groundbreaking book Tulsa sparked immediate controversy across the nation. Its graphic depictions of sex, violence, and drug abuse in the youth culture of Oklahoma were acclaimed by critics for stripping bare the myth that Middle America had been immune to the social convulsions that rocked America in the 1960s. The raw, haunting images taken in 1963, 1968, and 1971 document a youth culture progressively overwhelmed by self-destruction -- and are as moving and disturbing today as when they first appeared. Originally published in a limited paperback version and republished in 1983 as a limited hardcover edition commissioned by the author, rare-book dealers sell copies of this book for more than a thousand dollars. Now in both hardcover and paperback editions from Grove Press, this seminal work of photographic art and social history is once again available to the general public."
softbound, List price: $24.95, Amazon price: $17.47
Inquire about the 1971 edition availability.

 
Alvin Langdon Coburn: Photographs 1900 -1924
Alvin Langdon Coburn: Photographs 1900 -1924,
Alvan Langdon Coburn
1998, Edition Stemmle
12" x 9.75", 240 pp.
(used copies available)
"Alvin Langdon Coburn: Photographs 1900-1924, is a splendid showcase for the delicate, picturesque, moody images of Coburn . . . who photographed writers, artists, and politicians from Gertrude Stein and Mark Twain to Henri Matisse and President Taft. California beaches, N.Y. skyscrapers, Paris rooftops, and standing stones in Britain, are captured and softened in his definitive Pictorialist style."
Alvin Langdon Coburn: Symbolist Photographer

Alvin Langdon Coburn: Symbolist Photographer,
Alvan Langdon Coburn
1986, Aperture
11.75" x 10", 80 pp.
(used copies available)

 
 
The Last Dream
The Last Dream,
Brad Cole
1998, Center for Photographic Art
11.25" x 13.8" 60 pgs.
Order this book

Essay by A. D. Coleman

This book not only provides us with very engaging "dream like" images, it is a very good example of how the photography book succeeds as a "narrative." Cole takes you on a journey through his images that provides you a glimpse into another world. Superb reproductions. - Ed. - 51 duotone photographs

   
To the Light: A Journey Through Buddhist Asia
To the Light: A Journey Through Buddhist Asia,
Sharon Collins
2003, W.W. Norton & Company
10.35" x 10.37", 160 pp.
List price: $29.95
"Lyrical, evocative color landscapes, still lifes, interiors and portraits invite the reader into a Buddhist world.

To the Light opens with a photograph of a red-robed monk, profiled in the cameo of a monastery window. Inviting the reader to accompany her, an elderly Nepali woman, standing backlit in a gompa doorway, gazes out from the following page. As the journey unfolds, a series of landscapes, still lifes, interiors and portraits evoke a spiritual as well as geographical context. Gently, Sharon Collins' luminous, serene images lead the reader into a world of contemplation and simplicity. Seventy-four full page color photographs of Buddhist Asia, paired with short, key paragraphs from sacred texts, transform the intangible into the tangible.

Far beyond being a mere straightforward narrative of Buddhism, To the Light is an elegant exploration of Tibet, Ladakh, Nepal, China, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam by an expert photographer with an eye for images that depict the organic nature of Buddhism as a way of life.

To the Light reaches out to those who practice Buddhism and those intrigued by it, to actual and armchair travelers and to aficionados of fine photography. - Seventy-four full page color photographs.

   
Jack Combs
The Cubans
Jack Beckham Combs
9½"x12", 192
pp
2010 University Press of Virginia
List price: $49.95
The documentary photographer Jack Combs has been making photographs of the Cuban people over the course of six years and fifteen visits to the island. His images range from the urban to the rural, from saturated colors and polished night skies to vibrant street scenes full of movement and sere agricultural landscapes. More »
 
Aquarium
Aquarium,
Diane Cook, Len Jenshel
2003, Aperture
9.5" x 12", 119 pp.
List price: $45.00
"Cook and Jenshel, wife and husband, work together on large projects, she in black and white, he in color. Turning to water after a project about volcanoes, they settled on two approaches, one concerned with ice, the other with immense aquariums--hence, one with pure nature, the other with nature humanly constrained. Their aquarium pictures are gorgeous, thoughtful, and provocative. At first the black-and-whites seem more artificial and abstract, especially in the subtly turbulent image of a tiger plunging after a pumpkin, which is virtually impossible to decipher without a written explanation. But it is almost as hard to "decode" the adjacent color image of a spotlighted shark lunging toward the viewer. Other color pictures are forthrightly painterly: illuminist (a redheaded woman watches identically red jellyfish), magical realist (a baby and a turtle in a seeming face-off), and, of course, surrealist (the giant fish-nose "invading" a sunken classical Greek city). Biologist Todd Newberry's essay and the interview-afterword raise piquant questions about the aquarium experience for inhabitants as well as spectators." - Copyright © American Library Association.

Close at Hand
Mariana Cook
2007, Quantuck Lane Press
8" x 9¼"
, 128 pp 
List price: $29.95
From the publisher:
"
These photographs burn in the retina and then in the body and mind. They unfold with uncanny and luminous elegance.”—Arthur Sze
More about this book »
 
Body Parts
Body Parts,
John Coplans
2003, powerHouse Books
11.25" x 8.75", 64 pp.
List price: $25.00

"Following the attacks of September 11, artist and downtown resident John Coplans responded unconsciously to the disaster by making photos of his arms and legs and then collaging the two together into one image. After making four such images, Coplans realized the connection to the aftermath of the event, where workmen were digging up debris and constantly finding human remains, especially body parts.

At the same time, Coplans' problems with his eyesight were exacerbated; he was unable to see facial features, and he could neither read nor focus. The days became dark, somewhat like dusk, but worse. For some time, his left eye had been useless because of Macular Degeneraion; now, the same thing was happening to his right eye. Yet Coplans could still see flat images the size of a postcard fairly distinctly with the aid of a magnifying machine, and decided to continue working on Body Parts.

Since he could not see, the question arises as to how Coplans could take these photographs. In fact, he had not taken any of the images himself since he first began making the various "Self Portrait" photographs in 1984. Coplans would preview the pose with a video camera connected to a television set and have an assistant do the actual shooting. But once his eyesight had been severely diminished, this system beame useless and he had to find another.

For Coplans, the solution came in recognizing the fact that we don't actually see an image with our eyes- we perceive it with our minds. He then applied this concept to the process of making photographs for Body Parts; Coplans imagined the image in advance and then found the pose. In the past when he could see, it was necessary to take many photographs to match the image on the video, but now it was done in a single shot to get the first half of the image; then his assistant would take the complimentary pose. Very often this was accomplished on the first take with assistant Bradford Robotham. Together with A Body (pH, 2002), Body Parts forms the complete Coplans oeuvre. - 25 duotone photographs

A Body
A Body 
John Coplans
2002, powerHouse Books
9" x 13.3", 160 pp.
List price: $60.00
"For thirty-three years, John Coplans has photographed his body nude. He made his first picture of his back and hands in 1978 when he was fifty-eight and the last in A Body in 2001, at the age of eighty-one. Mythic in scope and unflinching in its examination of one person’s humanness and mortality, Coplans transcends, in this sequence of 115 images, the boundaries of photography as an art. A painter by training and a self-taught photographer by choice, Coplans uses his own headless body as his subject matter and as his medium to investigate every inch and idea about his maleness. Epic, grotesque, bittersweet, sensual, provocative, poignant, funny, and even—at times—absurd, Coplans achieves a visual meditation on the compelling relationship between sensuality, aging, and death that is unparalleled in the history of the medium.

While Coplans has published abbreviated versions of his nude portraits in catalogues and small format books, A Body is the first publication to present the full emotional impact of this important work in an oversized monograph that takes the viewer on a protean voyage through, inside, around, and all over the human body." - 4 gatefolds, 109 duotone photographs and 25 black and white illustrations.

 
On the Body
Imogen Cunningham, On the Body,
Richard Lorenz
2001, Bulfinch
12" x 9.16", 168 pgs.
List price: $24.95

It's hard to imagine a young woman born in 1883, in the middle of the repressive Victorian era, who possessed absolutely none of the prissy, small-minded modesty of the 19th century. But that is Imogen Cunningham at age 23 in 1906, shooting a nude self-portrait in which "the smooth skin of her shoulders, derrière, and legs glows within the darker context" of the weedy landscape where she is sprawled. There is no artifice about the picture, but her pale form is nonetheless transformed into a "floating arcadian Venus," as author Richard Lorenz aptly describes the image.

Imogen Cunningham

Imogen Cunningham,
Imogen Cunningham
2001, Taschen America
13.14" x 10.82", 256 pgs.
List price: $39.99

Imogen Cunningham: Life and Work 1883-1976 gathers together the best of her work from all her genres and includes an extensive illustrated biography and bibliography.
Portraiture
Imogen Cunningham, Portraiture
Richard Lorenz
2001, Bulfinch
12" v 9.13", 200 pgs.
List price: $24.95 (soft bound)
Cunningham (1883-1976) made portraits of some of the century's most interesting artists, actors, and writers. Her admirers have long waited, however, for a book adequately showcasing her range as a portraitist and reproducing some of the hundreds of less-familiar portraits in her archives. Lorenz deserves high praise for ending the wait by bringing 220 intelligently chosen and sequenced plates to light.
 
Native Nations: First Americans As Seen By Edward Curtis
Native Nations: First Americans As Seen By Edward Curtis,
Edward S. Curtis
1993, Bulfinch
14" x 11", 160 pp.
List price: $75.00
"This stunning collection selects 110 striking photographs taken by Curtis (1868-1952) in his nearly 30-year effort, begun at the turn of the century, to create what Cardozo, a Curtis specialist and photograph dealer, calls "an irreplaceable photographic and ethnographic record" of Native Americans. The photographs, reproduced using a new printing technology, are arresting. Portraits like those of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce and of a Mohave woman potter show the dignity and endurance of these Americans. Landscape pictures of tepees in winter or a canoe-with-hunter suggest the shadings of a charcoal master and demonstrate Curtis's artistry. The photographs also range over pottery, masked dancers and various ritual objects and are accompanied by Curtis's detailed, stately captions. Some Native Americans have criticized Curtis for stereotypical, stylized images, notes former museum curator Horse Capture, but to him, they are images of beauty, power and pride. Indeed, the portrait of Horse Capture's great-grandfather is another moving epitaph for a lost world." - Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Native Nations Miniseries: Chiefs & Warriors
Native Nations Miniseries: Chiefs & Warriors,
Edward S. Curtis
1996, Bulfinch
6.3" x 4.6", 96 pp.
List price: $13.95
"This miniature book features pictures by photographer Edward Curtis ... Chiefs and Warriors gives us striking pictures of tribal leaders dressed in traditional ceremonial garb or battle regalia." - 45 quadrotone plates
Edward S. Curtis: The Great Warriors
Edward S. Curtis: The Great Warriors,
Edward S. Curtis
2004, Bulfinch
128 pp.
List price: $35.00

 "For over thirty years the photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952) travelled the length and breadth of North America, seeking to record in words and images the traditional life of its vanishing indigenous inhabitants. Like a man possessed, he strove to realize his life's work, which culminated in the publication of his encyclopaedia "The North American Indian." In the end this monumental work comprised twenty textual volumes and twenty portfolios with over 2,000 illustrations. No other photographer has created a larger oeuvre on this theme, and it is Curtis, more than any other, who has crucially moulded our conception of North America's Indians.

This book shows the photographer's most impressive pictures and vividly details his journey through life, which led him not only into the prairies but also into the film studios of Hollywood."

The Plains Indian Photographs of Edward S. Curtis
The Plains Indian Photographs of Edward S. Curtis,
Edward S. Curtis
2001, University of Nebraska Press
9.36" x 8.25", 186 pp.
List price: $60.00
"Famous, iconic and oft-maligned, The Plains Indians Photographs of Edward S. Curtis, taken in the early 20th century, are here winnowed to a tiny fraction of their bulk and considered within their artistic and cultural contexts by scholars Martha H. Kennedy, Martha A. Sandweiss, Mick Gidley and Duane Niatum. However one feels about Curtis's project, it's hard not to be impressed by its scope: The North American Indian, which constitutes about one-third of his total oeuvre, consists of 20 volumes of large photogravures and 20 volumes of illustrated text on more than 80 tribal groups which the 91 photos here can only begin to suggest. Kennedy notes "a widespread tendency to regard Plains Indians as representative... of all American Indians." Sandweiss describes how Curtis conceived of himself "as the Herodotus of a dying race" in his systematic cataloguing of his subjects." - Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
   
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