Essay by John Wood
" Luis Gonzalez Palma's photographs are marked by a rich texture of transcendent symbols and an open-armed embrace of beauty. Crowns, roses, and wings appear again and again, yet his world is one haunted by grief. He has said, "I live in a country where there is mysticism and violence at the same time-where you are enjoying nature and the helicopters are flying overhead to bomb some region; where you know that as you are working, someone is being killed or someone is being baptized." However, Gonzalez Palma is no documentary photographer. His landscape is not that of Guatemala but that of the soul, and it is filled with angels and terrifying, mythic beasts. The shadows that pervade it stem less from politics than from the sorrow of the human condition. For all the pain in his work, though, he never takes us to those Gates of Hell, where we must abandon all hope. His subject is grief--never despair."
Poems of Sorrow is the first major monograph on Luis Gonzalez Palma.

"This stunning companion to a major traveling exhibition captures the life and work of one of the most distinguished photographers of our century. Fusing nearly 300 unforgettable images with his own account of his amazing life, Gordon Parks, at age 84, gives us the first complete retrospective of his photographic career. 100 color & 195 duotone illustrations."

A Star for Noon: An Homage to Women in Images, Poetry and Music
Gordon Parks
2000, Bulfinch
11.33" x 10.41", 112 pgs.
List price: $50.00

Book and CD.
"Gordon Parks, photographer, poet, composer, and writer, is truly a Renaissance man. Here he turns all his gifts to the universally appealing theme of love. This gorgeous book combines exquisite female nudes with still lifes, poetry, and original music. Now 86, Parks continues to photograph, and much of this work has never been seen. The eighteen poems--also previously unpublished--trace the arc of love, from infatuation through loss to fulfillment. The CD is music especially composed for this volume and performed by Parks on piano with orchestra."

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Still Life: Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000,
Irving Penn
2001, Bulfinch
11.3" x 10.8", 144 pgs.
List price: $85.00

Irving Penn,
Irving Penn
1997, Bulfinch
12.38" x 9.91", 192 pgs.
List price: $65.00

 Introduction by Rebecca Solnit.
"Though the title of this book conjures up images from ESPN 2, the truth is more befitting—two well-respected figures in the photography world have teamed up to explore the most exuberant of manicured lawns and gardens around the country. John Pfahl has published several titles marked by a sense of wit and whimsy. His award-winning Waterfall was preceded by Permutation on the Picturesque; each of those earlier titles share Pfahl's continuing penchant for carefully describing place. Rebecca Solnit, who provides a scholarly introduction here, is the author of last year's River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, an enthralling piece of writing."

Introduction by Deborah Tall
"This gorgeous new artists’ book comprises 23 color photographs of North American waterfalls, a subject close to the artist’s heart and one which he has documented over the past two decades. Waterfall is an accordian-bound book, printed in process color on matt art paper, hardbound and slipcased in blue and natural cloth. Printed in a first edition of 1,000 copies, this is a welcome addition to the literature available on both the artist and his subject.", publisher - 24 color plates.

"Signs and Relics is an exploration of the world from a photographer’s point of view--in this case, noted Village Voice photographer Sylvia Plachy. Her engaging images--some light and humorous, some somber--show particular people and places at precise moments of synchronicity. Plachy draws telling metaphors from the photographs, which are grouped in 19 thematic sections. "Sit," for example, shows images ranging from a wood chair in a Parisian window to a woman perched in a tree to Barbie atop a pair of high-heeled legs.

Fragments of dreams and memories coexist with images from the streets of the world and photographs of people, from Plachy’s family to viewers at an art exhibition. The text suggests the ties that draw the views together and simultaneously offers insights into the photographer’s personal philosophy. The various sections form a mosaic in which the pieces refer to each other and to the notion that the present is rooted in the past and that any view of the world--photographic or theoretical--is part of an unseen ensemble."

"Robert Polidori, often considered an architectural photographer, is in fact a photographer of habitat. On the surface his subjects are buildings, but at the core his lens is focused on the remnants and traces of living he finds scattered in hallways, left in back rooms and worn on facades. His spectacular color photographs are presented here in an appropriately oversized volume that capture both their monumentality and their attention to detail. Havana is a particularly rich setting for Polidori's inquiries. The curves and columns that line the streets refer to past eras and speak of the political, social, and economic forces that have driven the city to its present condition. Through his rigorous and sensitive examination - facilitated by a sense of color and composition that makes his photographs feel like vivid memories - Polidori delicately peels away the patina of daily living and reveals the juxtapositions that create a city's identity. ... " - 152 color. plates

"In the 11 days following the Chernobyl catastrophe on April 26, 1986, more than 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area surrounding the nuclear power plant. Declared unfit for human habitation, the Zones of Exclusion includes the towns of Pripyat (established in the 1970s to house workers) and Chernobyl. In May 2001, Robert Polidori photographed what was left behind in the this dead zone. His richly detailed images move from the burned-out control room of Reactor 4, where technicians staged the experiment that caused the disaster, to the unfinished apartment complexes, ransacked schools and abandoned nurseries that remain as evidence of those who once called Pripyat home. ...
.... In his large-scale photographs, Polidori captures the faded colors and desolate atmosphere of these two towns, producing haunting documents that present the reader with a rare view of not just a disastrous event, but a place and the people who lived there. Mr. Polidori's camera is his sight.... [and] an exceptional witness." --William L. Hamilton, New York Times - 190 color plates"

Tibet,
Jaroslay Poncar
2000, Te Neuse
18.5" x 8.75", 160pp
List Price: $100.00

The Color of Wildness: A Retrospective, 1936-1985,
Eliot Porter
2001, Aperture
14.05" x 10.56", 176 pgs.
List price: $60.00

"Eliot Porter's photographs present an eloquent call to respect and value nature, while taking careful note of humanity's varied relationship with it. Eliot Porter: The Color of Wildness, the first in-depth retrospective of Porter's work, reflects his intimate encounters with diverse ecosystems the world over. His photographs invite the viewer to observe more closely at the natural world and appreciate the breathtaking variety, complexity, delicacy, and beauty found there. Through such appreciation, Porter suggests, we can lead fuller, more balanced lives."

"These churches have never before been photographed so thoroughly, with such meticulous attention to their exuberant detail and splendor, providing a glimpse of the setting in which people lived, worked and worshipped in colonial Mexico.
86 color plates."
Softbound editon available, list price: $18.95
1999, Chronical Books

Richard Prince: Women,
Richard Prince
2004, Hatje Cantz Publishers
11" x 7.5", 176 pp.
List price: $40.00

Eye-opening set pieces from the chauvinistic side of everyday American culture presented in Richard Prince's typical critical style.

Perfectly beautiful yet strangely faceless, interchangeable fashion models, bare-breasted, long-haired biker chicks posed provocatively on motorcycles ... such incarnations of male fantasies are a feature of many of the works of U.S. artist Richard Prince (born in 1949). He recycles found materials from American popular culture, most often ad images and magazine photos which he rephotographs, repaints or overpaints, arranges in collages or breaks down into fragments, thereby transforming them into works of art. Images of women representing various spheres of trivial culture, icons of advertising like the Marlboro Man, and figures borrowed from chauvinist cartoons are central motifs in his art. Without comment, he cites and duplicates them in supposedly long defunct role clichés that remain stubbornly present even today. Richard Prince: Women presents a selection of strikingly revealing appropriations chosen by the artist himself. - publisher

Text by Renée Walker Pritzker
Foreword by Roy Flukinger
60 duotone illustrations
'If, upon completing your passage through this book, you believe that this work is solely about cattle, then you must go back and start seeing instead of just looking.' —from the Foreword

Drive any highway from Austin to El Paso, and you'll find the Texas of the imagination. When the towns string out like barbs on a wire fence and the cattle outnumber the cowboys, stop and you're there. Squint in the sun's glare, rest your eyes in the shade of a mesquite. Feel the day's heat and the southwest wind that cools your skin. Breathe in the good smell of earth, and listen to the lowing of the drowsy cows. This is the Texas of dreams.

And when you can't go there, open this book. Burton Pritzker has sojourned in the Texas of dreams and brought it all back in these evocative, black-and-white photographs. In making pictures of those most Texan of icons-cows, bulls, and steers-Pritzker captures whole moments in time and place with all their play of forms, textures, and light. In his cattle, you'll find sweetness, fragility, bravado, strength, and monumentality-the underlying essence of Texas itself. Accompanying the photos is a running commentary that blends the voices of many Texans looking at the images into a single voice telling stories of ranch life, of working with cattle, and of learning to see the realm of dreams in the everyday world around us.

Burton Pritzker began his artistic career as an architect and later turned to photography as 'a pure form of expression, without a client, which gave me an incredible sense of freedom.' He lives and works in Dripping Springs and Mason, Texas. His work has been widely exhibited and is in many collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Collaborating with her husband on their first published book, Renée Walker Pritzker is a writer of poetry, fiction, essays, and plays.