Man Ray Photographs
Man Ray
2001, Thames & Hudson
12" x 8.45", 256 pgs.
(used copies available)

"I paint what cannot be photographed, I photograph the things I don't want to paint....I would photograph an idea rather than an object, and a dream rather than an idea." Man Ray's own words suggest the essence of his brilliant, original, and deeply influential photographic oeuvre. Taking up photography in 1915 for the purpose of reproducing his paintings, he earned money doing the same thing for others when he went to live and work in Paris in 1921. This led to one of the most versatile careers in the history of photography, ranging from portraits of celebrated artists, musicians, and writers such as André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie, Arnold Schönberg, T. S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein, to the pictures using light effects outside the camera for which he is famous (cliché-verres, rayographs, and solarizations). These photographs are among the most exciting and revealing manifestations of the profusely fertile artistic impulse that made Man Ray equally celebrated as a painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker. Besides many classic images, the book includes a number of photographs that had never been seen before, including portraits of Virginia Woolf and of Antonin Artaud and a large selection of erotic pictures. They add up to a truly revealing look at Man Ray, Jean Cocteau's "great poet of the darkroom." 347 duotone photographs.

See Man Ray, American Masters series Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde DVD Title

" ... With his photographs, Rayographs, solarizations, and various experimentation with Surrealist doctrines in the darkroom, his photographic contribution to art and especially surrealism is matchless. Thanks to his famous portraits of contemporaries - artists, writers and celebrities - he also became the most notable chronicler of the inter-national Avant-garde movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

This remarkable monograph published to coincide with the historic exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, is entirely dedicated to Man Ray's photographic oeuvre. The Centre Pompidou is the recipient of the Man Ray archives - some 13,000 negatives and 5,000 prints - which reveal for the very first time never before published photographs (a great amount consisting of erotic compositions). One-third of these photographs have never been seen.

Not only the finished photos, but also the process - crops, background manipulation and other methods. The book with its new images presents for the very first time a true picture of the artist, and a vital addition to the many publications about Man Ray that appeared throughout this century, many of which are long out of print. This monograph is a must for Man Ray experts, for those interested in photography, and a wonderful introduction to students and others not yet sufficiently familiar with Man Ray's work."

 Man Ray
Man Ray
1997, Aperture
8.35" x 8.35", 96 pgs.
List price: $12.50

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"In 1956 Marc Riboud became one of the first Western photographers to enter China since the Communist takeover of 1949--and he was permitted to return regularly over the next four decades. This book presents his compelling record of the far-reaching and rapid changes that have taken place as China has evolved through the revolutionary era into a puritanical tyranny, and finally into a mirror of the capitalist West. 150 duotone photos."

Marc Riboud Journal,
Claude Roy
1988, Harry N. Abrams
11.96" x 11.44", 120 pgs.
(out of print, used copies available)

"Offering probing pictures of the postwar world, this reissue brings back into print Abrams’ outstand- ing retrospective of the work of famed French photojournalist Marc Riboud. From his first photo in Life magazine, of a worker painting the Eiffel Tower, to fascinating shots taken in China, Vietnam, the Middle East, and other world hot spots, these images are remarkable for their elegance of composition and tough-minded skepticism. They are—as French critic Claude Roy says in his introduction—“right on target and reverberate long after the initial shock has worn off.” Riboud himself has provided a brief new introductory note and an updated chronology."

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Riefenstahl Olympia,
Leni Riefenstahl
2002, Taschen America
12.44" x 9.78", 288 pgs.
List price: $39.99

Last of the Nuba
Leni Riefenstahl
(used copies available)

Chamber Close
Bettina Rheims
2007, Schirmer/Mosel
8 ¾ " x 10 ¾", 160 pp
List price: $49.95

Bettina Rheims: Retrospective,
Bettina Rheims
2004, Schrimmer/Mosel
12" x 9.5", 208 pp.
List price: $49.95

Whether the shot is candid or posed, the mood tender or harsh, the setting elaborately staged or forgettably mundane, Rheims infuses her work with a unique and personal vision of the subject before her. Furthermore, she displays an uncanny ability to extract poses and expressions a man would never achieve from his female models. Their bodies are exquisitely free, confident, and open, their expressions both trusting and daring. Erotically charged without being kinky, Female Trouble is both a celebration of women’s protean nature and a tribute to their strength and independence."

The Fat Baby is an epic collection of poignant and often controversial stories photographed and written by acclaimed social documentary photographer Eugene Richards (b.1944). The culmination of a dozen years of reporting, both on and off assignment, these stories, each one different in style and tone, immerse us in the lives of Honduran coffee growers, members of a Kansas City street gang, drought-plagued villagers from Niger, and doctors in an embattled Bosnian hospital. They chronicle the birth of a first child, an explosion of family violence, the struggle of a farm family to hang onto its ancestral home, and the unearthing of a half-hidden grave said to hold the remains of a slave.

Described as having an acute, sometimes hard-edged visual sensibility and a literary voice, Richards writes in order to come to terms with the complexities of what he is observing. At a time when photojournalists are often relegated to illustrating the ideas of others, he persists in interweaving his words and photographs to create boldly narrative stories that bear witness to the dramas of real lives and comment on the times in which we live. Deeply personal and prodigious in scope, The Fat Baby is a tribute to the emotional power of photography and a celebration of storytelling.

The Battle with the Slum,
Jacob Riis
1969, Dover Publications
9" x 6"
(out of print)

"Splendid sequel to author’s 1902 classic, How the Other Half Lives. Compelling real-life tales, accompanied by rare photographs and engravings, report on the status of living conditions among New York City’s poor and exploited, including successful efforts to demolish breeding grounds of crime, improve conditions in schools, tenements and on playgrounds; and the removal from power of Boss Tweed and the Tammany organization. Of vital interest to anyone concerned with urban renewal and the plight of the city’s poor at the turn of the century."
Soft bound editions available, list price: $14.95
1998, Dover Publications

Jacob Riis,
Bonnie Yochelsem
2001, Phaidon Press
6.14" x 5.34", 128 pgs.
List price: $7.95

Juan Rulfo's Mexico,
Juan Rulfo
2002, Smithsonian Institution Press
11.75" x 11.5", 215 pp.
List price: $59.95
Amazon price: $41.97

"Juan Rulfo was one of the great literary innovators of the twentieth century. His 1955 novel Pedro Páramo is considered one of the foundational classics of magic realism, predating One Hundred Years of Solitude by more than a decade. Lesser known are his haunting photographs of Mexico, which exhibit remarkable parallels to his prose. The photographs, mainly taken between 1945 and 1955, do not tell stories: they present. The images of people and their land, women in their traditional dress, musicians with their instruments, capture the calm, quiet, inner rhythms of Mexico's rural population. Rulfo extracts unique moments through his photographs; his images of desolate, abandoned buildings, their walls destroyed by artillery shells, are expressions of his nation's painful history. His quietly dramatic landscapes recall the work of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston while displaying a style that is truly his own.

This collection of 175 images is the only comprehensive collection of Juan Rulfo's photographs available. The six essays preceding the images illuminate the photographs and pay tribute to one of Mexico's most enduring literary and visual artists."

Thomas Ruff Nudes,
Thomas Ruff
2003, Publisher: Harry N Abrams
11.68" x 9", 160 pp.
List price: $49.95

"Thomas Ruff (b. 1958), known for his deadpan portraits and gorgeous views of the night sky and architecture, is one of Germany's leading contemporary artist/photographers. Among his recent work is an exploration of the internet, that parallel visual universe teeming with sexuality of every flavor and variety. He gathers from that virtual playground erotic and often pornographic photographs that he subsequently manipulates in his computer, making beautiful--and disturbing--artwork from visual material that, for better or worse, is probably more abundant than any other type of image in our world today.

The pictures, which are graphic and abstract at the same time, are accompanied by an excerpt from a forthcoming novel by controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose work is similarly influenced by the sex industry. Reviewing the series in the Village Voice, Jerry Saltz wrote: "Ruff may think these images are analytic or objective, but they're also sweetly, luxuriantly visual...Sex slips into something ravishingly, optically comfortable, and these everyday, off-world images morph into parapaintings from the Planet Love."

 Since the beginning of Ed Ruscha’s career in the late 1950s, photography has been both an inspiration and a source of discovery. This volume thoroughly traces Ruscha's engagement with photography and reveals how his photographic works shed new light on his career as a whole. ...

Read more about this book

CRACKERS,
Edward Ruscha
1969, Heavy Industry Publications
8.75" x 6", 240 pgs.
(inquire about availability)

"This is Ed Ruscha's photo-illustrated narrative featuring noted Los Angeles fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, his frequent model Leon Bing, artist Larry Bell, and Tommy Smothers as models based on Mason Williams' text "How to Derive the Maximum Enjoyment from Crackers" (which is printed on the inside rear flap of the dust jacket). Intentionally photographed as if a collection of film stills, this project served as the basis for Ruscha's 1971 film "Premium". - 115 b&w illustrations.

 Royal Road Test,
Edward Ruscha
1967, Self Published
9.3" x 6.25", 60 pgs.
(inquire about availability)

Some Los Angeles Apartments,
Edward Ruscha
1965, Self Published
48 pgs.
(inquire about availability)