Book Description

The first compilation of writings by a master of photography.

One of the leading lights in photography of the twentieth century, Henri Cartier-Bresson is also a shrewd observer and critic. His writings on photography and photographers, which have appeared sporadically over the past forty-five years, are gathered here for the first time. Several have never before appeared in English.

The Mind's Eye features Cartier-Bresson's famous text on "the decisive moment" as well as his observations on Moscow, Cuba, and China during turbulent times, which ring with the same immediacy and visual intensity that he brings to his photography.

Cartier-Bresson remains as direct and insightful as ever in his writings. His commentary on photographer friends he has known-including Robert Capa, André Kertész, Ernst Haas, and Sarah Moon-reveal the impassioned and compassionate vision for which Cartier-Bresson is beloved.
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Reviews (4)

A small book with a lot of insight
I got HCB's book from the library this week and couldn't stop reading it since I started.
Mind you this book has its pluses and minuses:
Pluses:
It is gives good insight in HCB's style of thinking and in general photography in his own words. He talks about his little experiences in China, Cuba, Russia and also about his friends.
Minuses:
The book is very brief and u yearn for more of his stories and experience. It has very less photographs, so if you are looking for that you might get disappointed.

With all that said, I would definitely recommend all of u Photography fans to read it at least once if your local library carries it.

It is not what I expected
I bought this book thinking that I was going to receive more insight of Cartier-Bresson style. There is something but I expected more about the thinking of this master of Photography.

You won't find what you want here
This book is certainly looks interesting for anybody wanting to learn a bit more about the art and thinking of Cartier-Bresson, and indeed it is beautifully designed and produced. Unfortunatly the the little scraps of information that it contains seem as if they have been published just beacause they have indeed come from the great masters mouth. I mean its all kind of throw away stuff obviously never intended to be published with perhaps a couple of interesting paragraphs -but you probably knew those ones anyway-. So if you really want to study his work get "the artless art" if you want to learn from his experience, look at his pictures, you won't get much from this one.

First compilation of his writings by Henri Cartier-Bresson
This is the nicest book I've ever read on photography. Bresson explains his art in a very comprehensive way and invites us to think about the photography. He also reminds us one thing that we are usually keen to forget about it: The photograph is nothing without it's content; The content must be the reflection of our life.. It was a real pleasure for me to read this great master's well filtered thoughts (over 90 years!)on photography. For those who think photograph really does matters ... Read more

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

Ansel Adams at 100 celebrates the centenary of one of America's best-loved photographers. This superlative catalog of an exhibition organized by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presents the most dramatic and the most delicate of Adams's formal compositions, from spectacular mountainscapes to grasses on a pond, all reflecting his avowedly religious relationship to nature. Previously unpublished examples of Adams's early images show how he worked through the day, using changing light and different vantage points to interpret a subject. A fascinating comparison of his darkroom techniques is given in two printings of a 1948 negative of Mount McKinley, made in 1949 and 1978 to very different effects, one brooding and luminous, the other crisp and monumental. (The conventional wisdom is to prefer the earlier, but this reviewer loves them both.) The text by John Szarkowski, director emeritus of New York MoMA's photography department, gives biographical details and gracefully places Adams in the history of 20th-century photography and the conservation movement. Impeccable technical standards were a hallmark of Adams's work, and this book follows his tradition. Each black-and-white image is a tritone, meaning that it was printed from three different plates corresponding to different parts of the original photograph's gray scale, resulting in an extremely rich chromatic range. Light really does appear to glisten off a wet rock, and white aspens to glow. The images have been very carefully chosen, each page of a double spread complementing the other. The book's paper is custom-made, it is bound in linen and presented in a linen slipcase, and a complimentary facsimile of one of Adams's icons is included. The whole adds up to a most unusual and pleasing artifact: Ansel Adams at 100 consciously sets out to be the definitive study of a master, and it succeeds. --John Stevenson ... Read more

Reviews (18)

A masterful restrospective
If you can only afford to buy one photo book / coffee table book this year . . . this is the book to buy. Period. This oversized book is beautifully reproduced and lovingly bound to last for ages; a commemorative print, not available elsewhere, is reproduced as a separate plate -- suitable for framing, which is a nice touch: Who among us can afford an original Ansel Adams photograph? As beautiful as this is as an example of book-making, its real value lies in the selection of photos.
Of course, no two photographers will ever agree as to what photos should have been included in this massive retrospective -- outside of the obvious ones like "Moonrise Over Hernandez County" -- but every photographer who looks at this book should find inspiration in Ansel's inimitable "eye" that saw, and captured on film, the ordinary and transformed it into the extraordinary; a photographer who saw the extraordinary and transformed it into the sublime.
As for the text: I think an academic perspective is certainly appropriate for such a retrospective, but I would dearly have loved to see a piece by, say, Joseph Holmes (NATURAL LIGHT--a gorgeous collection of photos) or another photographer to give it, so to speak, a "through the lens" perspective.
Although there are other coffee-table sized books published of Ansel Adams's work, this one sets a high watermark and, as such, should find a permanent place in the library of every serious photographer, aspiring photographer, or anyone with a sense of beauty who can appreciate the rare and wonderful talent that is Ansel Adams.

Quality Show Catalog of Adams' Nature and Landscape Images
This book is the official catalog for the traveling show in honor of Ansel Adams' birth in 1902 that just opened in San Francisco and will travel through Chicago, London, Berlin, and Los Angeles before closing in New York late in 2003. I cannot remember a finer catalog for a photography show.

The show's images were selected by John Szarkowski who is the director emeritus of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art. In selecting images for the show, he emphasized both what he thought was Ansel Adams' finest work, and his work that looked best in printed form. So the images provide room for an outstanding reproduction, and that's just what the book's publishers have provided.

The edition itself comes linen bound and in a matching linen slip cover. The pages are all of the highest quality heavy cover stock. The tritone printing is exquisite, limited only by the negatives and the current state-of-the art in printing. There is also a superb design. The works are sized to be in proportion to each others' negatives. Where images play off of each other, they are placed next to one another or on facing pages. Where that sort of conversation isn't possible, you see one image per two open pages. Unlike most of Ansel Adams' books, this one is on oversized pages so that there is the possibility of seeing the details as Mr. Adams intended them to be seen.

A nice bonus is that each book comes with a frameable tritone 13" X 11" print on heavy cover stock with fascimile signature by Ansel Adams and a blind embossed seal of the Ansel Adams Trust of Aspens, Dawn, Dolores River Canyon, Colorado, 1937 . . . which is also reproduced in the book. It is the image of aspens that you probably know best from Mr. Adams' work.

The essay focuses on two things: (1) The question of whether the photographer brings order to nature (as Edward Weston suggested) or simply sift its out (like gold dust from gravel in a stream) as Ansel Adams seems to have done. (2) A brief biography of Ansel Adams emphasizes his life as an art photographer and his early parallel interest in piano. Since the book is for a show, it would be inappropriate to try to cover much more. I was disappointed, however, that more of Mr. Adams' many letters were not included.

The main drawbacks of this book for most people will be that it is selective and narrow in focus. Many people will mistakenly think that this book is intended to be the ultimate biography and reproduction of his photographs. That work remains to be done. I shiver to think what that will cost us to purchase! You will get a taste of his many different nature and landscape shots, but not all of your old favorites or as many of any type as you would probably like. You will also yearn, if you are like me, for an essay that paid more attention to his efforts in conservation.

Of the 114 plates in the book, I found 27 to be outstanding to an extraordinary degree for my taste. Not surprisingly, seven were from Yosemite, and six from the Sierra Nevadas. A number of others were of mountain scenes. To me, Mr. Adams captures the spiritual connection of mountains, sky, and water in an unusually transcendant way. But his focused works of grass and leaves on water, dead trees, solitary trees, rocks, and sections of rock formations are equally intriguing and spiritual, just in a different way. Space does not permit me to cite all of these images by name. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many of my favorites in the book were new to me, even though I have read every Ansel Adams book I can find.

The exquisite details in these works overwhelm you with the sense of how much complexity is woven together into our natural world, and how seldom we take a moment to absorb every iota of it.

After you finish enjoying this fine work, I suggest that you think about where you find spirituality in your life. What places? What times? How do you capture and keep that feeling with you?

Touch God in new ways . . . all the time.

A Great Tribute to a Great Artist
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Ansel Adams' birth, John Szarkowski has selected what he considers Adams' finest works and offers a critique that ranks the photographer as one of the great artists of our time.

Szarkowski, Director Emeritus of the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, often selects unexpected and unfamiliar prints in his collection. The book is great in every way. It was printed in tritones at Meridian Printing on paper made in Toulouse, France. The plates are scaled to reflect the relative size of the original photographs; the book and slipcase are bound in a linen cloth made in the Netherlands. It is a fitting tribute to Ansel Adams' art.

Adams' pictures define for me what the term landscape means. This is a great collection of his work and should serve provide a firm foundation for Adams' elevation from a photographer to an artist.

A Picture is worth a million words
Adams work speaks for itself. He spend a lifetime documenting the beauty of the natural world and defined many of the standards that we now take for granted with regard to landscape and nature photograpy. Unfortunately, the curator of this show, John Szarkowki, is a long-winded blowhard who finds his own maundering art criticism much more interesting than, say, the biographical basics of Adams life or the numerous interesting conflicts and interactions he had with other of his peers and contemporaries. The pictures are lovely, of course, but you can learn a lot more about Adams' work and life through almost any other book, and for a lot less than [$$$].

A very nice collection
I purchased the catalog after seeing the centennial exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The choice of photographs was strong and the exhibit flowed well from one photograph to another - as does the catalog. Like other reviewers, I would have liked to see more of Ansel Adams' greatest hits, but I found this catalog to be as good as or better than any other collection of his work that I have seen. The short introductory biographies in the catalog were informative, if a bit trite at times.

The exhibit is a must see and the (paperback) catalog a good buy. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (3)

the best
Cartier-Bresson is a God of Photography. This is his best album that I know.

Visualizing the Common Qualities!
Review Summary: This book is a brilliant expansion of M. Cartier-Bresson's 1955 show designed to emphasize the similarities that exist from country to country throughout Europe in the way people live together. M. Jean Clair has done a marvelous job of adding earlier and more recent images to extend and magnify this theme. As a result you will see an "unquestionable family likeness" for the Europeans that emerges from "the obstinate reworking of a chosen subject." The book contains 200 duotone images to make that point.

Reader Caution: While there is relatively little nudity in this book, there is one final image of two female models resting on a couch that would probably cost this material an R rating if it were a motion picture. If you skip that photograph, you will probably not find the other partial female nudity offensive. This one work is actually asexual, in portraying posing nude as hard work from which one needs a totally relaxing break.

Review: Since World War II, Europeans have been struggling with their common heritage and how to balance it with the national, religious, and cultural ones. Gradually, the differences are being homogenized. Brilliantly, Henri Cartier-Bresson understood early on that the connections were stronger than most other people probably realized. By showing the similarities across countries and cultures, he creates an awareness of potential for friendship that would escape those who had never visited all of these countries.

The work revolves around unnamed themes. But any casual viewer will spot children playing, men and women enjoying a relaxed moment together, public observances of religion and politics, how humans are dominated by nature, the contrasts between rich and poor, and the artificial nature of much modern life. His work also explores the subtle ways that natural and human-made objects display the same forms and outlines.

Here are my favorite images in the book: Guilvines, Brittany, France, 1956; On the banks of the Seine, France, 1936; Palais-Royal, Paris, France, 1959: Amarante, Alto Douro, Portugal, 1955; Lamego, Beira Alta, Portugal, 1955; Madrid, Spain, 1932; Ariza, Aragon, Spain, 1953; Aquila, the Abruzzi, Italy, 1951; Torcello, Italy, 1953; Zurich, Switzerland, 1953; Ridnik, Serbia, Yugoslavia, 1965; Gyor, Hungary, 1964; Near Linz, Upper Austria, 1953; Tug-boat pilots on the Rhine, Germany, 1952; Warsaw, Poland, 1931; Moscow, USSR, 1954; Fishermen, near Suzdal, USSR, 1972; George VI's Coronation, London, England, 1937; Queen Charlotte's Ball, London, England, 1959; and Break between drawing poses, Paris, France, 1989.

You will also be intrigued by how much of the political content of what is portrayed here has changed since it was photographed. The scenes of celebrating Soviet Communism and its founders are gone. The Berlin Wall is gone. The positive identification with everything royal in England is diminished.

Naturally, there's a less pleasant side of this convergence that M. Cartier-Bresson did not choose to portray -- the dominance of mass culture with world brands and forms of entertainment, often from outside Europe. In fact, some have argued that the gravity pulling Europe together is that people like to have more choices when they shop. Isn't it interesting that this dimension was ignored?

M. Cartier-Bresson has a masterly touch for composition that is seen again and again in these photographs. The large two-page landscapes with small people in them show the kind of sophistication that only the most successful painters achieve in the oversized paintings you see in the Paris museums. M. Cartier-Bresson also shows his love for people by portraying them in attractive, positive ways . . . even when they come from different ends of the religious and political spectrum. How wonderful it must have been for him to see people so positively!

Those who are long-time Cartier-Bresson fans will be disappointed a little in the images here. You are probably used to seeing them reproduced in somewhat larger sizes. The sizes used here work, but bigger in this case would have been better.

After you read this book and enjoy its wonderful images, I suggest that you think about how people can make connections with one another that move from a deep spiritual commitment to helping one another, regardless of the basis for that commitment. Otherwise, all we may find we have in common in the future is that it will look like we all shopped in the same mall.

Stand taller by assisting those who want to receive a willing heart!

A remarkable journey through lands and peoples of Europe
This is the accompanying book to the exhibition by the same name. It is classified by country and covers from Ireland on the Western edge of Europe to Turkey on the East. Within each country there no further classification by date, location or any other criteria. Photographs are less striking than his usual magnum style but has a certain peaceful effect to most of them. Photos from Russia are exceptionally good. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Deep understanding
Very exhaustive and subtle review of Caillebotte's art and personnality ... Read more

Book Description

The definitive account of the life and work of Richard Avedon, to accompany a major retrospective of the photographic work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Useful roadmap to Avedon's work
I'm glad that I own this book but potential buyers should be aware that this is a history of Avedon's work, not a stunning presentation of his photographs. The book contains hundreds of images but most of them are small in size. The images are arranged chronologically with some associated text. The book also contains two essays about Avedon and a detailed bibliography listing press accounts about him. There is also a helpful list of the various books that Avedon has published.

I would recommend his other titles -- "In the American West" for example -- if you want to see the full-size, stunning photographs for which Avedon is famous.

Not bad, but not so good as I expected
The book is OK. Nevertheless beware: there is more text than photographs. And they are tiny in most cases. He who prefers to read about photographs rather than to see them will be pleased. I am a little disappointed.

Absolutely terrific
This is a wonderful collection. I have found myself going back to it again and again. I'm not sure Adam Gopnik was such a good choice, although he is a lively writer; but the other New Yorker art critic, Peter Schejhal (sp?) would certainly have been better, as entertaining as Gopnik but more focused and memorable. But this is just a small complaint; overall, I love this book and hope that every library in the world someday owns a copy.

Beautiful, amazing, changed my life
I really liked this book. The photos are extraordianry. Fine work done by Adam Gopnik ... Read more

Book Description

In this extraordinary and unusual book, Jennifer Clement explores the turbulent relationships that Jean-Michel Basquiat had with his muse Suzanne Malouk and with the art establishment. The result is a distressing yet beautiful profile of a strange, powerful love striving to flourish in the face of horrendous outside pressures. And while Suzanne held firm, Basquiat sought refuge in a fatal heroin addiction. Widow Basquiat also presents an eye-witness account of the drug-fueled insanity of the New York art scene of the 1980s. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Hearts and Tracks
This book was a excellent book in the matter that it protrayed another perspective of Jean-Michel Basquiat and let us in on the life of one of his most enduring muses in his short and unfortunate addictive lifestyle and life. The books poetic writings give Jean-Michel and Suzannes life together a hard tragedy instead of a glamorous protrayal (tragedy is the actual matter of fact). Jean-Michel and Suzanne's relationship was truely bizarre and not understanding to the everyday person. People who know or know of Jean-Michel probably never knew the side of him that Suzanne saw, and it is refreshing and wonderful that we were allowed to read such intimate details of their life together. I titled this review "Hearts and Tracks" because the book is full of heart and the heroine abuse of Suzanne and Basquiat (including a discription of his unfortunate death).

no title
The book came in the maximum amount of time I expected - 2-14 business days from the notice I received from the seller that the item had been shipped. The quality of the item was high, much higher than expected for a used book. It looked brand new and I was very pleased with the item.

Poetic, sympathetic, and True
I have been a fan of Basquiat for a long time. I am an artist as well. I have always been intrested in his life and have a lot of books on him and his art and his life. I found this book to be about a totally different perspective. Not only a womens persepctive but a women who was a muse to him. This book does not paint a glorified Picture of him...or a star struck tragic picture of him. It is about Susan and her plight with life, and him being a big part of it. The book is extremely poetic, very dark, sad, melancholy...but above all MOVING. I read it in less than 24 hours. I applaud Jennifer Clement

s.
This is a surprisingly light read of a heavy topic that gives a unique, inside view of life with the artist, Jean-Michael Basquiat. It is an even better book when read as a success story of a woman who ultimately left an unhealthy relationship. Since it covers her childhood as well as her relationship with Basquiat and her attempts to move away from him you get a little bit of insight as to why she would be attracted to this type of person. When you finish the book you will have learned about the sensationalized artist but you will also learn a story about a very successful woman who wasn't quite as interesting to the public only because she was strong and overcame adversity instead of wallowing in it. She is probably not as famous as her ex-beau because she didn't die of an overdose, but such is our culture.

Come to a free reading of this book in New York
On Sunday September 9th the author will be giving a free reading of this book, to celebrate it's US release, at St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th street @ 2nd avenue at 7pm....... ... Read more

Amazon.com

The early work of any artist is often startling, and Alexander Calder's is particularly so. We think of Calder's sculpture as the epitome of crisp, Modernist forms--sometimes moving gently, as the mobiles and stabiles do. And we think of his paintings as filled with abstracted, biomorphic shapes. But the 1998 Calder retrospective showed that this American in Paris between the world wars began as a specialist in smoky nocturnes. This book, the catalog of that exhibition, carries Calder past all that, to 1930, when he was "shocked" into complete abstraction, as he said, by a visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian. The rest of the book details the development of an oeuvre, including bent-wire toys, carnival figures, and circus acrobats, that made Calder among the best-loved of 20th-century artists. It contains pictures of Calder and his beautiful wife Luisa, at home and in the studio in Connecticut and France, and 267 full-color plates of Calder's drawings, sculptures, and paintings. The chronology is interspersed with the chapter essays, which can be somewhat confusing, at first, for readers who like to jump to the back of the book looking for the time line. It is well worth it to slow down for Marla Prather's readable, instructive text, which is filled with quotes from Calder and his contemporaries, and for Alexander S.C. Rower's remarkable chronology, which includes even the Calders' 1972 New York Times advertisement calling for the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon. With great economy, Rower covers every event of importance, in Calder's art and in his life. --Peggy Moorman ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Caulder 5 stars, Publication 5 stars, Writing Style 3.
Calders work leaves me speachless and in its place... inspired, to do more, better. The book(hardcover)itself is beautifully bound and constructed of the highest quality materials, making it a delight to page through. The writing style is rigid and impersonal. Perhaps the author was careful to provide a neutral background for the colorful, animated genius of Calder but it lacks rhythym, speed and ease of use. I loved the tactile experience of the book itself and of course, Calder for his fresh, brilliant and prolific inventiveness. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great stuff, even though I hate Roman numerals.
Excellent scholarly work that explains and shows what Audubon did, and how he did it. As a collector of original Audubon Havell prints, I found the introductory chapters to be informative, readable and very helpful. Wonderful explanations of his technique. About eighty of the plates are rendered nearly full size in this large book. The other 390 are included in an index as full-color 3 X 4 prints. All of the 435 original "Birds of America" images are in this book as well as quite a few other Audubon watercolors that were never syndicated for printing. There are several appendices including one that lists the actual size of each watercolor. Very helpful to a collector. I especially enjoy comparing Audubon's original watercolor paintings depicted in this book, with the large, excellent renderings of the Havell prints in "Audubon Birds of America" by Tim Parmentor, also available from Amazon. My one tiny complaint is that all of the color images are designated by the Roman numerals that Audubon assigned to them. Pain in the neck. Great gift book for both art students and birdwatchers. ... Read more

Book Description

Published to celebrate the centennial of Joseph Cornell's birth in 1903, this book provides a fresh, multidimensional perspective on the pioneering modern artist. Lavishly illustrated with over seventy-five boxes and collages, as well as images of the fascinating source material that the artist collected to create his exquisitely crafted worlds, the book communicates to the reader the sense of surprise and delight that one experiences upon viewing the actual boxes with their toys, stuffed birds, maps, clay pipes, marbles, shells, and other paraphernalia of daily life.

The book's essays bring together the expertise of Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, chief curator at the Peabody Essex Museum and former director of the Joseph Cornell Study Center; the compelling commentary of Walter Hopps, art dealer, museum curator, and the artist's personal friend; the wide-ranging scholarship of Richard Vine, author and managing editor of Art in America; and the sensitivity of Robert Lehrman, a leading Cornell collector whose firsthand experience lends this publication its distinctive intimacy. Among the topics explored are the role of dualities in the artistic process, the dominant themes of Cornell's oeuvre, and the importance of his Christian Science faith.

Through its innovative technology, the book's companion DVD-ROM delivers an encyclopedic compendium of the artist's works and source materials, the insights of numerous scholars and critics, access to Cornell's experimental films, and interactive opportunities that promote an utterly unprecedented investigation of his art. 231 illustrations, 205 in color; DVD-ROM. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

New Printing in March of 2004
For those of you who missed the first printing and are choking on the $120+ price tags of the "second" hand copies, please know that the Voyager Foundation is doing a second printing in March of 2004 - keep on top of the listings and snap one up as soon as it appears - for the low-low asking price of $60.

The DVD Alone would be worth the price
This is a wonderful way to examine Joseph Cornell's work up close, in a way that most people will never be able to do. We normally can not turn the boxes around, and look at them closely at every angle, unless we know a Cornell collector. With this DVD you can do that, and these works were intended to be seen that way. The book is beautiful and thoughtfully written; it fills in background needed to fully appreciate the works.

Great tribute to a Great Artist
This is a superlative tribute to and presentation of Cornell's beautiful work. I suggest the reviewer who said that there is no DVD included request a replacement and retract the above review. There IS a DVD, and it is wonderful.

The Attention to Cornell's Detail is Wonderful!
I don't think the Reader from Virginia Beach looked closely enough for the DVD. It's tucked away in the back cover of the book (lift the back flap of the book jacket to reveal it).

This book and DVD make Cornell, the person, come alive. His objects are beautiful but his motivations for making such wonderful work are brightly illuminated in Lynda Hartigan's well-written book and Robert Lehrman's DVD.

I am a developer of New Media and this has got to be one of THE BEST DVDs I have ever seen. The interface is beautiful and rich. And, most of all, it allows you to get close to Cornell's work (both physically and conceptually).

BEWARE! No DVD included!
The book is ok, I guess, but if you expected the much-lauded DVD to be included, you'll be disappointed. There is no DVD! The photos in the book, alone, do not do justice to Cornell's creations!(Especially for the cost...) ... Read more

Reviews (5)

The photographic art of Margaret Bourke-White
I am quite sure it was the film "Gandhi" that had me thinking Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) was essentially a portrait photographer, but this impressive collection of her life's work amply proves otherwise. Bourke-White was originally an industrial photographer, who was hired by Henry Robinson Luce to do assignments for his new magazine "Fortune," for which she did extensive photographic essays on everything from meat packing plants in Chicago and glass blowers in upstate New York to workers in Indiana quarries and the steel industry in Germany's Ruhr valley.

On her first trip to Russia in 1930 she photographed not only the industrial expansion of the Soviet Union but the lifestyle of the people and it is from this point in her career that she made the clear shift to being a photo journalist. During the Great Depression she documented the plight of migrant farm workers and sharecroppers. When Luce launched "Life" in 1936 Bourke-White formed the magazine's original photographic staff (along with Alfred Eisenstaedt, Peter Stackpole, and Thomas McAvoy) and her photo of the construction of Fort Peck Dam in Montana was the cover and lead article in the first issue. During World War II Bourke-White covered everything from the German attack on Moscow to Patton's push into Germany to the horrors of Buchenwald.

Bourke-White's work represents the height of the era in which photography was a recognized art form, by which I mean a time when photographs were hung on walls in the same manner as paintings. Her work, like the best of that period by her contemporaries, has a poster-like design. It is fascinating to read how her use of multiple flashbulbs helped her create a more realistic effect. "Margaret Bourke-White, Photographer" lays out her career in clear stages, telling us not only about what she was doing but the hows and whys as well. Whether you consider yourself an aspiring photographic artist or are simply an interested neophyte such as myself, you will have a greater appreciation for both the artist and her art after devouring this book, which contains 160 pages of superb reproductions of her best and most famous monochrome images (some of which are from her personal archives).

Excellent
I did not buy this book because MBW was an inspirational female or other, but because her photos are simply superb. They capture a feeling, a time and space with a clarity that is both sparse and yet detailed. This is a book to savour and reflect on.

Her sense of design and form was and still is incredible!
This book illustrates why Margaret Bourke-White should be recognized as one of the 20th century's top photographers. Her ability to capture a moment during war and destruction or an enternity in marble and stone, is awe inspiring. She was not limited by her feminity. She moved easily into the world of machines and factories, capturing molten metal and shiny blades. Again and again, I return to the book and study all aspects of her photographs. The depth of field, the rhythm, the harmony and the life seen in all her photos takes my breath away. Within a few days of purchasing the book, I had the joy of visiting the National Art Gallery of Canada in Ottawa where there are two Margaret Bourke-White photos in their collection. The soft creamy paper used in these pictures counters the hard metal of the image itself. These are the third and fourth Margaret Bourke-White's I have had the pleasure to see in person. The other two was a copy of the original cover for LIFE magazine and a single rose bud. Both of these photos are owned by Margaret Bourke-White's sorority and are featured in their archival collection. The photographic reproductions in this book, although lacking the soft creams of the Art Gallery's copies, do capture the integrity of her photos. I will treasure this book.

Finally, a book of photographs by Margaret Bourke-White
For several years, I would stop in the photography section of whatever bookstore I was in to see if there were any monographs about Margaret Bourke-White's photography. Alas, there were none. Margaret Bourke-White was a remarkable photo-journalist who has given us many remarkable and lasting images of industry, war and society. She joined Life magazine at its founding and died at the time of the magazine's demise in 1972.

This book provides a comprehensive look at her work decade by decade with the best of her best work included with an introduction to each section by Sean Callahan. The appearance of this book is long overdue. A perfect companion to this volume is the biography by Vicki Goldberg.

As documentary images they are as good as any I have seen
This large format hard-backed book is a magnificent tribute to one of the world's most renowned women photographers. Published by Pavilion, this landmark retrospective (with a UK street price of 40 pounds) contains 160 pages of some of her most remarkable monochrome images, together with some rarely seen work from her personal archives.

Reproduction is quite literally superb, with the pictures jumping from the page; most images are placed one to a page while some spread the gutter. Those who aspire to create the very best black and white prints should study Bourke-White's work carefully. As fine art photographs they would hang well in any gallery. As documentary images they are as good as any I have seen.

From the 1920s to the 1950s Bourke-White fearlessly recorded objects, people and events that shaped history. First famed as an industrial photographer, she then became on the first staff photographers at Life magazine.

This book is the most complete collection of her work to date and includes photographs from her early days. Images of industrialised America, through to war-torn Korea and the Nazi bombing of Moscow, all show life as it really was, and photographed in such an accomplished way, that the reader can't help but be drawn into them as though it was yesterday.

Few photo books impress me as much as this one. A worthy addition to anyone's collection. ... Read more

Book Description

A startling new look at the life's work of a photographer who had an enormous impact on the way we see the world. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Richard Avedon, we hardly knew ye.
Of course Richard Avedon is one of the most important photographers in this century. This is his retrospective book and it's very good. If you like Richard Avedon, this is an important book to own. If you are sitting on the fence about him, borrow your friends copy and, call it a day. An Autobiography is a great introduction to Avedon. However, for five bills, don't go gently into that dark night. This is a collector's copy and the price reflects that. ... Read more

Book Description

This major new monograph stands as an important rediscovery of a small but central body of work in the career of one of the world's best known and beloved photographers. The Richard Avedonimages presented here, many for the first time, were made in Paris for "Harper's Bazaar" during the 1950s. What is particularly special about this presentation is that the images are being reproduced to the exact scale of the engraver's prints made for Avedon by the master printer Andre Gremola, and are uncropped, on their original mounts, with all of the artist's notations on both front and back. Thus, they provide a remarkable portrait of the working methods of one of the most influential fashion photographers in history. This oversized book, measuring 12 x15 inches,is being printed without compromise with tritone plates throughout, and will be a stunning object in its own right. With this body of work, which includes the photographer's iconographic "Dovima with Elephants, Cirque d'Hiver, 1955", Avedon broke radical new ground in the history of photography. He documented the moment in which postwar France was striving through fashion to reclaim its cultural eminence. Judith Thurman, fashion writer for "The New Yorker" contributes the book's introduction.Edition of 100.

"And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible."-Richard Avedon

"(Avedon) is a passionate artist, always trying to climb inside his image. He gets there, too. It's a self-portrait in the eye of the beholder who is also, and so strenuously, beheld." -Thomas Hess

"Here, for instance, is all that I read in an Avedon photograph, the seven gifts it gives me: first of all, truth, the sensation of truth, the exclamation of truth; then character (pensivity, melancholy, severity, satisfaction, gaiety, etc.); then type (the politician, the writer, the executive); then Eros, a commitment, whether seductive or repulsive, to affect; then death, the corpse's vocation; then too the past, what has been caught, taken, can never come back again, can no longer be touched; lastly. . .lastly the seventh meaning, which is just the one which resists all the rest, the inexpressible supplement, the evidence that, within the image, there is always something else: the inexhaustible, the intractable element of Photography (desire?)." -Roland Barthes

Essay by Judith Thurman.

40 quadratone.

12 x 14.75 in. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

This is great stuff and freshly presented
Who gives a ding-dong if Avedon is mining his archives for book material. This stuff is great and I like the way it has been put together. It's a fun, loose design balanced by elegantly composed and seen photographs. Most of his books have been very clean from start to finish. That wouldn't be good for this project.
This work is wet and playful without losing all the good stuff. It's a fresh jelly donut with the perfect ratio of jelly to donut. At no point during the experience does it fall apart and there is goodness in every page. (...) ... Read more

Book Description

A beautifully produced monograph on one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century, comprising a critical essay, a superb selection of colour plates, and invaluable documentation of the artist’s writings, interviews, bibliography and exhibition history. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Reviews (3)

a song of seeing
This is an extraordinary book, one that can be read again and again just as a painting can be looked at again and again.

It seems to me that most literary works on painters miss by miles, and rarely help the viewer see what the painting has to communicate. They're always about things that can be expressed in words-- ideas. They're not about looking, not about seeing, but interpreting in literary terms, too often ignoring the qualities unique to visual images. Rilke on the contrary looked hard at Cezanne, and reflects sensitively and thoughtfully on what he saw. Somehow, and the process is remarkable, his reflections enable one to see the painter's work as clearly as Cezanne hoped his viewers would.

Cezanne struggled to build images of what he alone saw, putting his vision into paint--whether he looked at a mountain, a skull, an apple or a glade dappled with sun, shade and swimmers. The result is moving in a way that eludes literary analysis. This most original or artists has enhanced the spiritual vision of all who've come after him. The world he shows us becomes a different place for painters and everyone with open eyes. Rilke pays Cezanne the greatest homage he can by simply looking. A treasure of a book!

Letters about the spirituality of art
The encounter with the work of Cezanne was one of the milestones in the life of the poet Rilke. The letters which are collected here show why. Rilke, like Cezanne, was a man who was religious in an unconventional way. He was not interested in any particular concept of God, but in the process of discerning the divine in the sheer existence of things as they are: "All talk is misunderstanding. Insight is just in work." What he admired most in Cezanne's work was his "devout objectivity", the ability to let objects speak for themselves without the intellectual interference by the artist and without preconceived notions. Rilke felt that when Cezanne painted the mountain Sainte Victoire, for example, he wanted to show the essence of the mountain, the mountain pure and simple, nothing more, nothing less.

The German edition of the Letters on Cezanne contains an excellent afterword which quotes the philosopher Martin Heidegger who wrote, "we come too late for the Gods, and too early for being," meaning we do not live in the safety of believing in the Gods any more, and we do not trust in simply being yet. Rilke was acutely aware of this state of suspension, and the collection of his letters on Cezanne gives us an idea of how Rilke as an artist intended to make sense of this life in suspension.

Painting thru the eyes of a poet
This book gives one a glimpse of a painters genius as seen through the eyes of a poet. Rilke possesses the poetic sensitivity to shed some light on Cezannes paintings. This along with Delacroixs Journal and Van Goghs Letters to Theo really afford one a literary appreciation of the great European artists. ... Read more