Amazon.com

By a recent count, the continent of Africa comprises some 1,300 cultures. Some of them number millions of people, some only a few families; some are thriving, while others are in danger of disappearing, the victims of acculturation or, in extreme cases, of genocide. This diversity--and the dangers to it--is little known outside Africa. PhotographersCarol Beckwith andAngela Fisher highlight both matters in African Ceremonies, an extraordinary two-volume collection of some 850 full-color images. The two artists have traveled to almost all the continent's 53 countries in the last three decades, documenting traditional tribal life in earlier books and articles for National Geographic, among other publications. Here they focus on the religious customs of several dozen peoples, combining stunning images with well-written essays to illustrate the enduring power of traditional beliefs.

Among the book's finest moments are a record of the Fulani cattle crossing, when for 10 days young males drive their herds across the wide Niger River to receive gifts from their grateful compatriots; a sequence showing a healing ceremony of the Himba people of Namibia and Angola, whose "wild women," possessed by lion spirits, are riveting actors on the page; and a remarkable series of photographs of Wodaabe courtship dancers, who compete to attract wives by charming them with exaggerated smiles and the skilled use of cosmetics. The authors note that, as women, they entered places men never could--and as foreigners, they were also often welcomed as "honorary males" and allowed to witness male-only ceremonies. Many of these rites are in danger of extinction as old ways are forgotten and in some cases suppressed. Beckwith and Fisher have captured them before it's too late. Beautifully designed and manufactured, African Ceremonies makes a fine companion toHenry Louis Gates Jr.'s Wonders of the African World, and invites leisurely reading--and constant revisiting. --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Reviews (13)

Finally!A Nonethnocentric Perspective on African Traditions!
The New York Times Sunday Book Review section today had a wonderful review of this book (2 volumes in a slipcase). The documentation of ritual and people performing rituals as the seasons change in Nature and life cycles turn for People is a sacred task. The photographers appear to have embraced their subjects with care and respect - perhaps others will follow in this way in the future. What strikes me most about the book and the reviews is the genuine approach of the authors to the dignity, honor and respect of the African People they have photographed and documented. This alone makes the book a winner for me.

Regarding the book, I am particularly impressed by their treatment of sacredness without judgment and jaded lens. Indeed the art and form of ritual itself creates tradition. The music of these images is at once visual and alive celebrating the sacred as timeless expressions of culture and community.

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
HOW CAN ANYONE SAY THAT THESE CULTURES DON'T EXIST ANYMORE, OR THIS IS AN AFRICA THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. THEY TOOK THESE PICTURES WITHIN THE LAST 10 YEARS.. DIDN'T THEY ? DUH ? EVERYONE KNOWS THERE IS A COMMON EVERYDAY AFRICA.. GOING TO WORK GENERAL LIVING ( JUST LIKE US HERE IN AMERICA FOLKS) BUT STILL THERE IS AFRICAN TRIBAL SPLENDOR. JUST LIKE IN AMERICA INDIAN'S GET TOGETHER FOR TRIBAL POW WOWS. THEY STILL EXIST TOO. THE PICTURES IN THIS BOOK ARE SHOCKINGLY GORGEOUS...AFRICAN PEOPLE STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL. PLEASE! THE MEN ARE HANDSOME, THE WOMEN WONDEROUS. IT JUST MAKES ME WONDER WHY THE EUROPEAN STANDARD, HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE "STANDARD" OF BEAUTY. THIS REVUE MAY SOUND SHALLOW, BUT IF YOUR INTO THE HUMAN HAS ART FORM ...BUY THIS BOOK!!

See it before it disappears
A beautiful look at cultural conventions that may soon be relegated to the quaint and unusual.

An Africa that *does* exist, but that is vanishing
The "concise edition" of AFRICAN CEREMONIES opens with a preface by Dr. Malidoma Some, president of "Echoes of the Ancestors" and author of his autobiography OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT and THE HEALING WISDOM OF AFRICA. Malidoma is from the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso. His name means "make friends with the stranger/enemy," and that is why he now lives in the West.

I have met Malidoma on a few occasions (participating in some of his rituals) and I corresponded with him for a time. He has been incredibly helpful and supportive in my own spiritual journey (he is an initiated shaman of his tribe and has recently become the youngest initiated elder), and therefore I trust what he says. Malidoma's preface makes it clear that, sadly, AFRICAN CEREMONIES documents a world that - unlike the claims of some - is not entirely gone, but that is quickly vanishing. Malidoma comments that these photographs are very important because they show the last time that some of these ceremonies will be performed in such elaborate nature, and perhaps they will never be performed again at all.

AFRICAN CEREMONIES continues the tradition of these well respected photographers by providing a beautiful volume of beautiful peoples.

Buy it for what it is
Buyers should understand what this is - a beautiful coffee table book. Beckwith and Fisher present their usual quality of brilliant, sensitive photography. But understand that this is, for the most part, capturing a memory, a fantasy. This Africa no longer exists. Don't buy the book to learn African culture. Buy it if you like photography. As a historical record, it's lacking. One can capture a visual from the outside, but one cannot capture a cultural understanding as readily. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Eugene Smith... what can I say!
Superb. I am a professional photographer, and i really admire Smiths work. This book is a great collection of some of his images.
The publishers did a good job reproducing the photographs, nice detail and tone. Definitely worth the price.

Staff Photographer, Seattle Times, Seattle, Washington
An excellent display and text of one of one of the world's great photojournalists. I would recomend this book highly to any fan of E. Eugne Smith

Review of Smith book from an old friend
SMITH BOOK REVIEW

Having risked hernia to browse the impressive new book of an old friend and neighbor, ( W. Eugene Smith; Photographs 1934-1975 John T. Hill/Gilles Mora) what first grabs is the space, air and light enveloping these intense images with almost a loving caress, a sense of freshness and sunlight never possible in our dim, dingy-dusty claustrophobic Sixth Avenue loft building, where, just outside my studio door, were piled stacks upon stacks of his work mounted on black 16x20 dogeared mats, just waiting to be stolen, but which were, in fact, attributed by many visitors to some magical drugstore, and could I, please, arrange to have their wedding pictures made there, too? Gene couldn't sell one print for even twenty-five bucks in those days. Every night when I came home to sleep there was the despairing Clement Attlee staring upward at the bare light bulb over my doorway.

That was forty years ago, and twenty since Gene went to that great blast of ferrocyanide in the sky, and much ado about him has taken place in the interim. New York fifties mindset was Freudian psychoanalysis; everyone went to a shrink. Any prominent individualistic tendencies were often condemned to one definition of neurosis or another, and in the rather small and specious world of photography , Gene's maverick determination stood out in high relief. Businessmen photographers-- like the young Lee Friedlander, himself awash in Freudophilia, considered Gene a 'spoiler', pretentious-precious, and went instead to sit at the feet of the polymorphous Walker Evans; yes, "pomposity" was pretty much the legend that Gene's exit from LIFE brought down around his head. Not a team player at all; tsk tsk. And in his brave repudiation of corporate moloch, Gene valiantly pratfalled himself right into the lap of utter poverty.

To large extent, Gene's persona seemed to require a struggle against impossible odds; it focused and sharpened him to the high standards he demanded from himself , and he was no slouch when it came to grandstanding, often with tears, his anti-Goliath position. He built his own Myth of Smith, his self-invented public (relations?) image, fine when LIFE was footing the bill, but now, inside our firetrap former whorehouse , there was real rent to pay, real electric bills, bona fide empty refrigerators. That is about when we began to get acquainted--- I never really bought the Myth; for me he was just the strangely interesting guy downstairs who became a great pal.

Outside the loft, Gene was quick to acquire the packagable cliche of the garret-starved self-destructive artist. Compared to Van Gogh, he earned some residue of American Puritan contempt; this man whose great humanity was most evident in his work was treated most inhumanely by his peers.

Inside the loft, for many years the two of us were in daily contact, working and trying to exist under extremely difficult economic circumstances, and we often had one helluva good time!! I found him to be a genial, generous, courageous---often outrageous-- warm wildly witty man, always humble, sensitive, shy and hard-working, sharing a great interest in art, with a remarkable philosophical perspective. We jabbered of Welles and Chaplin , wide angle lenses, witches, Goya, Haiti, Satchmo, Stravinsky, O'Casey, Joyce, Kazan, war, suicide, politics, cock-fought over girls, guzzled cheap scotch, and swung with the jazz that regularly took place in my studio , as if great mind trips could avert the cold fact of the necessity to eat. I remember one hot summer day, making cream cheese and molasses sandwiches for us on cinamon bread. Gene argued that we didn't have to buy the molasses because we could get the iron from our rusty tap water. As a rule, his antic humor and punning sense managed always to keep things slightly off-balance; this man who had such a profoundly dramatic instinct and attraction for the tragic had also a capricious spirit of the absurd in the way he conducted his daily life; Van Gogh with a manic dash of Robin Williams.

And astonishingly productive. Yet always the gloomy impassioned chairoscuro came out of the darkroom-- prints blacker than black, then mounted on black, dense, intense, often in layout strangulation, making sure; I , W. Eugene Smith , won't let you go gently into that unferrocyanided good night. Sans assignments, now more artist than journalist, for years on end Gene shuffled his prints, made and remade PITTSBURG, photographed our jazz and our personal La Boheme, tried a failed book, a failed magazine, and finally luck brought him The Jewish Museum show and then his crescendo, Minimata.

One night in Bradley's in 1975, Gene said, "Well, Dave, I finally got there at last. I've got ten thousand dollars in the bank for the first time. Of course, it's only going to be there about a week."

Jump cut posthumous; an icon, passed away amongst us, is now suddenly acknowledged. Many who jeered him, refused him recognition, now come out to sycophant, to pedestal, to celebrate his life-- including LIFE itself. Gee, we're SO sorry; but let's exploit!

Those twenty-five dollar prints buckled the registers at auctions, and giant profits were made; yes, the same old art-woe story--- just at the time Vinnie the Gogh himself was pulling down millions in Sotheby sales. The dark side of Gene, finally, surely, took care of his children and at least one of his wives.

We get a brilliant and sensitive biography by Jim Hughes, a soso documentary, worldwide traveling shows. And then it seemed over. "There's no money left around for Gene Smith anymore" comments executor John Morris in the late eighties, handing his stewardship over to Gene's bastard son.

Now, surprise! comes this current coffee table dominatrix which gives Gene's babies, his pictures, the opportunity to have a life of their own in renewal. SNAP!! Of course one can argue anew the merits of the individual essays and which choices are the best, etc., but for myself-- having gone to bed amidst these images for many years, there's something new about them now; suddenly welcome. There is a spank-spank/no-no here; not all of what we see are Gene's own prints, very much against the artist's wishes, but the damage is by no means on the level of, say, Clement Greenberg's sanding off the paint on David Smith's sculptures after his death. And most of these choices help illuminate Gene's way of seeing and working. There are also textual inaccuracies; Hall Overton did not own the loft bldg. I had rented three floors, and Hall rented originally from me, and my friend Sid Grossman sent over Harold Feinstein to share Hall's floor. When Harold left, he brought in Gene.

I liked John Hill's technical essay at the closure. I was with Gene the night MAD EYES burnt out all the surrounding background, with ritual Clan MacGregor celebration, for neither of us-- one painter, one photographer-- gave a whit about 'objectivity'.

This spacious book-bomb adds honor and light to these master photographs, allowing them their own life and breathing room not usually available. Gene's insistence on control force-gilded his lilies, giving barely any space in his layouts to let the eye feel free to wander on its own volition. Now one can look afresh with impunity, and they look a bit different--even better.

In any event, Gene, now busily groping angels, can no longer argue in his own defense, no longer joke, weep, holler, cajole, rage, pun. And he doesn't need to.

You know? This fellow really had one goddamned great eye and sense of when.

David X Young

Oct 22 1998 ... Read more

Book Description

For four and a half years, Pamela Constable, a veteran foreign correspondent and award-winning author, has traveled through South Asia on assignment for the Washington Post. Following religious conflicts, political crises, and natural disasters, she also searched for signs of humanity and dignity in societies rife with violence, poverty, prejudice, and greed.

In Afghanistan, she made numerous visits while the country suffered under the hostile rule of the Taliban, attempted to reach the capital in a convoy that was ambushed and saw four journalists killed. She finally moved to Kabul in late 2001 to chronicle the country’s post-Taliban rebirth. In Pakistan, she covered a military coup in 1999, immersed herself in the mys-terious world of Muslim mosques and academies, and discovered both the extremist and tolerant faces of Islam. In India, she attended one of the largest spiritual gatherings of Hindu pilgrims in history and then rushed to the horrific aftermath of a devastating earthquake. She repeatedly visited the Kashmir Valley, where Pakistani-backed Muslim guerrillas are waging a seemingly endless war with Indian security forces. In Nepal, she covered the crown prince’s massacre of the royal family and journeyed to remote villages where communist rebels brought rigid moral order to life. In Sri Lanka, she explored a tropical paradise where reclusive insurgents trained children to become suicide bombers in pursuit of a utopian ethnic homeland.

Between extended sojourns in South Asia, Constable returned to the West to reflect on the risks and rewards of her profession, revisit her roots, and compare her experiences with Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. Her book is a uniquely personal exploration of the rich but solitary life of a foreign correspondent, set against a regional backdrop of extraordinary political and religious tumult. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

My own fragments of grace
it is a good book. and this good book has a good title - The Fragments of Grace. i live in new delhi and commute everyday to a 9-6 office. in the morning rush hour, as my bus crosses over the yamuna river, we always get stuck in a traffic jam....the buses in which I travel are always clogged tight with sweating commuters and it feels like hell......in such a distressing situation im always reminded of nazi cattle cars used for transportation of jews......at times while trapped inside these baked tin drums, i happen to look out from a side window and see the calm, dream-like, majestic dome of emperor humayun's tomb standing just across the road.......somehow someway it always make me feel beautiful about myself. while being crushed, pulled, pushed and mauled by surrounding commuters, I always try to frame a phrase that would exactly describe that nice feeling on seeing that beautiful monument. but the quest for that perfect articulation always eluded me.......thankfully, pamela constable's book-title did that job for me......humayun's tomb stands out like a 'fragment of grace' even as all sort of maddening chaos continue to fret and fume round it........

there are many decent writers around but a good writer is one which helps to articulate the reader's own feelings and perceptions even if that was not the intention in the first place.....so i was very moved and almost screamed out saying 'hey, this is me' when constable talked about her parents: 'even when we are in the same room, we remain worlds apart".......or when she confessed "seeing friends and mates they were never able to accept"......such paragraphs in this intensely personal memoir made me pause and think about my own parents and about my own life.......and ms constable was bang on target when she said that her parents still try to "improve the way i look and dress'......how does she know so much about me and my parents? how come she took my innermost perceptions and family secrets out of ME and translated them into words for HER book?

Each chapter in the book deals with her sojourn in some south asian country and ends with a deeply intimate interlude. reading the latter made me slightly uncomfortable, hesitant and anxious. it was like as if i had secretly tip-toed into somebody's attic one sleepy afternoon and was going through personal correspondence with half my alertness distracted towards the door from where that 'somebody' can enter anytime and catch me redhanded........at one point when constable wrote about a sudden in-your-face meeting with a long-lost journalist friend, once very intimate, in a crowded press conference, i felt embarrassed as if i was intruding into her privacy. indeed it makes for a very brave and kind person to write so gracefully about events so personal. thankyou pamela.

i may be sounding melodramatic but i loved the ending of this book. it was a gradual close. it was like a fading piano tune echoing from the stone walls long after the concert has ended and the audience has returned home....

finally if pamela constable happens to read this review, i want to tell her that many a times i have passed over that yamuna bridge on the banks of which lies a shanty where the elephants live. everytime i pass over that part of the city, i always instinctively look down under to wonder about those sad-looking elephants. i even made a guess after looking at some hoardings that it must be a muslim settlement. now after reading this book , whenever i will pass over that bridge again, i will know that delhi's total of 23 elephants camp there and that i know the name of at least one mahout who resides there - ghayar ali. constable should know that I too have noticed that place, that tiny fragment of grace.

really it is a book not to be borrowed and read but to be bought and read and re-read....

Insighful, compelling, important
I read this book in one day, just could not put it down. Pamela Constable has led what by any measure is an extraordinary life, full of courage and compassion. Her descriptions of the places and people she encounters in her work are lucid and lyrical, and brought to me an level of understanding I have not previously been able to manage for myself.

Brilliant
coming from pamela constable, expectations always run high. and just a decent book won't do. as someone who has almost religiously followed her articles on south asia, one expects nothing below a 'fine' book. weighed down by the baggage of such high hopes, ms constable's book on south asia has come at a time when the bookworld is already cluttered with emotional outpourings (sometimes too sentimental for a coherent and sensible read) from western correspondents who sounds either too patronising or too much in awe of this part of this world with all its engrossing exotica of soulful sufidom, AK-57 style violence, religious fanaticism, pathetic poverty, terrible tragedies and so on. not surprisingly as i opened the book, i had already started feeling a partial sense of disappointment fearing that this well-intentioned book too will end up as a hugely inflated exercise in self-important all-knowing arrogance of one of those foreign correspondents.......

now the surprising part: all my fears were uncalled for. one of the best thing about pamela constable is obviously the fact that she is a great reporter and has a clever skill of unravelling the story behind the headlines in a very unobtrusive, unreporter-like manner.....that is in a very humane and sympathetic way..... but good correspondent she may be, she is even a better writer. a very good writer indeed! and 'Fragments of Grace' proves just that thing.

as a book-lover perennially struggling to somehow reconcile his books-buying sprees with his limited personal finances, i strongly insist that this book is worth it. if there's is one book you want to buy this year, then let it be this. it has to be part of one's private library! i assure you that there wont be regrets. in this book, we see south asia through ms constable's eyes and it looks fascinating. most of the books, especially by correspondents reporting from hotspots of the world, tend to be of current-affair variety (think all those books about iraq, Afghanistan currently clogging the bookshelves) which usually manage to sustain interest till the time their biggie-big newspapers shift to some other headlines and some other editorials. such books are engrossing to read, indeed riveting and at times enjoyable, but they are then placed back on the shelves never to be taken out. 'Fragments of Grace' tends to be different. it is a book that may be contemporary but happily it also has a eternal quality about it. something that will linger on in the heart and mind long after one has finished reading it. even for those much-informed folks who think that srilanka is in south america and nepal lies on north of Botswana. even they will love this book. yeah!

anyway im planning to read it yet again......read it! ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A grunt Marine.........
This is as close as you can get in 2 dimensions to the 'reality' of 'war',words so often used but rarely, and really, never understood by those who have never lived through the experience.
The passion expressed in the photographs and words of the contributors to this work evoke memories to those of us who were there that will never completely fade. The experience has changed us all forever, and that is good. Vietnam was no different than any other war, people die, most innocent, some not, but what have we to gain from it ? ... Read more

Book Description

Philip Jones Griffiths, for a record five years the President of Magnum Photos, created in Vietnam, Inc. a record of the war there of almost Biblical proportions. No one who has seen it will forget its haunting images. In Agent Orange he has added a postscript that is equally memorable.

In 1960 the United States war machine concluded that an efficient deterrent to the enemy troops and civilians would be the devastation of the crops and forestry that afforded them both succour and cover for their operations. Initial descriptions of the scheme included "Food Denial Program", later adapted to "depriving cover for enemy troops". They gave the idea the name "Operation Hades", but were advised that "Operation Ranch Hand" was a more suitable cognomen for PR purposes.

The US had developed herbicides for the task. The most infamous became known as Agent Orange after the coloured stripe on the canisters used to distribute it. The planes that carried the canisters had 'only we can prevent forests!' as a logo on their fuselages. They were right. It was very effective.

Unfortunately the herbicide also contained Dioxin, probably the world's deadliest poison. In Agent Orange Philip Jones Griffiths has photographed the children and grandchildren of the farmers whose faces were lifted to the gentle rain of the poison cloud.

Some maintain that the connection between the maimed subjects of Griffiths' photographs and the exposure to Agent Orange is not scientifically established. However, the compensation payments made by the herbicide manufactures to those Americans sprayed in Viet Nam refute this assertion.

Historians will find it sufficient to say that there will always be collateral damage, that useful PR phrase, in war and that Philip Jones Griffiths should understand the consequences of martial endeavours. He most certainly does. He has catalogued here a pitiless series of photographs, and there can be no doubt that they should and will be recognized. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

The Black Book of American Infamy
For those already committed to voting for the so-called 'antiwar' candidate, I recommend putting this book in front of Sen. John Kerry and demanding to know what he will do as president to address American responsibility and pay reparations for the genocidal assault on the people of Vietnam. Such action will constitute a litmus test for this candidate, his "band of brothers" and future warriors about how the USA intends to solve the problem of terrorism. Will they acknowledge international law and prosecute the guilty parties including politicians, bureaucrats, executive military officers and defense contractors? Will they honor, finally, the Paris Accords and repair the ecocide brutally wrought upon the Vietnamese by their chemical weapons? Or will they continue to cover up a deliberate, malefic genocide by honoring war criminals like Kissinger and McNamara who now cries cinematic tears while his Pentagon successors plan the mass destruction of any nation that dares to oppose American hegemony?

Philip Jones Griffiths's AGENT ORANGE, COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN VIETNAM is a complex, dense statement that can be viewed and read several ways. Foremost, it is unquestionably the greatest work of photojournalism ever published. I do not make this statement lightly or without professional judgement. For twenty-five years, I edited the work of distinguished photojournalists -- Capa, Richards, Salgado, Peress, and Nachtwey among many others. Comparable only to W. Eugene Smith's MINIMATA: LIFE -- SACRED AND PROFANE, a passionate chronicle of the devastating effects of post-WW II industrial pollution on a Japanese town, AGENT ORANGE surpasses all previous attempts to synthesize the medium of still photography with historical documentation. Griffiths's masterly images unselfconsciously insert readers into the scene of an historical crime and guide them through the evidence page by excruciating page as a means to elicit direct testimony from the perpetrators and their victims. With the possible exception of Erich Maria Remarque' s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, no other monograph so successfully confronts citizens with the folly of leaders who commit atrocities in their name. The stares of genetically deformed children struggling to articulate humanity across the threshold of pain and disability give absolute lie to the facile excuses of national security used by politicians to conduct high tech assault-and-battery on unwitting, innocent populations. Then it was Vietnam, today Iraq and Afghanistan.

Beginning with his eloquent book, VIETNAM INC. first published in 1971, Griffiths has pursued an unrelenting inquiry into the truth of violence and war. He reported from the Mekong Delta battlefront and also the brothels of Saigon. Returning years later, he earned the trust of farmers who had rebuilt their devastated villages with the detritus of war. Pushing his inquest further he located and photographed war orphans, now shunned as the miscegenated offspring of foreign invaders (DARK ODYSSEY, 1997). Infrequently supported by the mass media, Griffiths parlayed his skills as a commercial photographer to raise the cash necessary to return periodically to Southeast Asia, as if excavating its pitted landscape for some fragment of reason that might explain the macabre body counts and haunting trans-generational birth defects. Some photographers are celebrated for their commitments in documenting a family coming of age or the rise and fall of a nation. Journalism schools promote the virtues of in-depth or extended coverage (sometime a whole week!) while network and cable news personnel embrace the fame of sticking with a big story only to defer, in the final analysis, to the desire of corporate sponsors. By contrast Griffiths has the determination of a seasoned forensic scientist. Although no maverick, he has paid the price of banishment from the newspapers and magazines "of record" whose editors remain too frightened by management to commission or publish his work. Why would they want to remind subscribers of their own inaccuracies and slavish pandering to the official story?

In this respect, AGENT ORANGE can also be read for its scholarship because it presents new historical research about the manufacture and deployment of chemical weapons during the Vietnam era. It has been almost twenty years since American courts acknowledged the gravity of dioxin poisoning in rulings on lawsuits filed by military veterans. Yet companies who supplied the military with these chemical defoliants continue to falsify experimental data on their products' potential for birth defects. Our government stands mute on the issue of "peace with honor" and refuses to contribute any meaningful economic assistance, nonetheless stipulated in the treaty with Hanoi. The war's apologists and neoliberal ideologues continue to deride Vietnam as a failed socialist experiment. Griffith's photographs and words rip their lies to shreds and dissolve their chauvinism in the cold truth of twisted limbs, hare lips, and hydrocehpalic fetuses preserved in formaldehyde. AGENT ORANGE is the black book of American infamy, its author has given citizens a priceless instrument to test their politicians sincerity and commitment to peace. Buy a copy and ask Kerry for a clear statement of conscience!

The ticking "time bomb" uniting two cultures once at war.
In September, 1976, just back from eight years helping homeless streetchildren in Viet Nam, I wrote an Op/Ed piece for the New York Times ( "Learning From the Vietnamese -- And Giving", 12/04/76) that concluded: "And I'm at a loss how to tell my own people that Vietnam's needs are our remedy - to say that what the Vietnamese people have to offer us - as they did me - is so great that for our own sake we must help them." I was attempting to make a connection between the spiritual strengths the people of Viet Nam had to offer us and the technological assistance we, in turn, could give them. Philip Jones Griffiths, in his book "Agent Orange, 'Collateral Damage' in Viet Nam" has made an even more compelling, if depressing, case for interdependency, i.e., because of the American military's chemical spraying in south VN during the war years there are now thousands of people in both the U.S. and Viet Nam who are dealing with deformities and death because of a ticking "time bomb" planted in Indochina decades ago. Griffiths, author of "VIETNAM, INC.", an award-winning photography book on America's longest war, has included here some unsparing images of humans beings brutally deformed by man's more fiendish dalliance with Weapons of Mass Destruction. Here is a "legacy" that must give all of us pause by a brilliant photographer's tireless effort to bring almost unbearable evidence to us of man's inhumanity to man. Like the Holocaust itself, the full impact of these atrocities took years to come to the fore, but "Agent Orange" makes a compelling case that two countries once at war remain linked in a tragic bond that will not soon go away. This is not an easy book to read or, should I say, to view, but I think we ignore it at our peril. Griffiths knows what of he "speaks", having spent years in Indochina and seen un-speakable carnage firsthand. Here he has placed the evidence before us, as well as a precious opportunity to understand where we have gone wrong and how we may become better human beings in the future. "Agent Orange, 'Collateral Damage'", it almost goes without saying, may be the ultimate brief on America's own WMDs. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Masterfully photographed and written, poetic
Philip Jones Griffiths is among the unsung heroes of our time, photographing the otherwise untold, unsavory aspects of a mean-spirited war completely lacking in human decency. Agent Orange is masterfully conceived, researched, photographed and written in prose that at once is dark, beautiful poetry. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Though he is probably the world's most honored recent war photographer, James Nachtwey calls himself an "antiwar photographer," as the preeminent critic Luc Sante notes in his excellent foreword to Inferno, a landmark collection of 382 war-crime photos. Nachtwey has taken shrapnel and had his hair literally parted by a bullet, but he's never lost his compassionate outrage. The stunning images in this huge-format book--brutally abused Romanian orphans, Rwandan genocide victims, a rat-hunter family of Indian Untouchables barbecuing dinner, skeletal dehydration victims in Sudan, the miserable in Bosnia, Chechnya, Zaire, Somalia, and Kosovo--are excruciating to look at, yet impossible to tear your eyes away from. Nachtwey's art is meant to force us to face unbearable facts. Faces are the key: you can't gaze into the eyes of a Romanian toddler tied to a bed, or wired to a primitive "electromagnetic therapy" device, and not grasp the horror more fully than you would by watching a TV news item or reading a newspaper piece. (The book's text explains each photo's context.)

Inferno is also a masterpiece in strictly aesthetic terms. The power of Nachtwey's images transcends journalism. Bloody handprints on a living-room wall in Kosovo, the ghostly imprint of a Serb victim's vanished body on a floor, a Hutu with crazed eyes displaying the machete gashes he received for opposing the Tutsis' butchery, a howling orphan in a crib, one eye contracted in anger--these are compositions that depend, like Goya's, on the artist's skill as much as the subject's legitimate claim on our conscience.

Nachtwey's photographs make us capable of imagining that it could have happened to us. They are hard to forget, or forgive. --Tim Appelo ... Read more

Reviews (24)

Into the Fire
A book that is not for everyone, yet everyone should see it. These are the faces of death and despair, the tears of anti-war, the bravery of war, the fear of not living another day, the fear of living yet another day...the courage, the persistance, the failure to give up...the hurt, the pain, the tears, the anger..in the lives that nightmares are made of... When you look at the photographs, you will never be the same. Study them. Let them go to your heart. Cry for them. Then reach out to them. And never, never forget......when I went into the Inferno, I never realized the impact it would have. We can be so distant to the people, but in this book...they come into our lives, making us aware that the world can be a living hell. James Nachtwey did a fantastic job catching the lives that we so often want to pretend don't exist. I highly recommend this book to all. Step into the fire. We all need to see........

Pictures that will sear your mind and wound your soul
With this book/pictorial, it becomes quite clear, that yes indeed, a picture is worth a thousand words or more.... Each picture means more than any news report or article you've ever read... You see the evil in the world with a clarity rarely shown in few other works of media... When you look at these pictures, tears of anguish, tears of a simmering anger begin to well in your eyes... the question we all must ask ourselves, "How can we let this happen? and why does it happen?" No one should ever suffer like those people suffer in this book, and it is heartbreaking and disheartning to realize that so many Americans and others don't really give a darn enough to stand up and do something...

Il lato peggiore dell'uomo
E' impossibile trovare le parole per descrivere queste immagini. Sono fotografie che parlano da sole e colpiscono duro, lasciandoti solo, con mille domande, a cercare una risposta che è solo sussurrata nel vento....
Dedicato a tutti coloro che pensano che la guerra possa portare a qualcosa di buono.
Un grosso grazie a James Nachtwey che per fare quello che fa deve essere parecchie spanne sopra tutti noi...

Brings out emotions that have been hidden
Like many other reviewers, I think this collection of photos is beyond words.

It may sound cliche to say this book brings out emotions inside you that have been hidden or you never knew existed, but it is true.

I heard about this book and had seen a few of the images from it in a TIME issue from sometime ago. I found a copy and looked through it.....

I could not stop and finally took the copy and bought it...

It had seared itself into my mind and I needed to own a copy because I could not ever let myself forget that the images inside this book are real and to forget they exist or happen would be like losing part of my humanity.

Highly Recommended!!!

5-star pre-review
I don't know if you'll accept a review from someone who hasn't seen the entire collection yet, but I'm giving this book your highest rating. I recently witnessed "War Photographer", a documentary about Mr. Nachtwey and his work at The Human Rights Film Festival at New York's Lincoln Center and can't get his images out of my mind. He should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. ... Read more

Amazon.com

America 24/7 reunites the team that started the popular A Day in the Life series of photography books, Rick Smolan and David Elliot Cohen. Those books sought to profile a single day in a country or city through pictures. Here, the concept is similar but far more epic in scope: photojournalistic, people-driven snapshots of young and old at work and play throughout the entire United States over a given time period (in this case, one week). Another twist this time is that more than 25,000 amateur and professional photographers snapped all of the pictures with digital cameras. From the million-plus photos submitted, 25,000 were chosen for a total of 53 volumes, one on America, one for each state, and one each for D.C. and New York City. The result is an amazing array of subjects, but all shot with a consistency of tone. Composition, lighting, and camera effects aren't as important as the content. the gener! al sentiment one gets from the images: Muslim high school girls jumping rope in traditional headcovers, Roller Bladers on the Brooklyn Bridge, electrical lineman students learning to climb telephone poles, Eve Fletcher, a 76-year-old California surfer, or Tonto, the "seeing-eye" miniature horse. There are babies, children, rites of passage, monuments, forests, circus performers, movie stars, and cattlemen. The images might be a tad sentimental, but not overly so. In addition, readers can order a custom book jacket at www.america24-7.com/customcover, using their own digital photo as the cover. --Eric Reyes ... Read more

Reviews (36)

wonderful book and custom cover!
The book has beautiful photographs and wonderful captions full of miniature stories. I ordered a cover, and when I had trouble with uploading (I'm not very computer literate) their customer service team got back to me in a day and they helped me through it -- even resizing my picture for me. My custom cover order came in three weeks. I have to say it was really worth the effort seeing the final cover in my hands. I'm surprised they don't charge us more for the whole thing. I've ordered many more as gifts. Their new site is easier to use and I was even able to track my order using the USPS tracking number they gave me. I would expect any company trying out a whole new idea to take a few months to get such a large operation together, but now its June and the site seems so be working great! I would give it another chance if you had problems in the past. I'm a satisfied customer and I hope they get more positive reviews because I know they're really trying their best.

Love It
I am shocked about the prior review in regard to not recommending this book or custom cover. We bought one for ourselves and two for gifts. The books arrived right at two weeks and I had to contact (by e-mail) the company and they promptly responded. The cover of our chidren turned out fabulous and the pictures in the book are fantastic. Everyone one that has seen our book is in awe. I highly recommend this book.

Best Photography book ever! Love the Custom Cover!
I LOVED THIS BOOK! It was the perfect one of a kind gift for my dad, who has everything. The book itself was a perfect visualization of America and the Custom Cover was a wonderful bonus offer. Where else can you get the chance to put your own image on a New York Times best seller?! I've read some reviews complaining about Custom Covers and I have to say that in my case and with most of my friends who have ordered, everything went smoothly -- their site was easy to use, customer service was prompt and helpful, shipment was on time and the cover print was excellent. I'd give them another try...I know I'll be ordering more Custom Covers.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK IF YOU WANT A CUSTOM COVER!!!
I purchased this book in January with the intention of getting a custom cover for my husband made while he was in Iraq. He wasn't coming home until April so I figured I had plenty of time. I went to their website and it said check back in a week they were updating their website. After two weeks (the "check back" message was still there) I tried to email the company and received no response but an auto-reply. Their message changed two days later to "check back again in another week they were still updating." This happened FIVE times. Then they finally said keep to checking back they didn't have a date when they would have it together. After two more months (it is now May) their website has now vanished!!!!!!!!!!! Again, don't purchase this book if your intention is a custom cover. I wouldn't really recommend spending $50.00 on this book without it either. It is just okay.

Missing Cover Follow-Up
In my previous review I received 1 of 4 covers, looking for contact info. I did receive the additional 3 a week later- how about a note or sticker "1 of 2" when shipping? For anyone else that has a problem; DK publisher 800.788.6262 live voice, no wait, extremely polite and helpful. America 24-7 Custom Cover 415.331.6300 ext. 7#, voice mail box with a greeting that states "we will not return your call". America 24-7 email customcover@america24-7.com did respond to my request in 3 days with something like "gee-wiz I really didn't know we could only ship 3 covers at a time so the last one is on the way" whatever.. The book is great, custom cover is a great idea and personalizes the book. I really think the publisher should have asked if these folks can actually deliver on what they advertise. BTW I just found this book at the store and thought it was nice- never watched Oprah in my life. Also, I would have paid more $$ for the custom cover if they could deliver without a glitch. ... Read more

Book Description

Love-ins and sit-ins, the "back to the earth" movement, nude beaches, the "New Age" quest for spirituality, reggae culture and The Grateful Dead, the New York Mets, and life on Martha's Vineyard-from an early age Peter Simon has delighted in documenting the world around him through photography. Here is his life's work thus far, an astonishing record of the far-ranging experiences of his generation, featuring many of the major figures, both in the mainstream and counter-culture, of the past 40 years. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

If You Remember the '60's...
It's been said that if you remember the '60's you probably weren't really there. It's a good thing Peter had a camera because he probably would have been wondering himself what those days were like. Parts of his world, beautifully recorded, jar our memories. Whether these memories are painful or delightful, they are part of our collective story. Many '60's communes didn't allow photographs, so these may be rarer than one assumes. The book is worth looking at and reading.

Uninspired photographs and more boomer self aggrandizement
I wanted to like this book, I really did, but I couldn't get past the amateurish tone as Simon retreads that well trod path that amounts to the sixties generation stations of the cross--wealthy childhood, discovering drugs and sex at college, dropping out and living off your parents on a commune, plugging into Eastern philosophies and, finally, capitalizing on "the good old days". I found the photographs mundane and the essays almost unbearable as Simon chronicles his constant drug taking and drifting from place to place. As another reviewer wrote, I don't think we would have seen this book printed if not for his name and his celebrity sister.

Makes me wish I was born a few years earlier
Peter Simon is a talented photojournalist, and this book is the story of his life, with a definite emphasis on the 60's and early 70's counterculture years, which he lived to the fullest. It's all here: the protests, living on a commune, the eastern spiritual gurus, flirtations with nudism, the (impressive) series of hippy girlfriends, the rock stars (he's Carly Simon's brother).

I'm sure other members of his generation will find the book very nostalgic. As for me, it's almost enough to make we wish I'd been born 10 or 15 years sooner. I went to college during the early years of the Reagan administration. The 60's obviously weren't a very happy time, but it would be hard to imagine someone of my generation putting out a book like this: who would care?

The later chapters of the book are an odd lot of whatever he was shooting during those years of his life. Therefore we have some baseball coverage, some photos of landscapes and his celebrity friends on Martha's Vineyard and some coverage of Woodstock 1999. I'd judge these chapters as substantially less interesting than the early ones.

One thing this book does illustrate is the importance of connections in getting a book of photography published. I'm not saying it's not a worthy project: it certainly is. But a lot of worthy projects are never published, and it's hard to believe his sister's celebrity and his family's connections in the publishing industry ("Simon" is the "Simon" in "Simon & Schuster") weren't key factors, especially for a virtually unknown photographer.

A Titillating Journey
Ah! From the intricacies of Tree Frog Farm to the open arms of MV's shores, the reader is webbed into every fiber of Peter's life through his descriptive words and vivid photographs - so much so, that he leaves you with a dream of being one of the free spirits on the beaches of Martha's Vineyard.Thank you, Peter, for the journey!

A Great Retrospective from a Well-Timed and Well-Placed Man
In my humble opinion, the baby boomer generation lived through some of the most captivating days our world has seen. In their 57 years (and growing) life, these people have witnessed heroes rise and fall, movements come and go, events take place and gracefully (or not) assume their places in the books of time. Peter Simon seemed to always be at the right place at the right time with his ever-ready camera aimed in history's direction. His eyes, both literally and creatively speaking, have witnessed Jackie Robinson play at Ebbetts Field; they saw student unrest at Boston University in the late 1960s; they watched his generation live simply off the earth in nature-based communes in the 1970s; they traveled with Grateful Dead and Bob Marley; they captured the 1986 Mets' victory over the Red Sox in the World Series; and dearest to my heart, his eyes have seen Martha's Vineyard come of age along with he, himself. If you lived through these days, or if you wish you had, I and Eye is more than a wise choice. It is a chronicle of your greatest memories and imaginations - one that you will want to hold in the deepest space in your mind.
-
A fan,
Craig Sherman ... Read more

Book Description

Photojournalism, Fifth Edition includes new interviews with well known photojournalists such as, Anne Wells story of a Pulitzer Prize winning photo, John Gaps III, formerly of the Associated Press, David Hume Kennerly of Newsweek, Diana Walker and PF Bently of Time.
Individual case studies draw upon the experience of leading photojournalists to show readers how working professionals handle on-the-job challenges.
A blend of insightful interviews, practical experience, and high-impact photographs creates the definitive text on photojournalism.

* DVD of short video documentaries that show photojournalists at work
* Extensive material on how to turn Pro, from developing a portfolio and freelancing to findind a job
* Interviews with celebrated photojournalists are accompanied by hundreds of black and white, and color photographs ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Tremendously useful; a photojournalist's bible
I bought this book for a photography class at Temple University, and it now serves as a wonderful guide and mentor toward all aspects of photojournalism. Readings from this book provided much debate and learning experiences for our class.

For photography students, this book is top notch. For photo editors or freelance photographers, this book may serve as a useful guide, especially in the area of ethics when taking and publishing pictures.

This is a valuable book that will remain on my bookshelf until a new edition rolls out. Through the excellence of this book, the author has earned my loyalty for another edition. Highly recommended.

Best book in Photojournalism you will ever read.
I'm been reading this book for a Photo course. The Material on it is quite interesting and the writing is pretty clear. I have been studing photography for about 3 years now and by far this is one of the best books you could ever hold on your book shell. A++ to a great writter and author. Will recomend this book to other college students that are persuding to go into the a photo journalist aventure like myself.

Photojournalist's bible
Just as Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" is considered required reading for any writer, Kobre's "Photojournalism, The Professionals' Approach" is an essential instructional manual for the aspiring or advanced photojournalist.

As a working photographer for almost 20 years, I've owned previous editions of Kobre's book and always make it a point to keep one within reach. I recommend it to anyone interested in photojournalism, especially high school and college students. While filled with detailed photographic theory and principles, the format of the book is very easy to follow and introduces fundamentals and advanced techniques with equal ease.

Perhaps my most-read sections are the chapters on ethics and the responsibilities of the photographer to the community they serve. Society requires a photojournalist to be held accountable for their actions; to be honest and compassionate, yet unflinchingly accurate when reporting the news.

Although the price tag is a bit on the high side, the information Kobre shares is priceless.

best how-to-book on photojournalism hands down
the book is clear and practical. It goes beyond the normal basic photography skills and gets into the real grit of photojounalism. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (9)

The epitomy of photojournalism
If you don't feel something while looking at the photos in this book you are dead inside.

A piece of art
I dont think Sebastiao Salgado needs any praise but this is the most beautiful book i have ever seen. The photographs are not only absolutely perfect but, most important, they tell us a story. the story of the movement of humanity. and make us think that we are only one, that borders should not matter.

The right combination
Ex-economist Salgado keeps a rational mind while making exquisite emotional photographs, reproduced to the highest standard. As much as anyone could want to know about the world's unsettled peoples.

An Intense, Emotionally Gripping Look At Poverty
Sebastiao Salgado has earned numerous accolades for his dignified photographs of impoverished humanity. This, his latest book, covers work he has done over the last few years, documenting forced migrations and economic squalor throughout the world. He is certainly a keen observer of the human condition. However, I felt completely overwhelmed looking at his work from this book when it was exhibited a few months ago at New York City's International Center of Photography. Looking at this book allowed me to step back, and catch my breath, studying each image at my leisure. Those interested in looking at some of the finest current work in black and white documentary photography will not be disappointed with this excellent collection.

A Most Touching Document
Without doubt Sebastiao Salgado is one of the greatest living photographers of our time. "Migrations" is the first book I bought after having seen his most interesting video tape "Looking Back at You".

In fact a most touching document on the migrations of people from all over the world-- having to escape from their native land to avoid being tortured or killed.

Apart from the technical excellence and quality Salgado's black and white photography has a certain magic about it that strongly reminds me of the work of photography greats like W. Eugene Smith or Henri Cartier-Bresson. However I have to admit that Salgado clearly has become my personal favorite. Being a photographer myself I highly admire Salgado's talent to produce such phantastic images of people in deep distress--showing things as they are, without having his subjects losing their dignity.

Some time ago a world famous photographer said that "...you can't photograph soul...". After looking at Salgado's work I think that's definitely not true.

This book clearly is a must have for every photography lover with special interest in black and white journalistic work. Can it get any better? This was my first Salgado book and it won't be my last... ... Read more

Book Description

Renowned photographer Lauren Greenfield has won acclaim and awards for her studies of youth culture. In Girl Culture, she combines a photojournalist’s sense of story with fine-art composition and color to create an astonishing and intelligent exploration of American girls. Her photographs provide a window into the secret worlds of girls’ social lives and private rituals, the dressing room and locker room, as well as the iconic subcultures of the popular clique: cheerleaders, showgirls, strippers, debutantes, actresses, and models. With 100 hypnotic photographs, 20 interviews with the subjects, and an introduction by foremost historian of American girlhood Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Greenfield reveals the exhibitionist nature of modern femininity and how far it has drifted from the feminine ideologies of the past. ... Read more

Reviews (15)

ARTWEEK REVIEW - FEBRUARY 2003
Lauren Greenfield's photographs from her most recent project, Girl Culture,
represents an important return to traditional photography and a break with
the popular, staged work of the past decade. Using a 35mm camera and
working intuitively and spontaneously, Greenfield returns to the basics -
picturing that which is important and reorganizing the chaos of the real
world into compelling and complex images that speak to our experiences as
emotional beings. This may sound simple, but over the past ten years,
photographers have moved far from the traditional approach and into the
imaginative fictions of Hollywood films, utilizing elaborate productions
crews and massive digital prints. Greenfield, in a powerful and compelling
exhibition and book, brings photography back down to earth, and in doing so,
signals a shift in contemporary picture making.

Greenfield has spent more than five years photographing young women and
girls, plumbing the zeitgeist for clues about body image, self-esteem,
consumerism and sexuality. As you can imagine, the results are not pretty.
They are skewed toward the complicated psychological arena where
self-awareness is mixed with victimization. The exhibition and book are
quite different experiences due to the fact that the publication included
interviews with the subjects. For a full appreciation of how vital this
work is to photography and to women¹s studies, it is important to see them
both. I found a pervasive sadness to the interviews, wherein women spoke of
the pressures to be thin, stylish and sexual and then expressed admiration
for these ideals, like an alcoholic who continues drinking, encouraging
others to join in.

The exhibition at Stephen Cohen Gallery is immediately remarkable due to the
intimate scale of the photographs. The prints range from 11 by 14 inches to
16 by 20 inches with only a few being larger. This changes the experience
of the work by drawing the viewers in close to read and interpret the
images. Besides the modest print size, when we get close to the
photographs, we can see the tiny specks of grain and notice that some of
them are a bit out of focus. This may seem sound like a criticism, but
these imperfections are a refreshing departure from the majority of
contemporary photography, suggesting the haphazard complexity of real life
and the medium¹s dependence on the artist¹s unique vision.

Greenfield¹s photographs are well known from major magazines and often
display a biting criticism and acerbic wit. These characteristics are used
mercilessly in some of the images. Lillian, then 18, shops at Kirna Zabete,
New York shows the pretty blonde sitting in an upscale boutique, holding a
red shoe. Her mouth hangs open in mid-sentence and its red-lined, oval
shape is echoed in the red, open-toed, ankle-strapped slingback she is
holding. Lillian reeks of having too much money and too little taste, and
the photograph is an indictment of her shallowness and vanity. In the
interview, Lillian says she hates being a blonde but claims to be so only
because she¹s an actress. Her awareness of the burden of beauty is
outweighed by her greedy consumerism. Another highly critical image shows
pornographic film star Taylor Wayne, who, dripping in jewelry, strikes a
clichéd pose, her massive breasts practically bursting from her dress. She
looks like a parody of herself, more of a mannequin than a real woman.

Greenfield¹s tone is more forgiving when she examines subjects who have less
control over their lives. The photographs of kids and teenagers, some at
weight-loss camp, exude a compassion that is balanced with the artist¹s
critical eye. Paula, 11, at weight-loss camp, Catskill, New York is
heartbreaking but empowering. Apprehensive of the camera, the pudgy girl
with crimson cheeks turns her body away, clasping her hands in front of her
chest defensively. Greenfield photographs her in the shade without a flash,
and the soft, cool-cyan light bespeaks the girl¹s vulnerability. Using
wide-angle lens and slightly tilting the camera, she keeps our attention on
the girl¹s face and accents her expression and wide body. The image is
gentle but also has the effect of suggesting her inner power and creates an
optimism not seen in the more critical pictures. So too with the image of
Joyce, Elysia and Alison at their friend¹s sixteenth birthday party.
Instead of primping or showing off, the three girls embrace and comfort each
other. The picture is so intimate that it reveals an emotional support
system so vital to many of the younger women pictured here.

The power and importance of Greenfield¹s work arises from its combination of
poignant subject matter, powerful compositions and framing, and the profound
connection between the subject and tradition the artist creates through her
masterful technique. The only weakness in the work is the dense contrast
between shadows and lights in many of the prints which takes away from their
emotional strengths. Greenfield is often referred to as a photojournalist,
which understates her importance in the art world. She is certainly not
driven to make pictures just because she is on assignment, but more likely
out of the desire to express her personal vision through relevant subjects.
Like Nan Goldin who, in 1987, showed that there was more to photography than
postmodern intellectualism, Greenfield takes us away from the monotonous,
digitized unreality of so much contemporary fine art photography. In so
doing, she reestablishes the primacy of the individual artist¹s vision in
connecting passion and subject matter.

American Photo Review Jan/Feb 2003
They are always blond, it seems, and always thin: the Popular Girls of every woman's haunted teenage memories. They are named Monique or Sandy or, of course, Heather, and their lithe legs stretch a mile from their fashionably rolled-up shorts to their totally cool sneakers - a degree of stylistic perfection unattainable by mere mortals. They seem so preternaturally gifted that you wonder whether such grace can persist into adulthood. (Maybe you hope it doesn't.) You also wonder whether these girls are happy.
Lauren Greenfield wondered just that when she traveled to Edina, Minnesota, in 1998 to photograph a story for The New York Times Magazine on the expansive topic of "being 13." Her pictures of the glorious blond Alpha Girls ruling over the seventh grade there began to provide an answer. The photos also began to convince Greenfield that there was much to be revealed about the real lives of American girls. It all led to a new book, Girl Culture (Chronicle Books, $40), an ambitious effort that blurs the distinction between photojournalism, art, and social science. (An accompanying exhibition of the images opened in October at the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York and will be traveling to the Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles in December and the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco in January.) "What I learned shooting the 'popular girls' in Edina was how hard it was to stay on top," says Greenfield, "and how insecure they felt about their social position. One said she was afraid she would come to school one day and suddenly find that she wasn't in the popular group anymore. Another girl said that if she could do it over again, she'd rather have real friends who liked her for who she was." Instead, she was rewarded for who she appeared to be.
That raw truth - the tyranny of appearance in the lives of young girls and women-lies at the center of Greenfield's book. The girls in Girl Culture range from four-year-olds playing dress-up in spangly princess outfits to awkward teenagers arriving at a weight-loss summer camp to Las Vegas showgirls and strippers plying their trade. In one way or another, all of them are defined by how they look. Like the photographs in Greenfield's first book, 1997's acclaimed Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood, the images in Girl Culture are often weighty with unflinching detail. In one shot, a showgirl named Anne-Margaret is seen reflected in her dressing-room mirror at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas. Taped to the side of the mirror is a handwritten note that reads I APPROVE OF MYSELF alongside pictures of models the dancer admires. That picture, shot on assignment for Stern magazine, got Greenfield thinking "about how girls construct their identities, how they use pieces of the outside world to express themselves."
Soon, Greenfield, who recently became a member of the VII photo agency, began seeing aspects of girl culture all around her: on an assignment in Florida shooting a story on spring break, with its "girls gone wild" partying; while photographing Chattanooga, Tennessee, debutantes who complained about being fat as a size four; and while shooting the Edina teenagers, whose unforgiving social structure was described by one of their mothers as consisting of "tier-one, tier-two, and tier-three girls." Putting the book together, Greenfield says, was an intuitive process. "I made a lot of different pictures that seemed like pieces of the puzzle," she says, "but I didn't know until I was editing it whether they would all fit together." The puzzle included some surprising juxtapositions, tying together the worlds of girls and adult women. "When I looked at the exhibitionism of strippers, it reminded me of little girls and how they perform, how they look for approval," the photographer says. "In pictures, you can't help seeing the similarities in dress and body language."
The work was also cathartic. Greenfield was once, after all, a little girl who grew into a woman in the American body culture, and she recounts her own teenage years of chronic dieting, anxiety about her own popularity, and a conviction that her outer appearance reflected the imperfections that lurked on the inside. In this Greenfield has plenty of company. One eating-disorder clinic estimates that 85 percent of adult females wake up each morning dissatisfied with their weight and appearance, determined to somehow replicate the ever-shrinking dimensions of "lollipop" actresses and models (so called because their heads look oversized atop their sticklike frames). Joan Jacobs Brumberg, a historian at Cornell University, who wrote the introduction to Greenfield's book, feels that the current cultural environment, fueled by commercial forces outside the family and community, is actually toxic for adolescent girls "because of the anxieties it generates about the developing female body and sexuality."
One bright spot in this dispiriting landscape of insecurity and self-blame is the rise of girls' athletics, which is credited with giving at least some girls a body identity that arises from their abilities rather than their decorativeness. Greenfield says that the athletes she photographed-including tennis star Venus Williams, members of the Stanford University women's swim team, and players on the Little Indians softball team in Naples, Florida, where girls' softball is a local tradition-had a sense of a goal broader than themselves. "They have a larger and more important context in which to see themselves," she says, "that has to do with making a faster time, or coming through for their team, rather than simply looking good when they walk out the door."
The book also features Greenfield's bracingly honest interviews with some of the girls she photographed, such as Stephanie, 14, whom the photographer met at the weight-loss camp, and Sheena, a 15-year-old struggling with her body image (see page 56). "I think it's a challenging culture for girls to grow up in," Greenfield admits. "My role isn't to condemn it, but to try to show the pieces, to put them together. This book is a subjective view of one aspect of the girl culture. It's not the whole story, but it's the part of the story that leaves no one untouched."

Very chic and lovely!
The photographs taken in this book were wonderful and fun, but the only reason why I gave it a 4 was because it didn't have much variety [and, to be honest, was a bit cliché]. However, I did find the book very interesting and the stories for each photo made it twice as good. I definitely would recommend it.

What It's Like for a Girl
I first saw this exhibit at the CCP at the University of Arizona, when I was 18 years old. Since then, I have not been able to erase Greenfield's images from my mind. Not only are her photographs beautiful and powerful, but the testimonials that go with each photo are heartbreaking. After I saw the exhibit, I had to have the book... but I didn't end up buying it until years later. I was happy to find that the book has expanded content--more pictures, longer testimonials, an introduction by JJ Brumburg (excellent!) and an essay written by Lauren Greenfield herself. I highly, highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the psychology and sexuality of America's female population.

Flash Art Magazine Review, February 2004
American photographer Lauren Greenfield's recent exhibition is entitled "Girl Culture". The artist's stunning documentary photographs are prompting comparisons to other female photographers such as Tina Barney and Nan Goldin.

Like Barney, also a documentarist of the social realms of contemporary America, Greenfield painstakingly monitors subtle variations of self-representation, made congruent with commonly accepted ideals at the earliest possible stage in a person's development. The rites Greenfield are watching are those of the common girl. In this way, "Girl Culture" presents the opposite of the body-hiding conventions of Barney's East Coast WASPs. Greenfield focuses on the procedures of preparing and presenting the body in a body-fixated mass culture.

"Girl Just Want to Have Fun" springs to mind as a disturbing euphemism for living the life of a little girl, an adolescent, or a grown woman in the United States today. Oscillating between overeating, starving, and self-mutilation, these girls become conditioned at an early age (even as young as four) by dressing up (and looking frighteningly grown-up) in a brutally competitive environment filled with drastic misconceptions of beauty.

The radical affirmation of the standardized ideal sometimes results in travesty, such as when we look through the photographer's eyes at both Las Vegas showgirls and minors wearing too much makeup. Greenfield knows her craft. Her eye is never hurtful or brutally revealing, but instead allows her subjects to present themselves the way they like, the way they live - knowing that the production of the self in front of the camera can be more revealing than any pose the photographer suggests.

Beauty, for most of these girls and women, is used as a weapon. It seems to grant self-esteem and acceptance. The outer appearance supports and covers the self simultaneously until the individual is no longer indistinguishable from the masses, until it seems to blend in smoothly. The American body is a body for the masses that results in mass display of the manipulated, operated, augmented body on such ritual occasions as pageants and spring breaks. Greenfield shows the way that these rituals conceal a rigid subtext of pain, suppression, and denial.

Remarkable is the sheer absence of men in all of these scenes. With the exception of a spring ritual, in which a group of men hold up a woman like a broken Barbie doll, they are almost invisible. They occupy the women's fantasies, their longings, their projections. Thus, they are included in every picture that Greenfield takes, with a girl culture unfolding in front of the backdrop of dominant male culture. In this respect, Greenfield's seemingly objective photography contains a tangiable, important critique. (Written by Magdalena Kroner) ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Thirties brainwashing
A fascinating photo study of how two nations used photography to push their own political agenda. Author Bendavid-Val sums it up as...'The moral Russian individual was called upon to yeild unselfishly to his people. Americans on the other hand believed that the individual had a basic right to act aggressively on his own behalf, to make his own future...'.

The book starts with a super twenty-four pages of photos, each spread has a Soviet photo facing an American one, both dealing with the same subject, children, street scenes, farm workers, power stations, in a bar, shop windows etc. They do look very similar, least at first glance!

The essence of the book are two portfolios of black and white photos, first the Soviets with seventy-seven then the Americans with seventy-four, they are mostly one to a page and beautifully printed.

The author explains in an illustrated essay the thinking behind taking pictures for propaganda, this could turn out to be a bit of a hazard in the old Soviet Union where creative folk could become non-people as happened to photo-editor Lazar Mezhericher, declared a saboteur in 1937 and photographer Yakov Khalip who had the misfortune to take portraits of NKVD boss Nikolai Yezhov who vanished one fine day, also in 1937. Khalip's work was suddenly tainted!
Incidentally 'The Commissar Vanishes' by David King is an interesting book about the falsification of photos in Stalin's Russia

What the author does not cover is why the American photos are technically so much better than the Soviet ones. I assume this has to do with Roy Stryker's very tight shooting scripts that he made his photographers follow. Also the output of the FSA had to compete with commercial images from ad agencies and the like. The Soviet photographers would hardly have had to worry about such competition and so their photos were much more subjective and creative. Strangely a lot of the American photos were taken in the early forties, despite the book title refering to photography in the 1930s.

Unfortunately there is no index or bibliography, which I would have expected. In the 'Listomania' section of my...'see more about me' page I have made a Top-Ten list of books about about FSA photographs.

Leah Bendavid-Val is to be congratulated on producing an excellent book about documentary photogrphy during the 1930s. These photographs are some of the greatest ever taken. ... Read more

Book Description

The most arresting photographic images in our history-all the way up to the World Trade Center tragedy and the 2002 war in Afghanistan-come to life in this complete compilation of Pulitzer Prize-winning news and feature photos, along with the stories behind them.

More than 235 prize-winning photographs offer a year-by-year, dramatically visual chronicle of our times. Each beautifully reproduced image is accompanied by key information on how the shot was taken and the stunning story behind it, as told to author Hal Buell by the photographers. An accompanying timeline, placing each photo in its historical context, features yet another 265 photographs.

This unique and moving volume is completely up to date, including the 2000-2001 winners.Recent photos include images of students fleeing Columbine High Sc