The Transparent City by Michael Wolf

This week's Photo Book Tuesday selection is The Transparent City by Michael Wolf. Produced by the Aperture Foundation, I chose this book for evoking the challenges I always deal with when traveling to big cities. Being from rural Tennessee, the vertical nature of being in a larger building while being surrounded by same has always burdened me with a sense of loneliness and a fascination with what other people are doing in their tiny space just a short distance away. It's confining and altogether weird to me. It's also really cool.

I've been a fan of Wolf's work for years after a friend sent me a link to his Architecture of Density series covering high rise buildings in Hong Kong.

From the publisher,

Bringing his unique perspective on changing urban environments to a city renowned for its architectural legacy, Wolf chose to photograph the central downtown area, focusing specifically on issues of voyeurism and the contemporary urban landscape in flux.

Hardcover

112 pages, 60 color images

released in November 2008

$42.00 currently at Aperture's website

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21 Nights - Randee St.Nicholas covers Prince

I've done a poor job of keeping this going having gotten busy with this and that for some time now but Photo Book Tuesday is back (after receiving threats that I better get back at it.)

This week we're looking at 21 Nights by Randee St. Nicholas. Nicholas covered a stint of umm ... twenty-one sold out nights chasing after Prince, formerly known as The Artist, in London in 2007. Nicholas and Prince have been friends since 1991 when she was asked to direct his "Get Off" video, and she was the only photographer allowed to cover the event. Chasing after him in the hotel and at the after parties as well as backstage, Nicholas condenses the festivities into this 256 page gem. Notoriously difficult to pin down, this is an unprecedented view into the life of one of the greatest musicians of our time. 

For Prince fans, the book includes a CD of soundbyte extras available nowhere else. For fans of Nicholas, you get 124 never before published images. Quite the combo! 

$50.00 Hardcover

Atria Books

At 5lbs this will take a sturdy coffee table

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Horizons by Sze Tsung Leong

This week's Photo Book Tuesday selection examines everyone's favorite subject, the horizon line. In Horizons by Sze Tsung Leong, we are transported around the world where our only anchor resides in the earth meeting the sky. What drew me to this particular book was thinking about our recent financial mess, and I mean our as in global. It is a clear message that we are all connected on this planet. This book reinforces that message. Often times photography today seeks to use remoteness or isolation as a sales point. Not that anything is wrong with documenting a tribal festival in outer Mongolia, but here we are drawn to seek a common ground and view a thread that binds us together in something familiar.

From the publisher:

This first monograph to present the acclaimed Horizons series by Sze Tsung Leong is comprised of 36 images taken around the globe--all sharing a consistent horizon line. The softly colored and highly detailed images highlight similarities and differences across nations, cultures and landscapes--creating a spatial continuum out of geographically distant locations. 
Sze Tsung Leong was born in Mexico City in 1970 and currently lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. His bookHistory Images was published by Steidl in 2006.

Published by Yossi Milo Gallery

Paperback

36 Color photographs

November 1, 2008

$39.95

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Street Art, Street Life: From the 1950s to now

This week's Photo Book Tuesday selection is Street Art, Street Life: From the 1950s to Now. Co-published with the Bronx Museum of the Arts, this new title from the Aperture Foundation examines the street for inspiring artists and photographers over the last half century.

From the publisher:

Street Art, Street Life examines the street as subject matter, venue, and source of inspiration for contemporary artists and photographers from the late 1950s to the present. This unique volume includes street photography; documentation of performance, events, and artworks presented in the street; works using material from the street; and examples of street culture.

Through works by almost thirty world-renowned artists,Street Art, Street Life explores a range of themes related to the street: as arena for political and cultural expression, violence and crime, gender roles in an urban context, advertising and commerce, and as counterpoint to museums and other traditional art venues. Street Art, Street Life is published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name, organized by international curator Lydia Yee.

Flexibind

112 Pages

125 Color Images

$27.97 (currently on sale)

The Aperture Foundation also has a cool newsletter that I would definitely recommend signing up for. 

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Vandal Squad: Inside the New York City Transit Police Department 1984-2004

For this week's photo book selection, we have Vandal Squad a cool look at graffiti culture from the other side of the fence brought to you from Powerhouse Books.

Hardcover

168 pages

110 color photographs

$35.00

From the Publisher:

Graffiti writers have left a vivid trail and told their spellbinding tales the world over in countless books and magazines, films and videos, websites and events. They have shared stories of war and glory, of battles and triumphs, and have the pictures to prove it. But many have gone down for those ups; they’ve been caught in action or hunted as criminals, and brought forth to answer for crimes of vandalism. They’ve copped pleas or pleaded guilty outright; they’ve been sentenced to do community service, to pay fines, and sometimes even to serve jail time—yet more often than not they got right back in action. No one knew this better than the New York City Transit Police Vandal Squad.

Founded in 1980, the Vandal Squad’s mission was to protect the subway system from hardcore criminal acts of destruction like kicking out windows and throwing seats out of train cars. It was only with the Clean Car Program of 1984 that graffiti became the primary focus of this specialized Unit. On a mission to catch those who gained fame under tag names, the Vandal Squad had to identify and locate these individuals cloaked in anonymity (and often so transient they were referred as “ghosts”) using every means available, including the NYPD computer database, Search Warrants, subpoenas, and even vandals themselves.

In Vandal Squad: Inside the New York City Transit Police Department, 1984–2004, former member Officer Joseph Rivera recounts the days and nights spent in pursuit of some of New York City’s most notorious vandals. The only book on graffiti told from the perspective of law enforcement, Vandal Squad takes us inside the New York Police Department. Rivera’s fast-paced tales of cat and mouse are presented alongside professional disregard within the Department. Featuring never-before-seen photographs and stories of graffiti’s infamous Top 40, Vandal Squad offers an unprecedented look at the graffiti world from the other side of the game.

Joseph Rivera was born and raised in the Bronx. He joined the New York City Transit Police Department in 1984, and was assigned to the elite Transit Vandal Squad in 1987. Rivera became the lead investigator of the Graffiti Habitual Offender Suppression Team (G.H.O.S.T.) within the Vandal Squad in 1998. The recipient of many commendations for outstanding merit throughout a 20-year law enforcement career, Rivera retired in 2004.

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House Hunting a re-printed hardcover from Todd Hido

Unavailable for quite some time, Todd Hido's look at the suburban home at night has been re-released from Nazraeli Press. A signed copy will run you $75.00. 

Nazraeli Press tends to focus on artists who wouldn't get as much exposure in the mainstream book markets or up and coming shooters. If you have the time, they have an interesting array of talent represented that you likely won't have been exposed to before.

Hardcover

56 pages

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Seven Summits - The High Peaks of the Pacific Northwest

I've recently been watching Art Wolfe's Travels to the Edge series. It's really good television and makes me want to be a travel photographer. This week's Photo Book Tuesday selection is Seven Summits covering Wolfe's journeys to: Rainer, Baker, Hood, Shuksan, St. Helens, Glacier, and Adams. For those of us who love high alpine photography, it's a great glimpse into the sentinels of the Northwest without requiring crampons and hiking poles. Some of his previous books are sold out and have not been reprinted so don't delay if you want to add it to your collection. 

Wolfe will be hosting and giving a keynote presentation at the 2009 North American Nature Photography Association's Annual Summit in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

Hardcover: 160 pages

Sasquatch Books

October 25, 2005

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A Procession of Them by Eugene Richards

Image copyright Eugene Richards

Documenting psychiatric institutions in Mexico, Argentina, Armenia, Hungary, Paraguay, and Kosovo, Eugene Richards takes you into the vivid but tortured world of the mentally disabled person. It's a tough journey to pick up this book, an amazing work of photojournalism.

University of Texas Press

Released in September 2008

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Still: Oceanscapes by Debra Bloomfield

I admire the persistence of photographers who devote a significant amount of time to a unique subject AND still manage to produce a body of diverse beautiful work from it. In this case, Debra Bloomfield in Still: Oceanscapes has returned to photograph the same stretch of beach for seven years. I'm drawn to the simplicity of the work as nature plays itself out over time and shows us the reason we are all drawn to the meeting of sea and sky.

Published in July 2008.

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Ichthyo: The Architecture of Fish book

This book is simply different. In flipping through the pages, it took me back to being a kid and seeing my first glass catfish. It was like watching a skeleton swimming and calls to mind those Discovery Channel shows about deep sea submersibles and the weird critters inhabiting the deep oceans. This book will take you to that place of wonder, your inner child. So, I think it's cool.

From the publisher:

Originally created to preserve a record of scientific samples, the balck and white X-rays of fish at the Smithsonian Institution have emerged as astonishing works of art in their own right. This stunning compendium of images-comparable to fine and delicate engravings-is drawn from the National Museum of Natural History, which holds the world's largest collection of ichthyological specimens (and which, upon the reopening of its Ocean Hall set to open on September 27 in the Summer of 2008, will put these X-rays on permanent display). As mesmerizingly beautiful as they are amazingly detailed, these images reveal the hidden wonders of the creatures of the deep.

The number of great photography books that are coming out right now is simply amazing. To bring light to many of these great offerings, I'm starting Photo Book Tuesdays. Each week I will be highlighting a book or two that I think deserves a little more attention. If you have the spare time, bounce over to Chronicle Book's website. They are the publishers of this and many other interesting new photo and art books. 

Published in May 2008.

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