Helen Levitt by
Helen Levitt, the visual poet laureate of New York City, published her magnum opus Crosstown in 2001 to great acclaim. Since then, Levitt has authored two smaller volumes, Here and There and Slideshow, her first monograph featuring her little known colour work which has garnered her accolades from around the globe. Here is a collection of her most iconic works, intermixed with never-before-seen photographs combining seven decades of New York City street life with Levitt's seminal work in Mexico City.
The Modern Century by
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) is one of the most influential and beloved figures in the history of photography. His inventive work of the early 1930s helped define the creative potential of modern photography. Following World War II, he helped found the Magnum photo agency, which enabled photojournalists to reach a broad audience through magazines such as Life while retaining control over their work. Cartier-Bresson would go on to produce major bodies of photographic reportage, capturing such events as China during the revolution, the Soviet Union after Stalin's death, the United States in the postwar boom and Europe as its older cultures confronted modern realities. Published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this is the first major publication to make full use of the extensive holdings of the Fondation Cartier-Bresson--including thousands of prints and a vast resource of documents relating to the photographer's life and work. The heart of the book surveys Cartier-Bresson's career through 300 photographs divided into 12 chapters. While many of his most famous pictures are included, a great number of images will be unfamiliar even to specialists. A wide-ranging essay by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator of Photography at the Museum, offers an entirely new understanding of Cartier-Bresson's extraordinary career and its overlapping contexts of journalism and art. The extensive supporting material--featuring detailed chronologies of the photographer's professional travels and of spreads of his picture stories as they appeared in magazines--will revolutionize the study of Cartier-Bresson's work.
Garry Winogrand by
Widely regarded as one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, Garry Winogrand (1928–1984) did much of his best-known work in Manhattan during the 1960s, becoming an epic chronicler of that tumultuous decade. But Winogrand was also an avid traveler and roamed extensively around the United States, bringing exquisite work out of nearly every region of the country. This landmark retrospective catalogue looks at the full sweep of Winogrand’s exceptional career. Drawing from his enormous output, which at the time of his death included thousands of rolls of undeveloped film and unpublished contact sheets, the book will serve as the most substantial compendium of Winogrand’s work to date. Lavishly illustrated with both iconic images and photographs that have never been seen before now, and featuring essays by leading scholars of American photography, Garry Winogrand presents a vivid portrait of an artist who unflinchingly captured America’s swings between optimism and upheaval in the postwar era.
Chicago by
Explore the beauty of the Windy City through photographs! From Wrigley Field to Lakeshore Drive and the Magnificent Mile, this volume contains more than 100 full-color photographs of sights throughout the Chicago area. Also includes informative captions and quotes from some of the city's most famous residents. The perfect souvenir for any lover of the great American city.
City Spaces by
In 1996, photographer Bob Thall—walking to his car after completing some work in downtown Chicago—was stopped by something. "I noticed this strange view down an alley," he later wrote. "It wasn't the type of photograph I was doing that year, but the scene stopped me. I had one sheet of film left and thought, 'Oh, what the hell,' and took the picture." Thall didn't print that picture for over a year. He had just published the highly-praised The Perfect City, an investigation of the sweeping changes in downtown Chicago over a twenty-year period—and he was still working on The New American Village, a look at the new edge city around O'Hare Airport that stands in such contrast to the urbanity of downtown. That single alley photograph, however, would stay with him, and eventually it would inspire the project that led to this, his third book: City Spaces is an exploration of the terrain of Chicago's alleys, where Thall finds remnants of the old city that he, and many other Chicagoans, once found so compelling. What these photographs transcribe are deep urban slits, afterthoughts to the gleaming modernist fronts of buildings. As Thall writes, "Investigating these spaces reminded me of my earlier sense of the city as a mysterious landscape to explore. My history as a Chicagoan, my history as a photographer, the history of the city, and, in a small way, the history of photography—without any plan or anticipation, these photographs brought these histories together for me." City Spaces will be a welcome addition to those interested in fine art photography, architecture, Chicago, and the urban scene—and will reinforce Bob Thall's presence as a leading artist and spokesperson for the city he loves.
Chicagoland by
Formed by images of crowded city streets and towering skyscrapers, our understanding of nineteenth-century Chicago completely neglects the fact that the city itself was only the center of a web of neighborhoods, farm communities, and industrial towns--many connected to the city by the railroad. Farmers used trains to transport produce into the city daily; businessmen rode the rails home to their commuter suburbs; and families took vacations mere miles outside the Loop. Historian and coeditor of the acclaimed Encyclopedia of Chicago, Ann Durkin Keating resurrects for us here the bustling network that defined greater Chicagoland. Taking a new approach to the history of the city, Keating shifts the focus to the landscapes and built environments of the metropolitan region. Organized by four categories of settlements-farm centers, industrial towns, commuter suburbs, and recreational and institutional centers-that framed the city, Chicagoland offers the collective history of 230 neighborhoods and communities, the people who built them, and the structures they left behind that still stand today. Keating reanimates nineteenth-century Chicagoland with more than a hundred photographs and maps; we find here the taverns, depots, and way stations that were the hubs of the region's vibrant, mobile life. Keating also includes an appendix of driving tours so readers can see this history for themselves. Chicagoland takes us into the buildings and sites that are still part of our landscape and repopulates them with the stories and characters behind their creation. The result is a wide-angle historical view of Chicago, an entirely new way to understand the region.