biography photography

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt and Co., 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 294 pages. Robert Capa and Gerda Taro were young Jewish refugees, idealistic and in love. As photographers in the 1930s, they set off to capture their generation's most important struggle-the fight against fascism. Among the first to depict modern warfare, Capa, Taro, and their friend Chim took powerful photographs of the Spanish Civil War that went straight from the action to news magazines. They brought a human face to war with their iconic shots of a loving couple resting, a wary orphan, and, always, more and more refugees-people driven from their homes by bombs, guns, and planes. Today, our screens are flooded with images from around the world. But Capa and Taro were pioneers, bringing home the crises and dramas of their time-and helping give birth to the idea of bearing witness through technology. With a cast of characters ranging from Langston Hughes and George Orwell to Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, and packed with dramatic photos, posters, and cinematic magazine layouts, here is Capa and Taro's riveting, tragic, and ultimately inspiring story. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Assouline, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 46 pages. Blue cloth covers with silver titles, white dust jacket with b&w illustration, short essay, profusely illustrated with full-page b&w plates. Light rubbing to dust jacket, 2" sticker to dust jacket panel partially pealed away, clean boards, pages crisp and unmarked; overall, a very clean, tight copy. B&W photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson by David Douglas Duncan.

Softcover. Washington DC, Smithsonian, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 60 pages. llustrated by Nicholas Nixon with 28 full-page b/w photos, 29 counting the cover photo. Includes an interview with him and a brief biography. Bound in the original white wraps.

Hardcover. London, Phaidon Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 208 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. An intimate collection of family photographs by over 50 photographers.

Hardcover. London, Phaidon Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 208 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. An intimate collection of family photographs by over 50 photographers.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 256 pages, b&w photos. For Bill Cunningham, New York City was the land of freedom, glamour, and, above all, style. Growing up in a lace-curtain Irish suburb of Boston, secretly trying on his sister's dresses and spending his evenings after school in the city's chicest boutiques, Bill dreamed of a life dedicated to fashion. But his desires were a source of shame for his family, and after dropping out of Harvard, he had to fight them tooth-and-nail to pursue his love. When he arrived in New York, he reveled in people-watching. He spent his nights at opera openings and gate-crashing extravagant balls, where he would take note of the styles, new and old, watching how the gowns moved, how the jewels hung, how the hair laid on each head. This was his education, and the birth of the democratic and exuberant taste that he came to be famous for as a photographer for The New York Times. After two style mavens took Bill under their wing, his creativity thrived and he made a name for himself as a designer. Taking on the alias William J.--because designing under his family's name would have been a disgrace to his parents--Bill became one of the era's most outlandish and celebrated hat designers, catering to movie stars, heiresses, and artists alike. Bill's mission was to bring happiness to the world by making women an inspiration to themselves and everyone who saw them. These were halcyon days when fashion was all he ate and drank. When he was broke and hungry he'd stroll past the store windows on Fifth Avenue and feed himself on beautiful things. Fashion Climbing is the story of a young man striving to be the person he was born to be: a true original. But although he was one of the city's most recognized and treasured figures, Bill was also one of its most guarded. Written with his infectious joy and one-of-a-kind voice, this memoir was polished, neatly typewritten, and safely stored away in his lifetime. He held off on sharing it--and himself--until his passing. Between these covers, is an education in style, an effervescent tale of a bohemian world as it once was, and a final gift to the readers of one of New York's great characters.

Hardcover. Zurich, Edition Stemmle, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 127 pages, minor dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, very clean and tight copy. Edited by Karl Steinarth and with the text of his interview of Berko. Features essays by Colin Ford and Helmut Gernsheim. Includes numerous color and black and white images list of previous exhibitions and bibliography.

Hardcover. US, Bulfinch , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 264 pages includes index. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. A graceful, lively memoir by photography's first historian, with accounts of his friendships with many of the century's great photographers, from Alfred Stieglitz to Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Newhall (1908-93) wrote the now-standard History of Photography (1937) and founded the photo collection at the Museum of Modern Art; as much as anyone, he helped photography gain acceptance as art. This memoir, finished shortly before his death, includes an account of his boyhood in Lynn, Massachusetts; of his training in art history at Harvard; the important early exhibits he organized at the MOMA; and the contributions of his wife, Nancy, to both the field and his own accomplishments. A long section describing his work as a photoreconnaisance expert in Egypt and Italy during WW II, though not closely related to his career, is also highly interesting. In addition, Newhall offers detailed accounts of various important photographers' working methods, as well as of discussions carried on among them about their work.

Hardcover. New York, Atria Books, 1st Hardcover, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 416 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Remainder mark to bottom edge of textblock. Otherwise a very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear to dust jacket. Black and white photographs. Tracing the highs and lows of fashion photography from the late 1940s to today, Gross vividly chronicles the fierce rivalries between photographers, fashion editors, and publishers like Conde Nast and Hearst, weaving together candid interviews, never-before-told insider anecdotes and insights born of his three decades of front-row and backstage reporting on modern fashion. An unprecedented look at an eccentric and seductive profession and the men and women who practice it on the treacherous shifting sands of pop and fashion culture, Focus depicts--perhaps most importantly--the rewards and cost, both terribly high, of translating an artist's vision of beauty for an often cold and cruel commercial reality.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. 414 pages, numerous b/w illustrations, owner's gift inscription on endpaper, slight foxing, text clean and sound. Small paper scar at bottom of spine where sticker was removed.

Hardcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. "While it seems we've already seen photographs of every centimeter of Paris from every angle, it's a pleasure to look at the postwar city through Child's viewfinder. A trained draftsman, painter and lithographer, he had strong theories about composition and light, as well as a desire to distill 'some aspect of each place,' whether it be fishermen on the Seine, geometrically framed by the overlapping arches of a bridge, or an old woman unwittingly anchoring an angular shadow in the South of France. As accomplished as the photographs are, and as engaging a character as Paul Child is revealed to be, the real draw here will undoubtedly be his intimate portraits of Julia Child before she was, well, Julia Child. What ultimately makes this enjoyable celebration of his work an important part of the Child archive is that it illuminates the third side of that fabled triangle, connecting us to his love of Julia - and France." (NYTimes) Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Tate, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 224 pages. British artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992) was one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Here, Martin Hammer presents him as a "painter of modern life," whose concern was to distill the feelings associated with living through the rise of Fascism in the 1930s, World War II, the revelations of the Holocaust, and then the early Cold War period. Against a backdrop of changing attitudes toward wartime memories and a gradual resurgence of interest in the war, Hammer offers extensive evidence of Bacon's use of prewar Nazi propaganda photography as a springboard for painting. By exploring some of Bacon's best-known and most compelling works, Hammer illuminates the artist's aim to transmute challenging photographic sources into a reflection on the contemporary world.

Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 224 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, like new copy still in publishers shrink wrap. Over 200 duotone images throughout. Tight copy. Born in Cork, Ireland, Frank Browne (1880-1960) was both a distinguished Jesuit and an accomplished photographer. At age 17, before commencing his studies for the priesthood, he embarked on a tour of Europe armed with a camera. Browne quickly discovered a strong affinity for photography, and continued to take photographs throughout his life. It was not until 1985, however-when Father Edward O'Donnell SJ discovered a large trunk in the Irish Jesuit Provincial's House and found it packed with negatives and photographs-that Browne was catapulted to international fame. Father Browne's remarkable life is recorded in the superb selection of images presented in this book. With wit and a sharp eye, he observed 20th-century Ireland; life as a Jesuit priest; his experience as a passenger on the first leg of the voyage of the Titanic in 1912; and his later travels throughout Europe, Egypt, Yemen, Ceylon, and Australia. This handsome, copiously illustrated volume offers a complete survey of the photographic work of an exceptional man.

Hardcover. NY, Scalo/DAP, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 572 pages, b&w photos. As a photographer for Life magazine from 1936 to 1959, John Phillips witnessed his share of troubles. His discerning and unflinching eye captured images as horrific as concentration camps and battlefield remnants with a kind of detachment that seemed to share his audience's senses of shock and outrage. He also found himself in the company of such illustrious leaders as FDR, Churchill, Stalin, and Tito during his prodigious travels across the world. Phillips, who died in 1996, was with the magazine from its inception, and his work helped to cement the publication's reputation for capturing unforgettable moments and images. Though plenty of lighter moments grace these pages, many of the included photographs are devoted to exposing one of the most turbulent periods of the 20th century, giving the book a historic sense of tragedy that can still be felt 50 years later.

Softcover. Washington DC, Smithsonian, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 60 pages. 24 color plates, high quality printing, interview, short biography; part of Photographers at Work / A Smithsonian Series.

Hardcover. Chicago, IL, NTC Publishing Group, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 256 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. A unique collection of photographs offers an intimate, behind-the-scenes visual chronicle of baseball players from the 1930s, '40s, and '50s

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 206 pages. Famously unabashed, W. Eugene Smith was photography's most celebrated humanist. As a photo essayist at Life magazine in the 1940s and '50s, he established himself as an intimate chronicler of human culture. His photographs of war and disaster, villages and metropolises, doctors and midwives, revolutionized the role of images in journalism, transforming photography for decades to come. When Smith died in 1978, he left behind eighteen dollars in the bank and forty-four thousand pounds of archives. He was only fifty-nine, but he was flat worn-out. His death certificate read "stroke," but, as was said of the immortal jazzman Charlie Parker, Smith died of "everything," from drug and alcohol benders to weeklong work sessions with no sleep. Lured by the intoxicating trail of people that emerged from Smith's stupefying archive, Sam Stephenson began a quest to trace his footsteps. In Gene Smith's Sink, Stephenson merges traditional biography with rhythmic digressions to revive Smith's life and legacy. Traveling across twenty-nine states, Japan, and the Pacific, Stephenson profiles a lively cast of characters, including the playwright Tennessee Williams, to whom Smith likened himself; the avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, with whom he once shared a Swiss chalet; the artist Mary Frank, who was married to his friend Robert Frank; the jazz pianists Thelonious Monk and Sonny Clark, whose music was taped by Smith in his loft; and a series of obscure caregivers who helped keep Smith on his feet. The distillation of twenty years of research, Gene Smith's Sink is an unprecedented look into the photographer's potent legacy and the subjects around him. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York , PowerHouse Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 192 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout. Every city-dweller has seen them, and ever city-dweller could list the telltale signs: the fur, the gold, the hats, the cars. They are the original macks, the original players. They are Big City pimps--the heroes of gangsta rap. Bob Adelman and Susan Hall dive headlong into their world in the classic investigative docudrama Gentleman of Leisure: A Year in the Life of a Pimp, an in-depth exploration of the underworld figures that populate our streets at night. The first book of its kind, Gentleman of Leisure, originally published in 1972 and now reproduced in a facsimile edition, is a collection of photographs and interviews dramatically documenting the private life of a pimp and his prostitutes. The people who appear in this book are not models: they are real people with real lives. Only their names have been changed to protect the guilty, their stories are real. Armed only with a camera and a tape recorder, Adelman and Hall entered the lives of the pimp Silky and his women. What they found flew in the face of prevailing prejudices: stripped of stereotype and myth, the pimps and whores that shared their tales were complex people embroiled in romantic dramas, with a code of behavior as intricate as the Mafia's, and a defined sense of self.

Hardcover. New York , PowerHouse Books, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 192 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout. Every city-dweller has seen them, and ever city-dweller could list the telltale signs: the fur, the gold, the hats, the cars. They are the original macks, the original players. They are Big City pimps--the heroes of gangsta rap. Bob Adelman and Susan Hall dive headlong into their world in the classic investigative docudrama Gentleman of Leisure: A Year in the Life of a Pimp, an in-depth exploration of the underworld figures that populate our streets at night. The first book of its kind, Gentleman of Leisure, originally published in 1972 and now reproduced in a facsimile edition, is a collection of photographs and interviews dramatically documenting the private life of a pimp and his prostitutes. The people who appear in this book are not models: they are real people with real lives. Only their names have been changed to protect the guilty, their stories are real. Armed only with a camera and a tape recorder, Adelman and Hall entered the lives of the pimp Silky and his women. What they found flew in the face of prevailing prejudices: stripped of stereotype and myth, the pimps and whores that shared their tales were complex people embroiled in romantic dramas, with a code of behavior as intricate as the Mafia's, and a defined sense of self.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with light edgewear. 192 pages. A critical examination of American photographer Gertrude Kasebier. Features text by Barbara L. Michaels. Includes 120 duotone illustrations. NAME ON FRONT FLY LEAF, OTHERWISE CLEAN.

Hardcover. New York , Random House, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 326 pages, b&w photos. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. A personal history of 50 years in photo-journalism by one of the top journalists of the 20th century. John Morris tells the inside stories from the field, ranging from photos of the D-Day landing to the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Hardcover. New York, Ammo, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 240 pages, many b&w and color photographs. A visual biography accompanied by excerpts from Thompson's work. Introduction by Johnny Depp, edited by Steve Crist and Paul Norton. Illustrated boards, no dust jacket issued.

Hardcover. New York, Tim Duggan Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 248 pages, b&w illustrations. The first great portrait photographer, a pioneering balloonist, the first person to take an aerial photograph, and the prime mover behind the first airmail service, Nadar was one of the original celebrity artist-entrepreneurs. A kind of 19th-century Andy Warhol, he knew everyone worth knowing and photographed them all, conferring on posterity psychologically compelling portraits of Manet, Sarah Bernhardt, Delacroix, Daumier and countless others--a priceless panorama of Parisian celebrity. Born Gaspard-Felix Tournachon, he adopted the pseudonym Nadar as a young bohemian, when he was a budding writer and cartoonist. Later he affixed the name Nadar to the facade of his opulent photographic studio in giant script, the illuminated letters ten feet tall, the whole sign fifty feet long, a garish red beacon on the boulevard. Nadar became known to all of Europe and even across the Atlantic when he launched "The Giant," a gas balloon the size of a twelve-story building, the largest of its time. With his daring exploits aboard his humongous balloon (including a catastrophic crash that made headlines around the world), he gave his friend Jules Verne the model for one of his most dynamic heroes.

Hardcover. Steidl, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 360 pages. In 1878, the Photographic Times claimed that ten minutes provided sufficient exposure for photographing a landscape. Six years earlier, an English immigrant to the West Coast named Eadweard Muybridge, going by the commercial name of Helios, had already pushed photography far in the opposite direction: not to soak up time into pictures, but to divide time with the quickest exposures then imaginable. In 1872, the tycoon Leland Stanford had commissioned Muybridge to photograph his horse, Occident, to determine whether it ever lifted all four hooves off the ground at once. In proving that this was indeed the case, Muybridge achieved a five-hundredth-of-a-second exposure, and so began an anatomy of motion-in humans, horses, birds-that exploded the possibilities of photography and ultimately led to the development of the motion picture. Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change offers an opportunity to trace the life and art of the great photographer. In the wake of a wave of recent scholarship and renewed interest, it pitches his entire body of work against the backdrop of one of the most transformative periods of American and European history. Published to accompany a retrospective exhibition organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Helios features essays by Philip Brookman, Marta Braun, Corey Keller and Rebecca Solnit that provide a variety of new approaches to Muybridge's art and influences.