criticism photography

Hardcover. Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, paper-covered boards, 172 pages. One of the most innovative films ever made, Sam Peckinpah's motion picture The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the film was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah's tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and impactful Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film-violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise-are just as relevant today as when the film first opened. To acknowledge the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together some of the leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director's greatest work. The book's nine essays cover an array of topics. Explored are the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies, the background of the film's production, the European response to the film's view of human nature, and the strong sense of the Texas/Mexico milieu surrounding the film's action. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth, 262 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs. Clean, tight copy. This portrait of Disderi and the carte de visite he patented in Paris in 1854 is far more than a biography. The c-d-v, or photographic calling card, was a relatively inexpensive product that made the photographic portrait available to the middle class . McCauley's carefully documented work explores Disderi's career and oeuvre , the impact of mass-produced celebrity cartes on the social and cultural life of mid-19th-century France, and aesthetics in c-d-v portraiture. The final third of the book is an art historical evaluation of the importance of the c-d-v for portrait painting of the period . The fine bibliography, generous illustrative matter, and detailed notes add to the value of this work for the avid student of photohistory or 19th-century studies.

Softcover. NY, Aperture Foundation, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 80 pages. A large, beautifully designed photography publication with many full page photographs in black and white and color. Glossy wraps. A very well-illustrated book of essays, appreciations, criticism, and portfolios of photography. Writings by Paul Schimmel; Rosalind Krauss; Gerhard Richter; Petah Coyne; Anne Baldassari; Wim Wenders; Charles Hagen; David Frankel; Mark Muro; others. Photography by Picasso, Edvard Munch, Wim Wenders, Louise Lawler, Chris Marker, Kiki Smith, Brancusi, Richard Pousette-Dart.

Softcover. NY, Harper & Row/Icon Editions, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 176 pages. Series of essays with b&w photographs throughout. CONTENTS: Artpolitics; The Size of Non-Size; What is Content?--Photography as Culture; Filmgoing -Videogoing; The Decline and Fall of Pop; The Idea of a Twenty-First Century Museum; Utopia; Post-Modern Form. Front cover in black and white with black, white, and red lettering. In very good condition, some rubbing to both covers but clean pages and tight binding.

Softcover. NY, Aperture, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 108 pages with b&w illustrations. The eight essays in Beauty in Photography provide a critical appreciation of photography by one of its foremost proponents. The result is a rare book of criticism, alive to the pleasure and mysteries of true exploration. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Penguin Press, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 310 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Color pictures throughout. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. The author untangles the mysteries behind an eclectic range of documentary photographs. With his keen sense of irony, skepticism, and humor, Morris shows how photographs can obscure as much as they reveal, and how what we see is often determined by our beliefs.

Hardcover. New York, Skira Rizzoli, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 240 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in shrink wrap. Full color, full page photographs throughout. Dust jacket designed to look torn with trash underneath. Tight copy. The work of counterculture artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, whose art is a complex punk-rock take on modern consumer culture. Enormous neon signs, intricate silhouette portraits constructed of trash heaps, and a work titled Instant Gratification: British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster thrive on the thrills of illumination, love, language, shadows, garbage, and cash. British Rubbish showcases their work in all its splashy glory. Their art evokes both gaudy Vegas culture and down-and-dirty punk rock: a combination of cynical extravagance and a defiant, rebellious sensibility. Extravagant, irreverent, sometimes coarse, and always sharply clever, British Rubbish is both a paean to and sly denunciation of conspicuous consumption.

Hardcover. New York, Asia Society/Creative Time, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 24 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Accordion binding. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Commissioned to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Central Park, Cai's Light Cycle fireworks display lit the New York sky with a circle of explosions on a September night in 2003. This 24-page accordion book documents it all from planning to performance, executed by the famous Grucci fireworks family. Separating the book's hardbound cloth covers reveals a continuous folded sheet with reproductions of Cai's gunpowder drawings (made by burning scant gunpowder on paper) on one side and photographs of the event and text on the other. In an interview, the artist compares his drawings to "love-making" and explains some technical aspects of his displays, such as a computer chip in each explosive shell.

Hardcover. Berkeey, University of California, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 305 pages, nearly 150 b&w photos accompany the text. A survey of photography in East Germany; from 1945 to 1989. In a very good dust jacket with light fade to spine. "Behind the Iron Curtain, against all odds, photography flourished as an art in the German Democratic Republic. The many images in this volume amply demonstrate that fact while also providing an illustrated social history of people 'caught' in the conflicting dictates of ideology, artistic oppression, a troubled national past, and basic human desires."

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 498 pages, index, B&W photos and illustrations culled from studio archives and privste collections, show the image of New York city in the world of film. Clean, bright copy in a dust jacket.

Softcover. Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1st, November 1, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 222 pages, b&w photographs. Light edge wear to wrappers. Small remainder stamp on bottom edge. Else a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Rochester NY, Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 199 pages, paperback. Fictions and the fictions of theory from acclaimed theorist of film. With a foreword by Annette Michelson. Mild rubbing and edgewear to wraps. Light bumping to spine. Previous owner's signature to front endpapers. Scarce. A clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 156 pages. Create and Be Recognized is the first survey of a compelling, always surprising art form -- outsider photography. Presented here is the work of seventeen largely self-taught artists who have used photography or photographic elements in their creations, including such luminaries as Adolf Wolfli, Howard Finster, and Henry Darger, as well as discoveries from little known, equally dramatic artists. As with most outsider art, the work here is fuelled by singular passions, marginalized mindsets, and extreme circumstances, falling outside mainstream picture-making. Employing collage (affixing photos or reproductions to a background), photocollage (photographs cut and pasted together to form a new whole), and tableaux (works based on manipulation and staging), the artists here present work that is, by turns, lyrical and frightening, and always fascinating. Published to coincide with a major touring exhibition of the same name originating at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Create and Be Recognized documents an emerging and important facet of contemporary photography.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, in a bright dust jacket, 278 pages. An important pioneer of the artform that became known as photomontage. Hoch (November 1, 1889 to May 31, 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. Hoch was the lone woman among the Berlin Dada group, however she was dismayed to the Dadaists lip service to women's emancipation and her work echos her feelings that there were difference between women in media and reality. Marriage did not escape her criticism. She depicted brides as mannequins and children, reflecting the idea that women are not seen as complete people and have little control over their lives. A long-time German resident, her work fell out of favor after WWII although she continued to produce her photomontages and exhibit them internationally until her death in 1978.

Softcover. New York , Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 96 pages. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap.

Hardcover. New York, PowerHouse Books, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 128 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. With sumptuous black-and-white photographs that recall the religious fervor of El Greco and the anguish of Francis Bacon, The Face of Forgiveness: Salvation and Redemption takes us inside evangelical meetings across the world and bears witness to the driving emotional faith of Christian revival, where emotion and love pours from the eyes and mouths of the faithful, praying and thanking the Lord.

Softcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 172 pages. Nancy Newhall wrote some of the most incisive work ever published on the inner lives of the photographers who shaped the medium. Her friendship with photographers such as Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Helen Levitt, to name a few, lends her writing a vibrancy rarely found in essays on photography. Newhall was one of the few people to gain access to the inner circle--and thoughts--of the imposing Alfred Stieglitz, and her intimate portrait of him, previously unpublished, reveals a man of genius, humor, and kindness. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Portland, OR, Nazraeli Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 108 pages. This printing limited to 1000 copies. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Creasing to a few pages. An otherwise clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. In the mid-1980s, Stu Levy began making 'grid-portraits' in order to overcome his his frustration with traditional portraiture's limited point of view. These constructs of photographs, consisting of twelve to twenty-five individual images, scan the architecture and flow of time in a subject's living or working environment. The resulting portraits, usually of artists, craftspeople and musicians, are made in the subjects' studios or living spaces and serve as a backstage tour of the artist s mind and creative process. Levy is fascinated by the artifacts that fill these spaces the possessions by which the subjects are themselves possessed. Rather than confining himself to a single 'decisive' moment, Levy explore its antithesis, a maze of scrambled time. These are made with a view camera using 4 x 5-inch negatives to allow for precision of detail. The sections are printed together to form the illusion of glancing through a window at a 'snapshot' of an event, which in reality might consist of fragmentary views made months apart and in totally separate rooms or environments. Among the subjects included in this important new monograph are Dr. Stanley Burns, Linda Connor, Barbara Crane, Jay Dusard, David Hockney, Graham Nash, and Jerry Uelsmann. Beautifully printed in duotone on matt art paper and bound in black Japanese cloth, this first printing of Grid-Portraits is limited to 1,000 copies.

Hardcover. Los Angeles, CA, St. Ann's Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 175 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Limited to 200 copies. Presented here are the many black and white photographs of American icons and imagery that are thematically connected by Fee's obsession with the decline and destruction of the America that he knew as a young man: we see his series of New York imagery, including the Chrysler building and the Brooklyn Bridge; pictures of the crumbling Penn State penitentiary; Beat inspired series of photographs of the American road; a distinctive and unique series of nude imagery; as well as his innovative collaborations with multimedia artist George Herms.

Hardcover. Boston, Bulfinch, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 156 pages. A collection of images taken by the noted director of photography at MOMA. Accompanying the photographs are excerpts from a life-time's correspondence giving a glimpse of Szarkowski's perspective on life and photography. Curator Sandra Phillips contributes an introductory essay.

Softcover. Argentum, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 126 pages in color. Critically acclaimed photographer David Ward explores the essential attributes of a successful landscape photograph--simplicity, ambiguity, and beauty--in this intriguing companion to his first book, Landscape Within. David discusses how the notion of beauty has been viewed by artists and psychologists and how, despite various modifications over the centuries, the concept of beauty remains relevant. David suggests that all photographers' work either poses a question or seeks to impose the photographer's viewpoint, and he goes on to investigate how photography affects our interpretation of the world around us. Accompanied by a selection of David's stunning, large-format landscape images, this is an elegant and insightful look into the nature of photography. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, MOMA, 2nd Pr., 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 216 pages, 100 duotone plates. Szarkowski's classic work with critical essays on each picture. Bright, unclipped dust jacket. Mild shelf wear.

Hardcover. NY, Hastings House, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 316 pages, b&w illustrations. Written by his ex-lover, business associate, and close friend, an explicit memoir offers a new perspective on the renowned celebrity photographer with a taste for kinky sex and drugs who died of AIDS in 1989. Fritscher's brutally frank memoir of his ex-lover, confidant, and colleague, drawn from the author's personal documents, seeks to strip away the notoriety surrounding the defiant photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. As editor and writer for the gay magazine Drummer, Fritscher was the first to publish Mapplethorpe's highly charged camera shots depicting a seamy world of "leathersex," sadomasochism, taboos, and fetishes. Here, Fritscher graphically portrays the masculine subculture of the homosexual community that Mapplethorpe inhabited until his death from AIDS in 1989, at age 42. He also discusses the censorship of Mapplethorpe's work within the mainstream gay community. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton/ Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 153 pages, b&w illustrations. "Mather and Weston first met in Los Angeles in 1913. They soon developed a close relationship, eventually working together as full-fledged artistic partners and even co-signing the photographs they produced. Weston was also madly in love with Mather, and the two engaged in an affair during his first marriage, even though Mather was more interested in women. This book which features art by both artists, chronicles their twelve-year association and sheds light on Mather, whose artistry, sexual identity, and mysterious past have been overshadowed by the massive reputation of Edward Weston and his subsequent association with Tina Modotti."