documentary photography

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers. Black & white photos. Foreword by Leland Hayward. Browning to page edges. Stain to bottom edge.

Hardcover. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 160 pages, like new in dust jacket. This fascinating account of Silvy's life and photography is published to mark the centenary of his death. Combining research into exhibition prints, still lifes, and street scenes, as well as the intimate, beautifully lit and posed cartes-de-visite, the book demonstrates Silvy's extraordinary originality and his life as a man of both art and commerce. Color and b&w illustrations.

Hardcover. Sao Paulo, Brazil, Dorea Books & Art, 1st , 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Non-paginated. Illustrated with Black & white photographs by Claudio Edinger. Texts by Arnaldo Jabor, Jorge Amado and Roberto Damatta. Clean, tight copy. A collection of photographs taken during the Carnaval celebration in Brazil.

Hardcover. NY, Abbeville, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Teissl's vibrant, color photos capture the unique pageantry and euphoria of the world's largest party. The sounds of Carnival are captured in a companion CD.

Hardcover. Steidl, 1st, 2011-08-01, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 286 pages. This book is both an autobiography of William Carter and a study of people. Carter's photographs, beginning in 1960, take the viewer on his travels throughout the world, from home to New York and Kurdistan, from Dublin to Gaza. Whether working as a photojournalist or purely for himself, Carter focuses on the gestures and expressions of people (sometimes charming, sometimes unsettling), and on streets and landscapes that often long for human presence. The subtitle "Photographs from Five Decades" might seem misleading as it implies a "typical" photobook where the sequence of images is primary. For Carter, however, it is the interplay between his photographs and writings that allows him to see into himself and his subjects: indeed he calls himself a "photographer-writer". In Carter's words, his work aims to capture the "hidden implications, eye-blink compositions, odd ironies and happy accidents" of the world.

Hardcover. Little, Brown, & Co., New York Graphic Society, 1st US, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 256 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. Retrospective on famed artist. Edited by Dr. David Mellor. With color and b&w plates throughout. Light edgewear and rubbing to dust jacket. Light fading and foxing to front flyleaf. Unmarked. A bright and tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 228 pages. At the beginning of World War II Cecil Beaton was commissioned by the British government to photograph the home front. He set to work recording both the destruction of the city, and the heroism of Londoners under attack. He conducted a survey of Bomber and Fighter Commands for the RAF, which was published with his own astute commentary. Beaton was an effective propagandist, but his voice, like his photographs, was touchingly elegant. Beaton's wartime work amounted to 7,000 photographs. He traveled through the Western Desert and on to Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan, Syria, and India, where he photographed the final days of the Raj in New Delhi and Calcutta before joining the Burma campaign. He ended the war deep in Chinese territory where he witnessed the Nationalist resistance to the Japanese. This collection of Beaton's masterful WWII photography captures the home front, the Middle East, arms and vehicle manufacturing in Britain, India, the Burma Campaign, and the war in China. It also includes a chronology placing events in Beaton's life alongside developments in photography, journalism, and the arts; war photography; and world events. His original photographs are reproduced large on the page, alongside his diary extracts, allowing for deep scrutiny and appreciation of the images and their artist.

Cape Town SA, Koeberg, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover. B&W photo essay on Cedarberg of the Western Cape of South Africa. Stated 369 of an unspecified number, edgeworn dust jacket. Endpaper map.

Hardcover. Lunenburg VT, privately printed, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth, 158 pages, b&w duotone photographs throughout accompanied by verse from various writers. A fine production printed by The Stinehour Press. The author war a pilot who witnessed the atomic destruction at Nagasaki and later became a research professor who studied nuclear fallout. He traveled extensively in the 1970s and was an avid and talented photographer. This was his fourth book published, all limited to 100 copies and shows a exceptional eye in the style of well-known street photographers. No dj issued.

Softcover. Lausanne, La Guilde du Livre, 1st, 1952, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Softcover, pictorial boards with chipped glassine wrappers. An atmospheric, engaging set of photographs of post-war London alongside Prevert's poetry. 136 pages, handsome b/w photogravures by Izis-Bidermanas. FRENCH TEXT.

Hardcover. Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 263 pages. When the Chicago Daily News closed its doors in March 1978 after over a century of publication, the city mourned the loss of an American original. The Daily News boasted the inventive, aggressive writing of such luminaries as Carl Sandburg and Ben Hecht. It was also one of the first newspapers in the country to feature black-and-white photography. In 1900, staffers from the paper's art department began lugging bulky cameras, heavy glass plates, and explosive flash powder throughout the city. A labor strike, a boxing match, or a crime scene--it was all in a day's work for the Daily News photographer. These cameramen helped sell papers, but, as Mark Jacob and Richard Cahan reveal, they also made art. Chicago under Glass: Early Photographs from the Chicago Daily News is the first collection of images from the photo staff's early years, 1901 to 1930. Jacob and Cahan, seasoned journalists themselves, have selected more than 250 images--many of which have never before been published--from the nearly 57,000 glass negatives housed at the Chicago History Museum. They include rare photographs of a young Buster Keaton with his wife and child, waiting to board a train and the notorious Al Capone outside a courtroom, smoking a cigar and consulting with his lawyer. Each thematic section begins with a fascinating introduction by the authors, and each image is accompanied by insightful historical commentary.

Softcover. Corte Medera CA, Gingko Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 96 pages, nicely reproduced b&w historical photographs of the city. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley, University Of California Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, black cloth stamped with silver lettering in a bright dust jacket, 112 pages. An immensely important record of black life in Chicago at the near end of the 1940's. Apart from a few photos of entertainers the rest capture, in fascinating detail, life in Chicago's south side. The workplace and workers, interiors of homes and bars, parades, funerals, sport and street scenes with plenty of activity. The detail in all these pictures is impressive and typical of Miller's eye to capture a scene that reveals so much. Foreword by Orville Schell. commentaries by Gordon Parks and Robert Stepto. Small color sticker on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 67 pages. A collection of 40 color photographs depicting the building facades and ruins of modern day Chihuahua, Mexico. The culminating effect of the brilliantly colored photos is nearly hallucinatory, taking in both the paintings of Bugs Bunny affixed to store facades, and political graffiti with a postmodern inclusiveness which says volumes about the spirit and poverty of this community. An accompanying text essayed by Charles Bowden, author of Blood Orchid , complements the images with a kind of poetic, meandering, and intimate meditation on the physical and existential state of Chihuahua. Lacks an index and bibliography. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 228 pages. Photographs by Robert Capa, Lois Conner, Stuart Franklin, Zhang Hai-er, Wu Jialin, Wang Jinsong, Hiroji Kubota, Sebastiao Salgado, Liu Heung Shing, and others. This magnificent volume unfolds a series of in-depth portfolios by twenty of the most important Chinese and Western photographers of the era, conveying the extent of their involvement in politics, culture, and everyday life.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Wexner Center and MIT Press, 1sr, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, oblong pictorial boards, Any new film and any new book by French filmmaker Chris Marker is an event. Marker gave film lovers one of their most memorable experiences with La Jetee (1962)-a time-travel montage set after a nuclear war that inspired Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys (1995). His still camerawork is not as well known, but Marker has been taking photographs as long as he has been making films. Staring Back presents 200 black-and-white photographs from Marker's personal archives, taken from 1952 to 2006. Some of the photographs are related to his classic films (which include Le Jetee, Sans Soleil, Cuba Si!, and The Case of the Grinning Cat), others are portraits of famous faces (Simone Signoret, Akira Kurosawa), but most are pictures of people Marker has encountered as he has traveled the world (an extra who appeared in Kurosawa's Ran, a woman seen on a street in Siberia). The central section of the book contains a series of photographs documenting political protests Marker has witnessed, including the march on the Pentagon in 1967, the events of May 1968 in Paris, and the tumultuous 2006 demonstrations protesting the French government's proposed employment policies. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Softcover. NY, Harmony Books, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages. A photographic documentation of the Beatty-Cole Circus, recording and portraying the customs, activities, animals, and singular personalities of an endangered way of life. "I wanted to document the backstage everyday life of this ancient closed society and the people who live in it." Full-page b/w photos. Wrappers with light wear.

Hardcover. London/Calcutta, Seagull Books , 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Circuses provide surreal, fantastic entertainment. At times magical and at others chilling, the circus is a world of magic and spectacle for the viewer, but for the performer, a career in the circus often brings with it a nomadic, lonely life. In Circus Girl, photographer Saibal Das captures beautiful and unusual images of circus girls, photographs which evokes this sense of darkness and resignation that underlies the otherworldly feats they perform under the big top. For instance, in one photograph, a circus girl whose act involves a lioness is seen sitting in front of a mirror putting on her makeup. The lioness that she usually whips in the ring stands behind her, her paw touching the girl's shoulder affectionately. But both wear a solemn look. In another, the girl sits on her props, staring silently at the snack packets strewn on the ground. The giant marquee is empty. Internationally renowned mime Nola Rae provides a haunting accompanying text that poetically comments on the transient wanderings of the circus performers who often yearn for a conventional family life while donning their costumes and taking hold of the trapeze. Rae gives voice to the circus girls, articulating the thoughts too often hidden by the brilliant illusion of stage lights.

Hardcover. Brooklyn NY, powerHouse Books, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 112 pages. Photographer Henry Horenstein presents his earliest photographs, made from 1970 to 1973: a collection of portraits of family and friends, landscapes, and period imagery. These photographs describe a time familiar to everyone, when one moves from adolescence to adulthood-remaining a part of a family while beginning to create a network of one's own.

Hardcover. Brooklyn NY, powerHouse Books, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 112 pages. Photographer Henry Horenstein presents his earliest photographs, made from 1970 to 1973: a collection of portraits of family and friends, landscapes, and period imagery. These photographs describe a time familiar to everyone, when one moves from adolescence to adulthood-remaining a part of a family while beginning to create a network of one's own.

Softcover. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 118 pages. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. A Siamese cat beneath a clothes line, three women with linked arms standing on the front lawn, a man drying his hands on a dish towel in front of the kitchen stove. These scenes are part of Close to Home and the accompanying the Getty Museum exhibition held from October 12, 2004 to January 16, 2005, which celebrate snapshots--"found" photographs by anonymous photographers--that capture everyday life in all of its joy, banality, and mystery. Taken between 1930 and the mid-1960s, these photographs, most of them in black-and-white, create an unpretentious portrait of suburban American life by untrained photographers whose images can be unexpectedly lyrical and moving.

Softcover. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages, clean bright copy. A celebration of the snapshot with a collection of fascinating images, 54 color and 88 in b&w.

Softcover. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 118 pages. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. A Siamese cat beneath a clothes line, three women with linked arms standing on the front lawn, a man drying his hands on a dish towel in front of the kitchen stove. These scenes are part of Close to Home and the accompanying the Getty Museum exhibition held from October 12, 2004 to January 16, 2005, which celebrate snapshots--"found" photographs by anonymous photographers--that capture everyday life in all of its joy, banality, and mystery. Taken between 1930 and the mid-1960s, these photographs, most of them in black-and-white, create an unpretentious portrait of suburban American life by untrained photographers whose images can be unexpectedly lyrical and moving.

Hardcover. University of Missouri, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages. A "shooter" for the Associated Press for thirty-three years, Burroughs was assigned to the Washington bureau, and his photos appeared frequently in newspapers around the world, as well as on the covers of Life and other magazines. Close-ups of History is both an eyewitness account of history and a stirring professional memoir--a book that brings special moments into the viewfinder as Burroughs turns his trained photographer's eye to reflect his highly cultivated sense of news. These dramatic photographs testify to an incredible career launched at the end of World War II, and Burroughs's work in postwar Germany is especially poignant. He documented the remains of Hitler's office, ruined cities and displaced persons, and the Nuremberg trials. He also captured the beginning of the Cold War as the Soviets tried to take over Berlin and the German people struggled to hold the city for the West.