biography Photography

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.

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.

Hardcover. Germany, Steidl, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 262 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Photographs throughout. Tight copy. The High and Lonesome Sound combines Cohen's vintage photos, film and musical recordings as well as an anecdotal text into a multimedia tribute to this underappreciated legend of American music whose every performance was, in Cohen's words, "not just a rendition of music, but a test of something to be overcome."

Hardcover. Germany, Steidl, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 262 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Photographs throughout. Tight copy. The High and Lonesome Sound combines Cohen's vintage photos, film and musical recordings as well as an anecdotal text into a multimedia tribute to this underappreciated legend of American music whose every performance was, in Cohen's words, "not just a rendition of music, but a test of something to be overcome."

Hardcover. New York, NY, Little, Brown, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 482 pages, hardcover. Extensive b&w and color illustrations throughout. Silver gilt titles on spine. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, MJF Books, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 166 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Photographs by Sid Avery. Front sun faded, otherwise clean, tight copy. An interesting collection of black and white photographs, presenting Hollywood Celebrities of the fifities and sixties in various scenes. eg Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in their kitchen cooking breakfast, Debbie Reynolds with her children playing at home.

Hardcover. New York, MJF Books, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 166 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Photographs by Sid Avery. Front sun faded, otherwise clean, tight copy. An interesting collection of black and white photographs, presenting Hollywood Celebrities of the fifities and sixties in various scenes. eg Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in their kitchen cooking breakfast, Debbie Reynolds with her children playing at home.

Hardcover. New York, MJF Books, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 166 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Photographs by Sid Avery. Clean, tight copy. An interesting collection of black and white photographs, presenting Hollywood Celebrities of the fifties and sixties in various scenes. e.g. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in their kitchen cooking breakfast, Debbie Reynolds with her children playing at home.

Softcover. NY, Assouline Publishing, reprint, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 366 pages. Softcover with light wear to wrappers. Very little wear to cover. Many b&w and color photographs throughout. A bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages. From the late 1950s until her death in 1971, renowned photographer Diane Arbus took pictures of oddball performers at the now-forgotten Hubert's Museum, a typical freak show in New York City's seedy Times Square. One frequent subject was Charlie Lucas, first a freak himself, later an inside talker. In 2003, Bob Langmuir, an anxiety-ridden, pill-popping, obsessive antiquarian book dealer from Philadelphia, unearthed a collection of photographs and memorabilia, including Lucas's journals and what he thought were Arbus's photos. This trove of genuine American kookiness came to dominate his life. Following Langmuir's quest--from the slums of Philadelphia to the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art--as he gathered, priced and ultimately came to understand this collection, author Gibson (Gone Boy: A Walkabout), himself an antiquarian book dealer, effortlessly twists these strands together with an emotional wallop. His toil in Hubert's vineyard, Gibson writes of Langmuir, amounted to no more or less than the continuing archaeology of the old, weird America. Gibson's laser focus on Langmuir's shifting state of mind as he struggles to master his personal demons and navigate the pitfalls of his own obsession gives this story its heart and opens a window onto a lost part of the American soul. 21 b&w photos.

Hardcover. Bath, UK, Parragon , reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 224 pages. Extensive color photography throughout. This collection of stunning photographs from the archives of the Daily Mail, along with the detailed commentary, provide a wealth of information on the stars' public and private faces.

Hardcover. Boston, New Graphic Society, 1st , 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 126 pages plus index of photographs. Hardcover with dust jacket. Interviews by Dater with people who knew Cunningham. 60 black & white plates by Cunningham. Clean.

Softcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st pbk, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 180 pages. A retrospective examination of the pioneering 20th-century photographer's work that spanned some seventy years. Drawn primarily from Cunningham's archives at the Imogen Cunningham Trust, the most complete collection of her prints and negatives in the world. 120 black-and-white photographs. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Zurich, Edition Olms, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages, with dust jacket. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Delving into the photo archives of French magazine, Paris Match, where Chaigneau is an editor, and accompanied by several of the interviews and articles the magazine published, the author offers a glimpse into the working processes and personal lives of some of the 20th century's canonical visual artists . Focused mostly on European masters such as Pablo Picasso, Bernard Buffet, Rene Magritte, Marc Chagall, and Joan Miro, the book's highly accessible, if minimal, commentary and anecdotes allow the photos to take center stage. Georg Baselitz, for example, is pictured perched on a chair with his head in his arms, as if "haunted by invisible demons," with several large scale paintings in the background. In contrast, Salvador Dali, ever the "wily publicist," seems to relish the camera's presence: in one shot dressed as a Spanish nobleman with an expression of faux-seriousness. Elsewhere, as a testament to his creative drive, Henri Matisse is pictured in 1954, bedridden but still painting with a specially devised long brush mere months before his death. Moving beyond the studio, some attention is given to the private lives of the artists, adding a human element to these creative giants. Photographer Willy Rizzo captures Picasso in a rare candid and intimate moment, reading the comics of a newspaper while his boxer, Yan, looks on. But perhaps the most illuminating moments are when the artists, in interviews, talk about their creative process; there is something humble and brave, for instance, in Jacques Villon's quip, "I don't know what I've discovered... but I know that I'm still looking". Color and b&w photos.

Hardcover. New York, Rizzoli International Publication, reprint, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 239 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Extensive color and b&w photographs throughout. Illustrated end papers and fly leafs. Tear to top right corner of rear dust jacket flap repaired with tape. Light edge wear to dust jacket, otherwise clean, tight copy.