For every Vietnam War image seared into our memory, there are thousands more, documenting our two-decade slog through an ultimately unwinnable conflict. Vietnam: the Real War, a Photographic History by the Associated Press tells this familiar but still compelling story in rich, visual detail, providing a thorough look at the daily life of US and South Vietnamese soldiers in the jungles and rice paddies, and on city streets. The book’s 300-plus photos, all from the AP archives, fill in the moments between the Pulitzer-winning images.
But in San Francisco, it was particular. It was called “Art and Music” The Mutants, The Dills, Flipper, Crime, SVT, The Yanks, Tuxedo Moon, The Tubes, Los Lobos, The Avengers, Dead Kennedys and Romeo Void, U2. Many of them were students at the San Francisco Art Institute. Members of The Mutants and Romeo Void of course..Chris Isaac of Silver Tones too and Bonnie Hayes & The Wild Bunch – Bonnie Hayes was one of the coolest girls in the punk scene. I was surrounded by these rock bands, both punks and artists. Suddenly these groups wanted images. They call me and say: “Stanley, I know you have pictures, you know, this magazine wants to do an article on us, etc.” And without realizing it, I became a professional photographer while still an art student….”
The imprint will distribute 3000 copies of the book for free with the stipulation that recipients donate money to a charity of their choice and then pass the book on to another person
Rather than offer a narrow list of my own favorite photobooks of the year—lots of documentary and street photography—I turned to some of the awesome photographers who contribute to Mother Jones and asked what caught their eye. The result is this diverse list of great books, a number of which I totally missed and am now scrambling to find. Also contributing to our picks is Jeremy Lybarger, who works on the admin side of Mother Jones but consistently knocks out smart photobook reviews.
Lurking on the eccentric and strange is a specialty on New York-based photographer, Martin Cartagena. His candid shots of the diverse cast of characters that make up The Big Apple are striking and revealing. It seems as long as there are 8.3 million people occupying New York there will never be a shortage subjects and new photographers to focus their lenses on them.
It’s been just over three decades since the passing of Ansel Adams, but his legacy lives on in the hearts and minds (and on many of the walls) of those he
Michelle Frankfurter has recently completed her multi-year project titled Destino documenting Central American migrants traveling through Mexico to cross into the United States
Raised in North Carolina and educated in California, the Brooklyn-based photographer Bryan Derballa has an unwavering love for the outdoors. For the last four summers, he’s set aside his work in order to head into the country with his friends. For him, these journeys are essential to his livelihood. As he enters his thirties, they allow him to hang onto what he calls the “liminal state between youth and adulthood. It’s a period of uncertainty that occurs sometime after college but before homeownership, when friends become family and time becomes finite.”
Photographer Jim Goldberg and publisher Gerhard Steidl probably had current socioeconomic realities in mind when they made the decision to revise and reprint Goldberg’s Rich and Poor, which contrasts portraits of San Francisco’s elite with portraits of its poorest citizens
“I’ve been influenced by all sorts of things,” Parke said in a 2007 interview. “Music videos have been great. There is this Icelandic group Sigur Rós – their music is just very sad and melodramatic. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead and those sorts of bands and their cutting-edge film clips have influenced me. They have this kind of dark, dreamy quality and I suppose that was what I’m trying to evoke. But, to be honest, I don’t really realize all this when I am shooting because the stuff inside me and the stuff outside me kind of flows through me into the pictures. Most of the time I’m in another world.”
In 2006, Lee Friedlander was hired by New York Times Magazine Director of Photography Kathy Ryan to photograph backstage at the Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Zac Posen, Oscar de la Renta and Proenza Schouler shows
This new project by Olivia Arthur takes as its starting point a shipwreck that happened in 1961 and traces the footsteps of a fictional survivor through the modern city.
Magnum photographers Paolo Pellegrin and Alex Majoli present a collaborative document of the Congo and its people. Bringing together the best of each photographer’s personal styles as well as experimental forays into abstraction and collage, this volume captures what Alain Mabanckou describes as a full range of the landscape, “from urban scenes to great forests and back, reflecting the way it is in most African societies today.” With no captions or individual photo credits, the densely printed images—presented on full-bleed pages, as gatefolds, or as double-spread gatefolds—become wholly immersive.
Photobooks on young womanhood, the chaotic landscape of Las Vegas, coffee-farming in South America, and more in American Photo’s roundup of the season’s best
In an age where everyone is publishing books, the requests for reviews are almost unmanageable. I have dozens of books sent to me every month. I simply cannot review them all, nor am I inclined to do so. However, every once in a while I come across a book worth noticing. Here are three such books.
The duty of a photojournalist, according to many, is to remain detached in a moment of crisis, to compartmentalize scenes of violence and war from the goings on of everyday life. As suggested by Italian journalist Mario Calabresi in his extraordinary book Eyes Wide Open, however, the best storytellers are those who allow themselves to be submerged within often painful events, to forgo absolute objectivity in favor of something rarer: a precarious marriage of impartiality and intimate involvement. In interviews with ten photographers who have not only documented but in many ways shaped the course of history—Steve McCurry, Josef Koudelka, Don McCullin, Elliott Erwitt, Paul Fusco, Alex Webb, Gabriele Basilico, Abbas, Paolo Pellegrin, and Sebastiao Salgado— Calabresi peels back the layers that lie behind iconic images to reveal the nuances of each frame and the living, breathing people who stood behind the lens.
As suggested by Italian journalist Mario Calabresi in his extraordinary book Eyes Wide Open, however, the best storytellers are those who allow themselves to be submerged within often painful events, to forgo absolute objectivity in favor of something rarer: a precarious marriage of impartiality and intimate involvement. In interviews with ten photographers who have not only documented but in many ways shaped the course of history—Steve McCurry, Josef Koudelka, Don McCullin, Elliott Erwitt, Paul Fusco, Alex Webb, Gabriele Basilico, Abbas, Paolo Pellegrin, and Sebastiao Salgado
The 2015 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards winners were announced in Paris, with Daniel Mayrit receiving the $10,000 top prize for First PhotoBook. Other winners included Diane Dufour and Xavier Barral, Thomas Mailaender and Will Steacy.
