For some insight into the commercial photography book market, PDN recently obtained data from Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks retail book sales, to see which new titles are among the bestselling photography books this year.
Category: Books
-
What Makes A Photo Book A Bestseller? 2009 Edition
-
'My Paper Chase – True Stories of Vanished Times,' by Harold Evans – NYTimes.com
When Type Was Poured Hot
In his new memoir, Harold Evans recalls an exuberant run in 20th-century journalism.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Carr-t.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Sir Harold Evans knows his way around a story, having served as the editor of The Sunday Times of London, The Times of London, and all manner of publications up and down the food chain. As the title of his new book, “My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times,” suggests, he describes an epoch past, an era in British journalism when type was poured hot, articles deemed unfit landed on an actual spike, and the men — and it was mostly men — who commanded all of it were literate buccaneers.
-
Grunge – WTJ
In celebration of the release of his latest book ‘GRUNGE‘ Michael Lavine is this weeks WTJ? sponsor. Michael took the pics and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore provides the text. Grunge is not only a collection of portraits of musicians synonymous with the 80’s punk scene and grunge explosion in Seattle but also documents the counter culture of the time. Michael had many personal relationships with many of the artists which lead to unparalleled access.
Link: Grunge
-
lens culture: "Transsibériades", Klavdij Sluban
Klavdij Sluban won the European Publishers Award for Photography 2009, for his book Transsibériades.
-
Review: Dorothea Lange – A Life Beyond Limits by Linda Gordon – Conscientious
I have always been under the impression that America has not given its female photographers the credit they deserve(d), and that it is maybe a bit too generous with its male ones.
Link: Review: Dorothea Lange – A Life Beyond Limits by Linda Gordon – Conscientious
-
photo-eye | Eddie Adams – Vietnam
“Eddie Adams,” writes his widow Alyssa Adams in her Author’s Note to Vietnam, “would never had let this book be published if he were alive.”
-
A soldier's photographs of Afghanistan – The Guardian
A soldier’s photographs of Afghanistan
Alexander Allan’s newly published collection of pictures from his tour of duty in Helmund offer an extraordinary new perspective on the conflict
via the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/oct/27/photographs-afghanistan
Alexander Allan’s newly published collection of pictures from his tour of duty in Helmund offer an extraordinary new perspective on the conflict
-
PDNPulse: Ex-Corbis Employee Working on Tell-All Book
Corbis, which shuffles its executive team around every couple of years, is frequently the subject of gossip about company politics. Recently, one internal feud spilled out in public on a blog by Jon La Grace, a former editor at Corbis Outline, the stock agency’s celebrity portrait division.
-
Book Review – 'Dorothea Lange – A Life Beyond Limits,' by Linda Gordon
Picturing the Depression
A highly political biography of a transformative figure in modern photojournalism, the documentary photographer Dorothea Lange.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/books/review/Oshinsky-t.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
perhaps the most iconic image — gracing textbooks, hanging from dormitory walls, affixed to political posters, even adorning a postage stamp — is Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother,” taken at a California farmworkers camp in 1936. The photo shows a woman nurturing three young children, one in her arms, the others leaning on her for support. Her manner is strong and protective, yet her face shows the worry of someone overpowered by events beyond her control. She has trekked west from the ravaged Dust Bowl of Oklahoma, finding fieldwork where she can. Gazing into space, she represents the spirit of America itself in the midst of history’s worst economic disaster — the mix of courage and compassion that will lead a proud, invincible nation to endure.
-
alex webb & rebecca norris webb – violet isle | burn magazine
alex webb & rebecca norris webb – violet isle
[slidepress gallery=’awrnw-cuba’] Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb Violet Isle play this essay Q&A with DAH &n…
via burn magazine: http://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/10/alex-webb-rebecca-norris-webb-violet-isle/
(1) Both of you have heretofore been solo artists. What sacrifices did you make and/or what benefits are there to a collaboration?
AW: From my perspective, the sacrifices were not great. Early on working in Cuba, I envisioned doing my own book, but I also wanted to do something different –– something unlike any of my past books, as well as something different from any of the many past photographic books on Cuba. When Rebecca and I hit upon the notion of combining our work, this resolved these concerns of mine. I also found it very exciting to weave our two distinct bodies of work together to create a different kind of portrait of the island. In fact, I am more excited about this book than any other book of mine since Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds, my first book, which came out in 1986.
RNW: I was initially concerned that my fascination with Cuba was taking valuable time away from a project that I had always thought would be my second book, My Dakota, a project that had started out as an exploration of my relationship with the West––and specifically my home state of South Dakota––and ended up also becoming an elegy for my brother, Dave. Now, I realize that bringing out the Cuba book before My Dakota was the right decision. I needed more time and distance from my brother’s death to absorb and distill and let go of My Dakota.
-
photo-eye | Bureaucratics
Link: photo-eye | Magazine — Bureaucratics:Sushma Prasad is an assistant clerk to the Cabinet Secretary of the State of Bihar, India. Her desk is relatively neat, but behind her is a chaotic pile of irretrievable facts buried in hundreds of tattered paper files. Prasad is one of fifty civil servants Jan Banning photographed in Bolivia, France, Yemen, Russia, Liberia, India, China, and Texas. They engage us as individuals, but Jan Banning has titled his series of color portraits after the system in which his subjects labor: Bureaucratics.
-
Magnum On Georgia, For Georgia
Link: Magnum On Georgia, For Georgia:This month Magnum Photos releases Georgian Spring: A Magnum Journal, a group project for which ten photographers—Thomas Dworzak, Martine Franck, Mark Power, Alex Majoli, Martin Parr, Alec Soth, Jonas Bendiksen, Antoine D’Agata, Gueorgui Pinkhassov and Paolo Pellegrin—traveled to the Eastern European country to document the contemporary culture and national identity. The book is curated and published by Chris Boot, a former Magnum director in London.
-
Chris Jordan – Running the Numbers « The PhotoBook
Chris Jordan – Running the Numbers
Copyright Chris Jordan 2009 courtesy of Kopeikin Gallery and Prestel Verlag In the Old Testament of the Bible, there are the numerous stories of the Prophets who have an unpopular message for their…
via PhotoBook Journal: http://thephotobook.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/chris-jordan-running-the-numbers/
The ability to visual changes is a central issue for Chris Jordan when had attempted to grasp and illustrate the environmental issues of waste. He was finding there was not an effective way to actually visualize what was occurring. It is difficult to comprehend the relationship between being an individual consumer and what the potential accumulation of that consumption might actually look like. Thus he created a series of images based on using individual objects, that when compiled into a larger image in conjunction with an identifying caption, could help us understand what the Big Picture might look like. That at the core is what his recent book Running the Numbers, an American Self-Portrait is attempting to help us comprehend.
-
5B4: Proud Flesh by Sally Mann
Proud Flesh by Sally Mann
When Sally Mann released her book At Twelve in the late-1980s the art world was rife with artists concerned with exploring the body polit…
Link: http://5b4.blogspot.com/2009/10/proud-flesh-by-sally-mann.html
Proud Flesh is for me an emotionally exhausting work about withering. It has elements of 19th century clinical photography done with absolute loving care for the subject. Its factual surface is quickly replaced by metaphor and the haze of imperfection from the wet-plate collodion negatives she employs
-
Snap Art – PDN
Link: Snap Art:Rizzoli is publishing a new book Shoot: Photography of the Moment, a survey of informal, snapshot-style photography by Stephen Shore, Nan Goldin, Juergen Teller, Wolfgang Tillmans and other pioneers of the style, presented alongside the best new practitioners. Shore wrote the foreword to the book, which includes essays by London College of Fashion professor Penny Martin and Ken Miller, the book’s author, who considers the snapshot medium’s history and explains its current vibrancy and popularity.
-
5B4: Capitolio by Christopher Anderson
5B4: Capitolio by Christopher Anderson:
Early into Christopher Anderson’s Capitolio we are faced with a horned demon exorcised by a cross held aloft over its head. It is this one image which metaphorically sums up the presidency of Hugo Chavez and the polarized nation of Venezuela. The poor tend to see Chavez as a saint while the wealthy few – the four hundred year old elite – paint him as the anti-Christ.
-
Mark Klett – Time Studies « The PhotoBook
Mark Klett – Time Studies « The PhotoBook:
Klett has tapped into the earlier photographic processes to explore the element of time by extending the duration of his exposures. He effective uses two variations, an extended long exposure to constant capture the light and a series of intermittent exposures over an extended period of time. To me, the process is like creating some mysterious treasures, because you can not always foretell what the final results will appear like. With time and practice, you can kinda guess approximately what the resulting image might look like, but you can never tell with absolute certainty.
-
Making an Awesome Photo Book
Making an Awesome Photo Book – A Picture’s Worth:
Blurb is well-known as a digital book-making company. Their CEO, Eileen Gittins, and I have had a chance to sit down last year when we were comparing notes about putting together a national seminar series, and more recently, we’re both partners to the Magnum Expression Photography Award. PhotoShelter has used Blurb before to develop marketing pieces, and while the end result was good, I always had the desire to have more control over the output than their software allowed (I worked as a graphic designer in college).
So I was very pleased to find that they now support “PDF to Book” capabilities, which means I could design my own book using a product like Adobe InDesign. This new process gives a few distinct advantages
-
The world's most expensive photography books
The world’s most expensive photography books | Art and design |guardian.co.uk:
The production of limited-edition photography books has provided a lucrative trade for art book publishers, even in a recession. As glossily packaged collector’s items, coffee-table tomes can fetch up to six-figure sums. But are they artworks in their own right? We take a look at some of the most expensive photobooks of all time