Silver & gold

Sample

Joan Severa

"During the nineteenth century - a time of great technical and cultural change - fashion was a cultivating force in the development of American society and was influenced by one's social status, geographic location, and economic standing. 'My Likeness Taken' is a collection of daguerreotype portraits of men, women, and children taken between 1840 and 1860. Selected from the top collections in the United States, each image is analyzed to clarify datable clothing and fashion components. With subjects from among the best-dressed members of society, these portraits - reproduced in full color - reflect the latest fashion developments, trends, and influences. For students of photographic and costume history, this is extraordinary material. Many of these images have never before been published, and Severa's keen analysis adds immeasurably to our understanding of the importance of dress in American society. Photo archivists and colectors, costume curators, social historians, material culturalists, and theater designers will also find My Likeness Taken to be an invaluable resource."--Jacket.

Sample

William A. Ewing

"The Century of the Body presents chronologically one hundred works that illustrate all the significant genres of body-centred photography, in both art and science. Dance, sport, fashion, glamour, anatomy, medicine, criminology, political propaganda, erotic imagery, Body Art, and all the varied currents of what is called 'art photography' are featured, each represented by the most innovative photographers of their day. The greats of scientific and technological imagemaking, notably Lennart Nilsson and Ralph T. Hutchings, are included. So, too, are the leading art photographers of the century, among them Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Brassai, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Bill Brandt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Richard Avedon and Joel-Peter Witkin. Well known Body Artists, such as Claude Cahun, Carolee Schneemann and Chris Burden, who used the camera to record the performances, are also acknowledged." "The Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne, one of the world's foremost photography museums, has selected these landmark images to celebrate some of modern photography's finest achievements. An introduction by William A. Ewing, and full commentaries on every photograph, survey the entire range of twentieth-century imagery, focusing on the radical shifts in attitudes to the body that have taken place since 1900. The images, magnificently reproduced in duotone and colour, stand as a lasting memorial to the finest photographic artists and scientists of the past one hundred years."--Jacket.

Sample

Michael Stern and Alan Hess

"A visionary artist who has achieved worldwide fame, Julius Shulman transformed the face of architectural photography - has, in truth, changed the very nature of how we see architecture - demanding that his work be so much more than the cold documentation of buildings. From the earliest photographs till those taken today, in a prolific and still vibrant career, his work demonstrates a profound sensitivity to and appreciation for the spaces in which actual people live, spaces that, as seen through his lens, are at once luminous and profoundly shadowed, spaces that are sometimes wonderfully mannered and yet still strangely, deeply personal, spaces of intrigue and ultimately extraordinary beauty, into which the observer - Shulman's passionate audience - longs to enter." "This volume, published in association with the Palm Springs Art Museum to accompany the exhibition, Julius Shulman: Palm Springs, tells the brilliant, decades-long story of the legendary photographer's symbiotic relationship with this oasis of Modernism on which so much of his photography is focused, an architectural landscape the formation of which he has simultaneously observed and helped bring to be."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

essays by Dave Hickey and Naomi Vine

"Peter Alexander: In This Light is the first full-scale monograph on this artist, who for over three decades has been an active force in shaping the art and culture of California. The book includes work spanning Alexander's entire career to date, from the cast resin sculptures of the late 1960s to the recent Las Vegas paintings. Essays by art critic Dave Hickey and by Orange County Museum of Art Director Naomi Vine probe the central issues raised by Alexander in his work: the problems surrounding the concept of beauty in making art today. Vine examines the suspect nature of beauty in art in our time, while Hickey discusses the supreme challenge of attempting to create art in paradise.". "In addition to the critical essays, extensive documentation details the career of Peter Alexander, not only illuminating Alexander's life but shedding light on a time in California art when the Light and Space movement was emerging as an important, innovative, and distinctly West Coast approach to art-making."--BOOK JACKET.