Book Description
Since 1930, when the museum accessioned its first photograph, a vast and unique archive of pictures has been assembled for study, preservation, and exhibition. Among the photographers whose work is reproduced and discussed here are Hill and Adamson, Cameron, OSullivan, Stieglitz, Strand, Weston, Cartier-Bresson, Lange, Ansel Adams, Minor White, and Robert Frank. Some of these photos are classics, familiar and well-loved favourites; many others are surprising, little-known works by the masters of the art, and a number are hitherto unpublished works by unknown photographers of the past.
Customer Reviews:
Learning to Look at Photographs.......2007-07-23
When John Szarkowski recently passed away at the age of 81, the world lost one of photography's most important figures. He was the "Stieglitz" of the 1960s and 70s, changing the way audiences look at photographic images and he shaped the way future audiences will come to appreciate the pioneering work of Arbus, Eggleston, Friedlander and Winogrand. When he took over the reins of curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from Edward Steichen, photography's early twentieth century grand master, Szarkowski promoted a "new" photography that incorporated the everyday moment as it was unfolding on the streets around cities and towns across America.
His great gift to all of us who love photography besides his championing of new talent, was his incredible skill at writing texts, essays, criticism, books on photography. With his talent as a writer, and his background as a photographer, he was able to open a window onto this two-dimensional world of form and tone, shape, texture and composition, explaining the ins and outs, the subtleties, and the intuitions of image makers, their techniques and their medium in all its finesse.
Having simply tried to take a good photograph all his life, he simply knew a good photograph when he saw one. It is what made him such a great curator. His own best known books of photographs, "The Idea of Louis Sullivan" published in 1956, contains photographs of the architecture of Chicago, and his other, "The Face of Minnesota" published in 1958, contains haunting landscape images of his home state. He wrote the way he carefully crafted his own images. He framed each paragraph paying close attention to his ear, to diction and all the elements of style. It is why I love to read him and why I think he was the greatest writer to take on this visual art form.
Two books of his about photography that in my opinion are indispensable are "The Photographer's Eye" first published in 1966, and "Looking at Photographs" first published in 1973. With these two collections, the reader will gain an historic appreciation of photography from its earliest innovators beginning in the 1830s to the period of high modernism in the 1970s. With Szarkowski as your guide, readers will appreciate how the medium advanced, yet they will also understand how it has remained fundamentally the same picture-making process when it comes to handling two-dimensional space.
In The Photographer's Eye, Szarkowski covers what a viewer needs to take in from a photograph, how it was framed, cropped, what the subject is, what the detail is, the focus and the vantage point. In each of these wide areas, he supplies important photographs from the Museum of Modern Art's vast collection that illustrate these points. He begins with "The Thing Itself" the "what" of photography, the landscape or still life, or portrait that the photographer has aimed his camera at. From there he moves on to how photographers fix on detail, the synechdocal "parts" that make up the "whole" and that produce visual metaphor: the close up of the hands, the side of a face, a rifle, a window, a headlight of a car, a door latch.
He then illustrates how photographers carefully frame their images, how they crop, how they envision the image from its interior picture plane to what is left out, alluded to, outside the frame. And finally, he shows how photographers measure time; freeze moments, single out the present for the past of some distant future. Added to this element of time is vantage, that trick of where to place the picture plane in terms of its perspective, foreground to background, its recession to a vanishing point or points, whether it is head-on and flat, or deep and endless, looming up or slanting down, the world from above, or the world from below.
In Looking at Photographs which is subtitled--"100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art," Szarkowski leads the reader across time, from the earliest best works of the 19th century masters: Timothy O'Sullivan, Fredrick Evans, Lewis Hine, and Jacob Riis, all the way to Robert Frank, Roy DeCarava, Paul Caponigro, and Joel Meyerowitz.
The book is printed so that there is a one-page essay facing each of the 100 photographs it describes. Within that compact structure, Szarkowski is able to move from one idea to another across the history of photography as the reader turns the pages, and he is able to pinpoint for the reader, the attributes that each photographer brings to his medium. In this way the reader learns to read images for their wealth of craft, form and subject matter. It is like having the curator take you on a personal guided tour of the museum's photography galleries.
I learned from reading this book that Timothy O'Sullivan's "white skies" were a result of the wet plate's over-sensitivity to blue light and that "sky areas were thus automatically overexposed, and rendered as blank white." I also learned that O'Sullivan "...accepted the white sky and used it as a shape, enclosed in tension between the picture's visual horizon and the edges of the plate." Knowing this, I can never look at O'Sullivan's work again without understanding how much this 19th century photographic pioneer wanted the figure-ground relationship of sky to land to feature in his compositions. And this is only one example from the book. There are 99 more.
Owning this book is like having your own private collection of the world's most famous photographs. The way you look at photographs will be enriched. On your next visit to a gallery or a museum, you will be able to see so much more thanks to the intelligent and thoughtful writing of John Szarkowski. His precise, clear and uncluttered prose style will make your reading experience a pleasure in itself.
A Collection, New Yorker style.......2002-01-30
A Collection, New Yorker style
It is difficult to make a collection of photographs by different people and not make it haphazard, unless there is an underlying theme. The book consists of 100 pictures by 100 photographers in bw, taken in the 100 years or so up to 1960's, accompanied by a page of text each. The writing is insightful and while is not meant to be a systematic introduction to the history of photography, nonetheless is quite educational if you are interested in the subject. While the photographs range from the concrete to the abstract, the book is coherent helped largely by text. I enjoyed reading the text and looking at the photographs.
The book's strength and its weakness is that it strives to be stylish and original; the writing is 'sophisticated' and snobbish, a la New Yorker. Some of the 'deep' comments I did not much care for. Perhaps more importantly, a majority of the photos chosen for the photographer are not the ones that are usually considered the photographers' most representative works.
You should not read the book to study the history of photography nor to find the standard representative works of the famous photographers. I think people who are familiar with the rough history of photography and the more famous photographers will enjoy looking through the book - perhaps checked out from a library.
Wonderful Images; Beautifully Written Commentary.......2001-11-18
John Szarkowski has selected 100 worthwhile images and has crafted exceptionally well written commentary about each image. The value of the collection far exceeds the sum of the parts. The book is an education about photography. It doesn't matter how much you like an image or agree with the commentary because by seeing the image and reading the commentary you will learn about photography and about life.
See More . . . Through Photographs.......2000-11-19
Although this book has much less female nudity than many photographic books, there are two such pages in the book. If this type of representation is offensive to you, either skip this book or avoid those pages.
This book has modest purposes. "This is a picture book, and its first purpose is to provide the material for simple delectation." Beyond that, it is "a visual interim report [as of 1973] on the results of collecting photographs at The Museum of Modern Art." These purposes are magnificently fulfilled, and your eyes and mind will be filled with many useful new perspectives and thoughts as a result of your delectations here. Your life will be expanded by seeing much more, both in photographs and in life, as a result.
Mr. Szarkowski, head of the photography collection at MOMA, points at that photography "has received little serious study." As a result, a language and analytical framework for considering photography are not yet developed. To overcome that limitation. Mr. Szarkowski has provided a number of perspectives in the one-page essays that accompany each page of photography. These perspectives include the utilitarian purpose of the image, the style of the photographer, the technology of the methods used, and the significance of the subjects or subject. He also draws your attention to detail or information that expand your knowledge. It is like having the best docent's photography tour of your life, as you go through the images.
These essays are modestly described as simply "an attempt to describe photography from a somewhat more liberal and exploratory perspective." Well, they are much more than that. They are like turning the light on to see the photographs for the first time, unless you are a talented photographer already.
In creating this book, a great decision was made to limit each photographer to one page of work. In this way, you get to see more types of images and styles. I think this added greatly to the knowledge and enjoyment that can be gained from this wonderful book. A great benefit of this approach was to allow selecting photographs that would reproduce well in this page size format. I heartily approve of that approach!
In the book you will find portraits, sketches for painters, ways of recording far away places, Civil War reporting, aerial reconnaisance, methods of encouraging connections, insights into the physics of life, and efforts to be a successor to painting. As the author says, "Photography has remained . . . radical, instructive, disruptive, influential, problematic, and [an] astonishing phenomenon of the modern epoch."
Here are my favorite images:
D.O. Hill and W.B. Johnston, David Octavius Hill, Celotype, c. 1845
Baron Isadore Taylor, Nadar, Woodbury type, 1872
Madonna with Children, Julia Margaret Cameron, Albumen print, c. 1866
Sugar Bowl with Rowboat, Wisconsin Dells, Henry Hamilton Bennett, 1911
Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Paris, Jacques Henri Lartigue
Georgia Engelhard, Alfred Stieglitz, 1921
Torso of Neil, Edward Weston, 1925
Babe Ruth, Nikolas Muray, c. 1927
James Joyce, Berenice Abbott, 1928
Wes Fesler Kicking a Football, Dr. Harold E. Edgerton, c. 1935
A Boy with a Straw Hat with Flag Waiting to March in a Pro-War Parade, New York City, Diane Arbus, 1967
The Museum of Modern Art added a photograph to its collection as only the 23rd object acquired in April 1930. From the beginning, the museum has been committed to photography and was the first museum to establish its own independent department of photography. Invariably, there are copious hangings from the collection available for viewing whenever you visit MOMA. The museum should be proud of creating and now reproducing an improved version of this wonderful set of selections from its extensive collection. Perhaps it is time to create a larger version of this book that is more representative of the whole collection.
After you finish expanding your vision through these marvelous essays and photographs, I urge you to do some photography of your own to express yourself. You will appreciate what you see even more when you create your own images. A good way to begin is to find a subject that is covered in this book and create your own version of that subject. In that way, you can get "inside of the camera" with the photographer. After your photographs can be seen, compare them with the book. Go back and try again. Repeat the process . . . until you have captured the image you were seeking. Like truth, images can be fleeting and transparent.
See more and be more through your improved vision!
The book I was REALLY hoping for !.......2000-04-09
This book fills the reader with emotion and knowledge about photography and photographs. I will never look at a photograph the same way after having read it. The language is beautiful and inspiring and photographs wonderfully reproduced. Anyone who loves the subject or art in general will find excitement on every page. NOW I can begin to know which photographers to study first and how to approach an enormous subject.
Book Description
Traveling the world for eight decades, mountaineer, explorer, cartographer, and aerial photographer Bradford Washburn has documented the landscape from the Grand Canyon to the Alps, from Mount McKinley to Mount Everest. Genius has inspired him to pioneer photographic techniques that capture the most remote and inaccessible points on earth under conditions worthy of a stunt man. Genius has also transformed his photos-conceived for a purely functional purpose-into works of expressive art. Now the career of America's most celebrated mountain photographer is presented for the first time in book form.
In Bradford Washburn: Mountain Photography, one hundred large-format mountain photographs, selected from more than 10,000 images, take the reader through Washburn's lifetime of accomplishments. Aerial images of high mountains, looking more like bold relief maps, are captured in extreme raking light. There are picture essays of early Alaskan expeditions-striking modern still lifes of supply caches and camp conditions-plus portraits of team members and colorful characters and situations encountered along the way. Additional aerial photographs reveal, in breathtaking clarity, the workings of the earth, continuously transformed by upheavals and erosions, and the slow march and retreat of glaciers.
Customer Reviews:
Bradford Washburn: Mountain Photography.......2007-04-03
I was looking for something different. The photographs are beautiful but they are mostly not of the mountain in which I was interested.
Bradford Washburn: Mountain Photography.......2005-10-17
TERRIBLE COPY - FALLING APART - PAID VERY HIGH PRICE AND WAS VERY DISAPPOINTED WITH THE QUALITY OF THE BOOK. WHEN PURCHASED IT SAID IT WAS IN EXCELLENT CONDITION.
Picture the mountains in all their glory..........2003-01-15
This book is a marvelous record of mountain exploration and photography with photos that span a period of almost 70 years. This small collection representing much less than 1% of Washburn's photographs is a remarkable record of photography rivaling Ansel Adams or Vittorio Sella. Although the photos were originally taken to support his geological or surveying research or to provide guide shots for climbers, Washburn soon realized that he had a knack for taking photographs as art that were as good as any being produced by other photographers.
This book may be a disappointment for those who want expedition photographs as few of the photographs include people. Indeed, having a few more pictures of people would have warranted five stars. Yet, many of the pictures are aerial photographs so the lack of people in many is not surprising. What makes it ultimately worthwhile is the crispness of the pictures, the attention to details on the ridges and valleys of the mountains, the patterns revealed in the flow of glaciers, and so on.
One other point of interest is that this book was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2000 Banff Mountain Book Festival -- the only pure photography book to win that award.
A slight disappointment.......2001-07-29
After the exhiliration generated by Washburn's classic book on Denali, this one left me slightly disappointed. There are many exquisite photographs and a few truly great ones, such as the famous picture of climbers on the Doldenhorn (in the Bernese Alps). But on the whole there are just a little bit too many pictures of abstract geological features. These reveal a more scholarly side of Washburn's art: interesting to round out our view on this great artist, but less captivating than the epic mountain pictures. Also, there is an appendix with a detailed account of Washburn's career, with many little inset pictures of people he worked with (Barbara Washburn being the most prominent amongst them). I would have liked to see many more of these pictures and at a size more amenable to detailed study. A final point of criticism on this book concerns the interview with Washburn by the editor: it is very revealing but way too short! I would have guessed that Decaneas would have been able to extract much more material from all the conversations he has had with Washburn in the final years of his life. So, it's a nice book to have in the library, but Decaneas missed an opportunity to put together an absolute classic. Pity.
Museum quality visual images.......2001-03-16
Bradford Washburn roamed the globe for eighty years as a mountaineer, explorer, cartographer, and aerial photographer. In Bradford Washington: Mountain Photography, Tony Decaneas as assembled one hundred full-size landscape mountain photographs from the more than ten thousand images that Bradford made during his lifetime of photographic accomplishments. From the Grand Canyon to the Alps, from Mount McKinley to Mount Everest, these black and white landscape photos of mountain peaks and picture portraits of team members and colorful characters that are each of them museum quality visual images showcasing Bradford's photography as having risen to the level of fine art.
Average customer rating:
- Good book despite inaccuracies and racial bias
- A wonderful gift for anyone interested in Sudan or the Nile
- A wonderful gift for anyone interested in Sudan or the Nile
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Sudan: Ancient Kingdom of the Nile
Manufacturer: Flammarion
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The Nubian Pharaohs: Black Kings on the Nile
ASIN: 2080136372
Release Date: 1997-04-15 |
Book Description
In association with the Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris, and the Kunsthalle, Munich.
The culture of the ancient Sudanese and Nubian Kingdoms is chronicled in this groundbreaking exhibition catalog.
Customer Reviews:
Good book despite inaccuracies and racial bias.......2004-02-11
The book convers a vast history from the beginning of the Khartoum Mesolithic and Neolithic to the unfolding of the Arab invasion of the Sudan. Through each chapter readers will find out more information about Sudanese history. All the leading experts in the field of historical and archeological reserch from Charles Bonnet to Timothy Kendal.
Not only does this book cover Sudanese history,but also accomplishments of the Nubians. In the past various books have tried to overshawdow Nubia with using the ''Eurocentric'' implications of strictly Egyptian influce. In this book,however,it shows indigenous relgious existed well before the absorption of Egyptian relgious deities like Amun. In fact,there is proper evidence that the deity Amun,itself,might have been based off a Nubian deity called Amani.
Despite the shinning qualities of the book,many bias of long dead scholarship seems to rear it's ugly head. Jean Lecant tries his hardest to argue based off tomb scenes of Huy that the figures depicted are not streotypical ''true negroes'' Lecant fails to observe the diversity of Africans and that phenotypical traits like noses are influced by adaptation of climes not intermixture with caucasoids. Lecant unfortunatley still clings on to old outdated anthropology that clearly demonstrates his ignorance.
A wonderful gift for anyone interested in Sudan or the Nile.......1999-01-29
This beautiful `coffeetable' book is something every Sudan scholar should take a look at, perhaps once a month? The book illustrates and catalogs an exhibit at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, and goes from Neolithic gravesites to the Christian era of Meroe. Anyone who doubted the complexity of prehistoric Nubian society will be convinced that here was an extremely interesting and complex society. The artisanship evident in the jewelry, construction of temples, and pottery, is stunningly skilled. If you can't justify buying it for yourself, give it as a gift to a friend.
A wonderful gift for anyone interested in Sudan or the Nile.......1999-01-28
This beautiful `coffeetable' book is something every Sudan scholar should take a look at, perhaps once a month? The book illustrates and catalogs an exhibit at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, and goes from Neolithic gravesites to the Christian era of Meroe. Anyone who doubted the complexity of prehistoric Nubian society will be convinced that here was an extremely interesting and complex society. The artisanship evident in the jewelry, construction of temples, and pottery, is stunningly skilled. If you can't justify buying it for yourself, give it as a gift to a friend.
Average customer rating:
- Stunning photography
- Powerful Living Photography
- Photography - Salgado
- Great Art with a purpose
- Exquisite photographs, disappointing layout
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Sebastiao Salgado: Workers
Manufacturer: Aperture
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Binding: Hardcover
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Sahel: The End of the Road (Series in Contemporary Photography, 3)
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Sebastiao Salgado: The Children
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Inferno
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Magnum Stories
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Koudelka
ASIN: 089381525X
Release Date: 2005-06-15 |
Book Description
More then those of any other living photographer, Sebastião Salgado's images of the world's poor stand in tribute to the human condition. Salgado defines his work as "militant photography" dedicated to "the best comprehension of man"; over the decades he has bestowed great dignity on the most isolated and neglected among us-- from famine-stricken refugees in the Sahel to the indigenous peoples of South America.
With Workers, Salgado brings us a global epic that transcends mere image making to become an affirmation of the enduring spirit of working men and women. In this volume, three hundred fifty duotone photographs form an archaeological perspective of the activities that have defined hard work from the Stone Age through the Industrial Revolution to the present. With images of the infernal landscape of an Indonesian sulfur mine, the drama of traditional Sicilian tuna fishing, and the staggering endurance of Brazilian gold miners, Salgado unearths layers of visual information to reveal the ceaseless human activity at the core of modern civilization.
Workers presents its subjects on several interactive levels: Salgado's introductory text expands his passionate photographic iconography, and extended captions, also written by Salgado, provide a historical and factual framework. Evoking the monumentality of Baroque sculpture, images of oil-fire fighters extinguishing Kuwaiti wells are informed by data detailing this perilous venture. Heroic photographs of Cuban and Brazilian peasants harvesting sugarcane are enriched by an overview of the history of the sugar trade, which documents centuries of colonialist exploitation.
On the eve of the millennium, Workers serves as an elegy for the passing of traditional methods of labor and production. Yet its ultimate message is one of endurance and hope: entire Indian families serve as construction crews to build a dam that will bring life to their land, and laborers using contemporary technology connect England and France through Eurotunnel. Honoring the timeless and indomitable spirit of the manual laborer, Workers renders the human condition with honesty and respect.
Customer Reviews:
Stunning photography.......2007-09-11
My wife and I saw these photographs exhibited in NYC quite a while ago (mid to late 1990's at the ICP?) and were extremely impressed, and I think that the book does them justice. Some are almost difficult to believe are real (see Brazilian gold miners on pages 300 & 301).
Powerful Living Photography.......2007-05-31
I was lucky enough to see this wonderfully humane expose and photographic genius while it was on tour at The Philadelphia Art Museum years ago. At that time, I passed up buying this book at the Museum Store and regretted and searched in stores for it years later.
If this book were on everyone's coffee table and looked at page by page ... there would be much more respect and much less oppression in the world. Good people would see to that.
Photography - Salgado.......2007-03-26
A brilliant book that I wanted to obtain quickly as a present - it came very quickly, in excellent condition, well protected and it is a fabulous book of photography for all levels of expertise
Great Art with a purpose.......2006-11-04
The bikes we ride, the tuna we eat, the oil that runs our cars, the gold we wear, are all manufactured, fished, drilled, mined, by countless people in remote corners of the world, often under extremely difficult and dangerous conditions, and more often than not, for extremely low wages. In this beautiful book, the Brazilian economist turned photographer Sebastiao Salgado put his Art to the Service of Humanity, to give us a window to the rest of the World that remains hidden from our TV screens and from our consciousness. The pictures are magnificent, and as true Art should, their impeccable technnique is there to serve the greater purpose of conveying meaning and emotion.
Exquisite photographs, disappointing layout.......2005-01-23
I love these photographs, and the quality of the reproduction is exquisite -- BUT
most of the photos span two pages
Having a "spine crease" in the middle of the photos detracts severly from their beauty and impact
Book Description
A brilliantly illustrated survey of modernist photography in Central Europe, published in association with the National Gallery of Art.
In the 1920s and 1930s, photography became an immense phenomenon across Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and Poland. Through magazines and books, in advertisements and at exhibitions, from amateur clubs to avant-garde schools, photographs emerged as a key vehicle of modern consciousness.
This book and the exhibition it accompanies present the work of approximately one hundred individuals whose creations exemplify the potential of photography in Central Europe between the two World Wars. Foto brings together for the first time works by recognized masters such as the Russian El Lissitzky, the Hungarian László Moholy-Nagy, and the German Hannah Hóch—all of whom developed their photographic ideas in Germany—with contemporaries like Karel Teige and Jaromír Funke (Czechoslovakia), Kazimierz Podsadecki (Poland), Károly Escher (Hungary), and Trude Fleischmann (Austria), who are less well known today.
Organized thematically, the book explores topics from photomontage and war to gender identity, modern living, and the spread of Surrealism. It shows the shared experience of modernity in the region, whereby recently founded nations and dismantled empires alike sought their place within the new world order established in the aftermath of World War I.
The illustrations, drawn from more than seventy collections in America and abroad, include several previously unpublished works as well as many others never before available in high-quality reproductions. 230 illustrations in color, tritone, & duotone.
Customer Reviews:
Drowning in Detail.......2007-08-23
Huge amount of information about every single photographer regardless of major significance.Dig through that, and much interesting stuff. But the fixation on MODERNITY is typical curatorial nonsense. It is about "Collage and its Variations in Central Europe".
Book Description
Home to over 20,000 mind-boggling anatomic specimens, plaster casts, wax models, and paintings, the Mutter Museum, founded in 1858, is part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. This book features over 100 photographs by a select group of renowned photographers whose work appears in the award-winning Mutter Museum calendars. Highlights include a bust of an early-19th-century Parisian widow with a six-inch horn protruding from the forehead; the connected livers of Chang and Eng, the world-famous Siamese twins; the skeleton of a 7’6” giant from Kentucky; and a collection of 139 skulls showing anatomic variation among ethnic groups in central and eastern Europe. Historical photographs from the museum’s archives, brief background texts about the collection, stunning photographs by acclaimed photographers including William Wegman and Joel-Peter Witkinand, and an introductory essay on the museum are also included.
Customer Reviews:
interesting but.......2007-08-24
I was a bit disapointed in the book. The pictures were beautifully done, but there was little information on the subjects. My interest was more in the people or bodies photographed, and I guess I felt cheated by not knowing more about them.
A Great Coffee Table Filler.......2006-12-04
If you don't have the calendars, this is an excellent way to get some of the delightfully artistic photographs of the creepy exhibits at the Mütter Museum. My primary complaint is that the text is often a bit short on detail, but it could very well be that not that much is known about some of the specimens. Also, the lack of photographs of some of the most interesting exhibits - such as the Soap Lady and the Giant Colon - is annoying, especially since they don't let you take pictures yourself at the museum. But there are more than enough fascinating photographs to make this a worthwhile addition to morbid coffee tables everywhere!
Amazing book.......2006-11-04
I bought this book as a gift for a chiropractic student and they were thrilled. Other chiro students in the class loved it as well and they all used it for some references.
A muddled mess of art photography and medicine--not enough of either.......2006-08-19
I often find that books that try to be two things at once don't really make it as either, and this is a case in point. I thought it might be a book ABOUT the Mutter Museum and the exhibits there, but it's not really, it's a book of artsy photographs that happen to be taken at the museum. However, it then includes bits and pieces of medicine and medical history, but never enough to really give you any perspective or answer questions you might have about the pictures. There is a section at the end that is straight writing without photos, but it's ALSO a muddled mess---a thrown together hodge-podge of history and only one, for some reason, case study. I don't think the medical information was that well edited, as I read with surprise that now babies born as early as the 3rd month of gestation can survive outside the womb! Wow! I bet that will be news to many OB/GYNs!
Maybe I don't know enough about art photography, but I found the photos underwhelming. Many were not really focused. There were often more than one of the same exhibit, from different angles, and for some reason in different places in the book. The most jarring photos to me were not the sad ones of horrible deformities but the ones with the dogs of William Wegman posing with such things as a preserved diseased foot. WHY? I felt it was really a blow to the dignity of the people that gave their body parts to science.
The best part of the book to me was the older photos, taken in the 19th century, which gave dignity to their subjects, and the pictures of wax models. They were so much more straightforward and clear than the other photos.
Overall, not worth the money. I hope someone at some point does a different book about this museum.
good coffee table book for enthusiast of corpses, fetuses, and natural anomalies mmmm!.......2006-07-05
First off- this book is no comparison to the actual Mutter Museum in Philly which houses probably the best collection of human anomalies in history. There are not only pictures, models, and wax figures but human skeletons (think the like of elephant man, siamese twins, horned and fanged heads and faces)of people that were amazingly endowed? or cursed?. The book is a glimpse at some of the highlights of the museum's unique array and a commentary on the human body and its amazing attributes. Ms. Worden does an excellent job with simple pictures and short descriptions that capture the uniquity of her job as director of this museum. Even if you tend to be weak-kneed or feign at the ideas of the abnormal, its hard not to be glued to these pictures and appreciate them. Ms. Worden who would have been thrilled at the turn out of this book sadly passed away a couple years ago but she was a warm face in the midst of the absurd but endearing. Hats off to her and this great book.
Average customer rating:
- Georgia O'Keeffe Would Have Loved This Book!
- A TREASURE FOR ALL
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Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Collections
Barbara Buhler Lynes
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Similar Items:
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Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction
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O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection
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Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life
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Frida Kahlo
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Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe
ASIN: 081090957X |
Book Description
Georgia O'Keeffe is one of the great artists of the twentieth century, and one of the best loved. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, holds the largest collection of her work, her archives, and her houses at Ghost Ranch and in Abiquiu.
This lavishly illustrated volume presents a magnificent selection of O'Keeffe's paintings, drawings, and sculptures, all reproduced in faithful color. It also offers a generous portfolio of photographs—some previously unpublished—by O'Keeffe; many by Alfred Stieglitz, her husband and mentor; and others by such renowned photographers as Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, Philippe Halsman, Yousuf Karsh, and Todd Webb.
In addition, there are a number of works by American Modernist painters who painted in New Mexico—George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, and Edward Hopper, among others.
Customer Reviews:
Georgia O'Keeffe Would Have Loved This Book!.......2007-09-11
Georgia O'Keeffe would have loved this book! Not only does Barbara Buhler Lynes, curator of Santa Fe's Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, respect her subject's astonishing eye and craftsmanship in this book, she respects Ms. O'Keeffe's wishes regarding displaying her works of art. During her lifetime, the artist often mounted her own shows, e.g., at An American Place, her husband Alfred Stieglitz's gallery in New York. Ms. O'Keeffe was adamant (a) that her creations be hung on white walls, and (b) that her artwork be arranged by type rather than chronology.
Lynes abides by both of the artist's rules here to great effect, and her meticulousness, in terms of the notes she provides about the artist's work and also the tags she associates with the plates (where she identifies the type and size of the surface used and also the type of medium: charcoal, graphite, oil, watercolor), add another layer of enjoyment for the reader.
Lynes' notes attempt to steer the reader away from stereotypical interpretations that haunted Ms. O'Keeffe during her career. For instance, regarding "Blue II" (Plate 3, Page 19), the curator states: "The . . . womblike spiral of 'Blue II' seems to substantiate connections crtics in the 1920's made between O'Keeffe's work and female sexuality. Yet when she made this watercolor, O'Keeffe was intensely involved in playing the violin, and . . . the form . . . of the spiral in her watercolor most likely derive[s] from the scroll-shaped termination of the neck of the instrument . . ."
Categories in the book include abstractions, still lifes, architecture, animal and human forms, and trees. Every reader will find his or her favorite here; mine are the artist's representations of feathery kachina dolls and New Mexico's Pedernal. The last category in the book contains works by other artists at the museum whose careers, in some way, parallelled that of Ms. O'Keeffe. Stieglitz photographs (including a Georgia O'Keeffe nude) are here, as well as Ansel Adams' memorable "gelatin silver print" of Georgia O'Keeffe and Orville Cox at Canyon de Chelly National Park.
A TREASURE FOR ALL.......2007-03-28
For those of us not fortunate enough to be going to Santa Fe this year for the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (which houses the largest collection of her work), here is an able substitute. Those who have visited the Museum in the past will relish this opportunity to revisit not only her art but her houses at Ghost Ranch and in Abiqiu, New Mexico.
It need not be said that O'Keeffe is a preeminent artist of the twentieth century, one of the most respected and loved. An American modernist she is acclaimed for her compelling abstractions, so elegant and vital. Her visions are often enlarged. Inspired by the natural she once said, "When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too...I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it."
This gorgeous volume is rich with illustrations - 335 in full color and two eight-page gatefolds. It also includes numerous photos, some previously unpublished, and works by others who embraced modernism and painted in New Mexico.
Curator of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, author Barbara Buhler Lynes is the leading authority on this artist. She has done a meritorious yeoman's task in compiling this glorious volume which is a treasure for all.
- Gail Cooke
Book Description
Pictured in two centuries of images, the hypermuscular and physically strong woman is studied here for the first time as a major player in popular culture and contemporary art. Using the bodybuilder as prototype, a rich variety of authors engage with her particular physicality, and how it resonates with social issues such as female pleasure and gender stereotypes. From the sublime to the gritty, this volume presents modern amazons as a culture with a history, a dazzling and transgressive current phenomenon, and avatars of the future.
Packed with illustrations, Picturing the Modern Amazon investigates the representation of hypermuscular women in a range of visual sources. Historical images and archival materials dating from the late 1700s through the present century illustrate older notions of female strength, providing a solid base of comparison for the modern materials. Contemporary art explores a diversity of issues surrounding the physically strong woman; artists represented include Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Nicole Eisenman, Annie Leibovitz, Alison Saar, Andre Serrano, Cindy Sherman, and Nancy Spero. Comic artists address the amazon through comic strips, comic books, and unique art works that focus on muscular female characters and superheros; artists include Robert Crumb, Diane DiMassa, Roberta Gregory, John Howard, and Turtel Onli. Photographs of some of today's top bodybuilding competitors capture the stunning strength and definition of the hypermuscular woman.
Co-edited by Joanna Frueh, Laurie Fierstein, and Judith Stein, the volume's contributors are Michael Cunningham, Nathalie Gassel, Leslie Heywood, Irving Lavin, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Al Thomas, Jan Todd, Steve Wennerstrom, and Carla Williams. Interviews with noted bodybuilders-both the sport's pioneers and today's top competitors-provide a personal perspective.
Customer Reviews:
Amazing Amazons.......2002-04-23
A great compendium of pictures and information -- you don't get this stuff often. This book talks to your inner Terminatrix -- not only guys get muscles. Gals can be hardbody beautiful too!
An Intelligent and Sensitive Testimony to Strong Women.......2000-07-09
This museum-quality, coffee-table book is outstanding in every respect. Produced to accompany the New Museum of Contemporary Art exhibit, the book faithfully recaptures the power and immediacy of the exhibit photographs and art reproductions. The authors gathered the finest images from the long history of strong women, spanning the worlds of circus, of cartoons, of classical sculpture, and of modern bodybuilding. The illustrations and their captions convey a story in themselves, without ever needing to read the text. But what a storehouse of information is contained in the text! As a professional female bodybuilder myself, I have read nearly everything about my sport. This book gives an honest portrayal of the sport and of the ways in which female bodybuilders are presented to, and perceived by, the dominant culture. It effectively conveys the Catch-22 that enmeshes women of strength. Would a female sprinter be told, "Run fast, but not too fast. Don't try to run as fast as the men." How this situation came to be, and its effect on the sport's top competitors is carefully and responsibly presented here. The interviews with five very diverse representatives of women's bodybuilding are, in themselves, worth the price of the book. In addition, the authors present essays by the sports' acknowledged top historian, Steve Wennerstrom, and the sports' premiere sociologist, Leslie Heywood. The essays are daring, provocative, and brilliantly illustrated. Issues of race and class are addressed head-on. This is a strong book that doesn't apologize for itself or its subjects. This book will be enjoyed by anyone who has a fascination with women and strength.
Book Description
Where We Live presents more than 150 images from the Bruce and Nancy Berman collection of contemporary photographs. From Mitch Epstein's Holyoke, Massachusetts, to Camilo Vergara's Detroit, to John Divola's 29 Palms in Southern California, the images here concentrate on the American landscape
and the people and structures that can be found in its vast vistas--and its backyards. The photographs that the Bermans have been drawn to often represent changing American communities recorded by artists whose vision is passionate but unsentimental--a vision that acknowledges the present as
fleeting, desolate, and lyrical.
Beautifully reproduced in this volume--which coincides with an exhibition to be held at the J. Paul Getty Museum from October 24, 2006, to February 25, 2007--are works from twenty-four contemporary photographers, the majority working in color, from William Christenberry and William Eggleston to
Doug Dubois and Sheron Rupp. Accompanying the photographs are illuminating essays by Kenneth A. Breisch and Colin Westerbeck and an introduction by Judith Keller. An essay by novelist Bruce Wagner captures the mood that runs through this powerful assemblage of photographs.
Customer Reviews:
Landscape miners.......2007-09-16
The 198 photos in the book are part of the 450 that have very generously been given to the Getty by LA collectors Nancy and Bruce Berman. This lovely book was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the photos at the museum in 2006 and 7. The twenty-four photographers featured are probably the leading contemporary exponents in the US of this landscape image capture and one reason I like this type of book is that I get to discover photographers I was not aware of. My main discovery here was Jim Dow. In the back of the book there is an excellent biography of the photographers which nicely lists their books, I've already got my eye on one by Mr Dow.
If you are familiar with recent landscape photography (and I think it's worth stating that this means the man-made landscape rather than natural) you'll most likely have seen some of the photos included: 'Petit's Mobil station' by George Tice, 'Red building in forest' by William Christenberry or '2nd Street, Ashland, Wisconsin' by Stephen Shore are three I've frequently seen but I feel the strength of the book is the opportunity to compare how these twenty-four photographers interpret the same subject.
The impressive page size: about eleven inches square, screen: 250dpi+ and quality paper and printing mean the photos sparkle on the page though I did wonder if maybe a few images had been taken from chromo prints rather than the original transparencies. I noticed a softness and lack of detail in a Stephen Shore photo of Easton, Pennsylvania for instance.
The book cannot be considered a definitive survey of contemporary landscape photographers, only those in the Getty Collection have been included so no Lewis Baltz, Jeff Brouws, Gregory Conniff or David Graham for example but those that are presented are clearly part of the top creative interpreters of man-made America
***FOR A LOOK INSIDE click 'customer images' under the cover.
fantastic book.......2007-01-16
I saw this show at the Getty Museum in LA and it was one of the best contempory photography show I have seen. the book is great!
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