How To and Why
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Understanding a Photograph: John Berger
18 x 11 x 1.6 cm €14.00 Add to cartJohn Berger’s writings on photography are some of the most original of the twentieth century. This selection contains many groundbreaking essays and previously uncollected pieces written for exhibitions and catalogues in which Berger probes the work of photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and W. Eugene Smith – and the lives of those photographed – with fierce engagement, intensity and tenderness.
The selection is made and introduced by Geoff Dyer, author of the award-winning The Ongoing Moment.
How do we see the world around us? This is one of a number of pivotal works by creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision for ever.
John Berger was born in London in 1926. His acclaimed works of both fiction and non-fiction include the seminal Ways of Seeing and the novel G., which won the Booker Prize in 1972. In 1962 he left Britain permanently, and he now lives in a small village in the French Alps.
Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels and several non-fiction books. Winner of the Lannan Literary Award, the International Centre of Photography’s 2006 Infinity Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’s E. M. Forster Award, Dyer is also a regular contributor to many publications in the UK and the US. He lives in London.
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About Looking: John Berger
19.5 x 12.5 x 1.5 cm €12.80 Add to cartAs a novelist, essayist, and cultural historian, John Berger is a writer of dazzling eloquence and arresting insight whose work amounts to a subtle, powerful critique of the canons of our civilization. In About Looking he explores our role as observers to reveal new layers of meaning in what we see. How do the animals we look at in zoos remind us of a relationship between man and beast all but lost in the twentieth century? What is it about looking at war photographs that doubles their already potent violence? How do the nudes of Rodin betray the threats to his authority and potency posed by clay and flesh? And how does solitude inform the art of Giacometti? In asking these and other questions, Berger alters the vision of anyone who reads his work.
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Ways of Seeing: John Berger
18 x 11 x 1.2 cm €13.00 Add to cartBased on the BBC television series, John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is a unique look at the way we view art, published as part of the Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics.
‘Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.’
‘But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.’
John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and influential books on art in any language.
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Photography and Ireland: Justin Carville
22 x 19 x 2 cm €29.00 Read more -
No Smoke without Fire: Willie Doherty
24 x 33 x .5 cm €26.00 Read moreThis major bookwork features the most comprehensive collection of Doherty’s recent colour photographs available in print to date. It is accompanied by texts by the artist. Published on the occasion of a Doherty exhibit at Matts Gallery, London.
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Magnum Legacy: Eve Arnold
28 x 24 x 2.5 cm €42.00 Read moreFilled with reproductions of Arnold’s acclaimed photographs, shot in both color and black and white, as well as previously unseen archival images, this biography relates Arnold’s bold images to the fascinating story of their making. Renowned for her intimate portraits of figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Malcolm X, and Queen Elizabeth, Arnold was equally comfortable documenting the lives of the poor and dispossessed. “I don’t see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.” To her images of migrant workers, disabled veterans, and protesters for civil rights in the US and against apartheid in South Africa, she brought an unflinching eye and a strong sense of social justice. This highly engrossing narrative tells a compelling story of an intrepid artist whose life’s purpose was to report on the lives of others.
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John Gutmann Photographer at Work: Sally Stein
30.5 x 24 x 2 cm €39.60 Read moreThis handsome book acknowledges Gutmann’s place in the history of photography. Drawing on his archive of photographs and papers at the Center for Creative Photography, it presents both unfamiliar works and little-known contexts for his imagery, linking his photography to his passionate interest in painting and filmmaking, his collections of non-Western art and artifacts, and his pedagogy. In addition to a major essay by Sally Stein, the volume includes an introduction by Douglas R. Nickel, and an overview of the Gutmann archive by Amy Rule.
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Impossible Reminiscences: René Burri
40 x 28.5 x 3 cm €83.00 Add to cartThis title presents the largely unpublished colour photographs of one the world’s greatest living humanist photographers, accompanied by Burri’s personal recollections and reminiscences to illuminate each photograph.
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The Photograph as Contemporary Art: Charlotte Cotton
20 x 15 x 1.5 cm €15.00 Read moreIn the 21st century photography has come of age as a contemporary art form. Nearly two centuries after photographic technology was first invented, the art world has fully embraced it as a legitimate medium, equal in status to painting and sculpture. This book provides an introduction to contemporary art-photography, identifying its most important features and themes and celebrating its exciting pluralism through an overview of its most important and innovative practitioners. The work of nearly 250 photographers is reproduced, from established artists such as Isa Genzken, Jeff Wall, Sophie Calle, Thomas Demand, Nan Goldin, and Sherrie Levine to emerging talents such Walead Beshty, Jason Evans, Lucas Blalock, Sara VanDerBeek, and Viviane Sassen.
This new edition brings the story of contemporary art photography up to date with a revised introduction outlining the evolution of photography from documentary tool to art form, and an updated final chapter focusing on the younger generation of artists who emphasize the technical and material properties of photography, employ it as part of a wider pan-media practice, or respond to evolving new modes of dissemination in the digital age.
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The World Atlas of Street Photography: Jackie Higgins
24.2 x 27.5 x 3.6 cm €54.95 Add to cartThe World Atlas of Street Photography focuses on the abundance of photos created on street corners internationally, including classic documentary street photography as well as mediated images of urban landscapes, staged performances, and sculpture.