Documentary-Collection

I was there and saw the destruction.
This book illustrates the event well and brought
tears to my eyes.

Brilliant! The photos express a evolving understanding of "Christ" (and a few other connected topics) in our contemporary Western culture.

In this book, Nissan Perez (the curator of Photography at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem) has collected photos reflecting the Western world's meaning of Christ. Occasionally, in the book, the sacred has been caricatured, even profaned, but, to the curators credit, the book doesn't seek to be "religiously correct" by editing out the profane, nor the secular; rather he reveals in a balanced way how today's society understands Christ and Christianity.

The book's jacket cover (The Last Supper using 'The Sopranos') is one of the many examples of how artists through the ages have utilized religious imagery to express Christ. The contemporary photos are powerful symbols of the postmodern understanding of both faith and Christ.

Paul Tillich (German-American philosopher and theologian) once wrote "Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate." The symbol is the ultimate language of faith.

These photos capture the symbol of Christ, the image of Christ and more. They eloquently express the complexity found in the language of faith. The symbolic images of Christ that are captured in these photos: Last Supper, Crucifixion, Descent from the Cross. The photos are provocative, and press the interpretation of an orthodox Christ. Photos can, as this book deftly shows, point beyond themselves to something else, something transcending the mundanity of life.

This book, like its many images, transcends words and captures the matrix of faith. This language of faith deserves to be seen. Highly recommended.

In fact there is not much to say. Robert Frank is probably the greatest photographer alive, his bool The AMericans being the true bible of the second half of the 20th century. here we have a collection of well-known and less-known pictures displayed in a fascinating scheme bringing about unheard of parallels and feedbacks. It is a deeply moving book showing that photography can be a lot more than just pictures here we talk of passion, emotion, life and death. Frank is at his best suggesting rather than displaying. Some of those pictures will bring tears to your eyes

This book is FABULOUS!!! Since my visit to the Canadian Rockies over two years ago, I have searched for a book which could capture the spectacular images I remember. David and Marc Muench's amazing landscape photographs are magnificent. J. Udall's essay on this region is equally captivating, amusing and above all reminds me that I must return there soon! In a world of overhype and hyperbole, this book is truly matchless.

Running Fence, with its ironic reference to Christo's famous California art project, is one of those books that will be looked at in 50 to 100 years in wonder. It shows with utter clarity the incoherence and brutality of the US-Mexico border, without in any way resorting to the usual journalistic cliches. The border has all the strange transparency of the early days of the American West. This is the last frontier, seen from both sides, and rendered as a new kind of landscape photography. The light is hot and dusty, the fence a weird, expedient barrier that fits uneasily into a harsh landscape. It starts in the ocean and ends in the otay mountains, with a kind of no mans land on the US side, and a crazy patchwork of factories and home-made houses on the other. Is this what NAFTA is all about?

It's something of a misnomer, the title of Larry Fink's hilariously gruesome portrait of the fashion world. In Runway, his latest and most spectacular book of photographs, the much-celebrated "catwalk" barely figures at all. Fink's much more interested in the backstage drama, and in this behind-the-scenes record of the culminating moments in the seasonal paroxysms devoted to ready-to-wear and haute couture, he finds theater aplenty.

A pitiless and perceptive social critic, Fink previously documented the brutal heroics of boxing and the bizarre social customs of New York's Upper East Side. Here his camera captures, in unflattering close-up, the unguarded moments of some of fashion's biggest stars. And while he frequently focuses on instantly familiar supermodels, his most memorable pictures tend to be of the designers themselves. Many of them are more recognizable than their mascots, bagged like so many trophies under Fink's unremitting gaze. Isaac Mizrahi strikes a characteristically self-mocking, histrionic pose; a wolfish Oscar de la Renta glares at us suspiciously; Calvin Klein, caught in mid-sentence, could be having a cardiac arrest. In another supremely chilling image, Gianni Versace gazes heavenwards, looking horror-struck; it's almost as if the slain designer's having a premonition of his gruesome fate.

Fink's corrosive visual style derives from influences as diverse as Weegee and Diane Arbus (he studied with Lisette Model, the legendary French photographer who made a habit of the grotesque). He's obviously well aware that his hand-held flash - usually held aloft and angled down - freezes the scene like a diorama, turning humans into statues and vice versa (in one delicious moment captured at a society benefit, we see the lower halves of a line of partygoers filing past a comparatively lively pair of sarcophagi). In page after uncaptioned, full-bleed page, Fink hammers home a harrowing glimpse of a grandly dysfunctional world.

But Fink has a love-hate relationship with this strange and contorted show of human frailty; he glamorizes and demonizes its insanity at the same time. He's abidingly curious about the backstage talents, with their fanatical devotion to craft, who feverishly toil to create the designer's illusions. In one tightly cropped shot, makeup whiz Kevyn Aucoin, with total concentration, grasps a model's head in a vice-like grip (significantly, her face is hidden from us). And always, there are the fashion paparazzi, hovering (like Fink) on the sidelines, getting it all down on film so we can devour it.

"When substance is dead, style lives on," Fink writes in an afterword. Rest assured, both substance and style are alive and well in this damning - and damn amusing - book.

This is a superb, beautifully-produced book that is important for many reasons. First, the authors have rescued from obscurity an important woman photographer who helped create the most enduring images of Hollywood's early stars and also helped define the whole concept of cinematic Glamour. (Her work with Garbo established the conventions maintained and developed by the better-known Clarence S. Bull, and she even taught Steichen a lesson that he used in crafting his greatest image of Garbo.) Second, they have put the portrait photographer in context, in a fascinating exegesis of the Hollywood starmaking machine. Third, a marvellous appendix has clarified, for the first time, the timeline for the development of Garbo's image by various photographers (and the chapter on Garbo is also fascinating in its case study of this process)... another appendix elucidates the formerly-opaque numbering systems used by MGM's photographers. More AND BETTER text than the usual Hollywood picture book, although it is also filled with never-before-published photos. A must-have for the shelf of any film buff, and also a good choice for those interested in photography or women's studies. Highly recommended.

I love this book very much but I did not buy it. I go to libraries to read this book many times. There's only one model in this book. The first several pages made me astonished for the beauty of the model. His body looks like ancient greek statue so much that I think Duane Michals emphasize this in purpose. There are also other fabulous photos inside this book that make me feel so moved. The only disadvantage of the book (for me only, maybe you don't think so) is that I don't like Walt Whitman's poems, not at all. His peoms in my opinion are too shallow and no ryme, like the talk of a farmer who reads little and who does not have talent in poems at all. (Maybe his proses are good.) I cannot tolerate seeing bad poems beside at the time of looking at wonderful photos.(that's why I did not buy the book but just read it in library).

If you like Walt Whitman's poem , consider the masterpiece of photos of Michals(the photos inside this book are a masterpiece absolutely), go and buy one for yourself, or at least borrow it from a library.

I was fortunate enough to see an exhibition of Wendy Ewald's work two years ago, and it completely changed the way I look at photography. Some accuse her of exploiting children (almost all of 'her' work is either collaboration with children or the work of the children she's taught), but I have to disagree. Rather, I think she's given a voice to children (most of whom are from low income neighborhoods) who otherwise wouldn't have any.
The images in this book (and, for that matter, her other books) are magical in a way that no book free from a child's influence could be. I can't recommend her work highly enough.

An annual contest collection by a Japanese amateur photo club dedicated to photography of women. A large collection of a variety of Japanese and other professional and amateur photographer's work from quite abstract to traditional glamour, almost all color and mostly nudes, of a variety of Japanese and other models. Fresh, fun, and fond photography. Ignore the silly, sexist title, you will have no regrets about the rest of it!