Documentary-Collection Books

"Shooting Blind" is a fascinating photographic study, as all the contributors are visually impaired. Accompanying interviews with the photographers indicate that many of them wanted to represent how they see the world - an impression of what it is like to experience a vision loss. They've accomplished this admirably by using an innovative flashlight technique, creating eerie light and shadows. This photographic technique is interesting in its own right, and its usage in the photographs can also be viewed purely as art, with no compelling need to know about the photographer's vision loss. One particularly magical photo is that of a violinist, with light and mist rising from the instrument, giving it an ethereal mystical quality, almost allowing the viewer to see the music flowing from the violin. "Shooting Blind" had a profound effect on me - allowing me to enter the world of people who are visually impaired, while at the same time making me realize that art doesn't have to be bound by our own limitations.

My eyes went wet when I browse through the striking images printed in "Shooting Blind: Photographs by the Visually Impaired". These unpretentious and sensual portraitures knock me down like a hammer strike. My colleagues ask me (I showed them the publication) if the blind photograhers could see their end products and I told him this does not really matter and we should treat the images as a gift to us (those who can really 'see'?!), a gift which could lead us thinking the meaning and the quest of seeing. These images are amazing graces!

For decades our so called Art World and mainstream Art History merely focus upon 'sophisticated' works and have neglected voices from minorities. The institutionalization of Art (with a capital A) by museum, gallery, collectors, curators and academics have buried the original essential nature of perceptual
experience and creative will.

I treat the photographers in this book a violate act up against the stagnated world. I truly hope the publisher Aperture or other Art dealers not to give a price tag to these honest images and leave them away from the fateful destinations and genres of Postmodern Photography.

Mr. Galano's work is beautiful, meaningful and unique. All New Yorkers have some experience with the homeless. All too often, we forget that homeless people are just that--people with stories, friends and loved ones. The combination of statistics on the homeless situation coupled with Mr. Galano's insightful and beautiful photographs is not only moving, but also fresh. We all need to be reminded that homelessness is not a choice. Homeless people have histories just like the rest of us and Mr. Galano brings dignity and beauty to this horrible situation and makes us realize that we must do more to recify this staggering situation.

With this amazing book Salvo Galano, finally, shows a simple truth: homeless are not space aliens fallen on our sidewalks. They are people, they love, they smile, they smoke, they fight, they fall. They have stories, they were clerks, soldiers, artists. They were us, until something went wrong. Usually not terribly wrong, they got fired, they got evicted, they lost all their money recovering from an accident not covered by the insurance. Salvo put them in front of the camera, like actors, or models, or important people revealing a world of beautiful human being who happened to be homeless.

The somber and quiet images in this book appear to be from the past, but were photographed within the last few years. This unique book offers views of Jewish communities depopulated by the Holocaust and left today much as they were after WWII. Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe left many of these areas undeveloped and frozen in time.

The images in this book are artistically composed and printed with great attention to detail. Viewing the large printed images give one of the feeling of standing in the place itself. I strongly recommend this book as one of permanent importance. With the rapid changes now underway in the area, it may also be the look we have at the communities that made up such an important part of the cultural fabric of Eastern European life prior to WWII.

Silent Places, by Jeff Gusky, takes us on a poignant, and incredible photographic journey to Eastern Europe, where he documented (in B&W photographs) the architecture and landscape of the Holocaust era...Synagogues, houses, landscapes, windows, doors, parks, all images from the past, but actually taken recently. The B&W aspect gives a ghost-like and haunting composition to the photographs...the aura of life within the frame illuminating our senses.

Time erodes the landscape, and even the architecture, but the sense of humanity and life still exist within the confines. We feel the aura of the past, brought into the present, the sounds of silence and former life, and activity resounding, for all of us to view. The ghosts of the past, sing their song, through broken windows, deteriorating doors, ruined homes, leaving an indelible mark in the time continuum, compelling us to wonder WHY?

Gusky's book is a a work of brilliance, one that we soon not forget, a book both compelling and haunting. It is a historical journey into the depths of loss, destruction and places that once hummed with Jewish life.

It matters not what our beliefs are, because we are all one underneath the sun, the umbrella of life on the planet. The history defined within the illuminations of this book define us all on some scale. We all have history, all have ancestral pasts, villages and cities of life, that run through our genetics. Time erodes much of our past, our life's history...and in that aspect...this book gives us to ponder and realize, that each person's history is a part of the universal whole.

Students and enthusiasts of photography and its history have long considered Peter Bacon Hales's SILVER CITIES indispensable. First released in 1984, it was one of the first, most readable, and most visually interesting, of a crop of new histories of photography that saw the medium as part of a larger sphere of cultural history. This new edition is really welcome-- much longer, even more lavishly illustrated, dramatically revised, beautifully redesigned. Hales has incorporated many of the ideas and discoveries of writers since the book was first published; he has added many new illustrations and changed the old ones, and he has pushed the book well into the 20th century, treating photographers like Walker Evans, James VanderZee, and Edward Steichen. The writing is better, too-- more conversational and fluid, easier to read. If you have a copy of the old SILVER CITIES, you'll have to buy this one, too. If you don't, this is a real eye-opener of a book.

"One may view this book as a study of American attitudes toward the city as revealed in one of its most important media or as an ongoing history of an urban art form," writes Hale, a professor of art history and director of the American Studies Institute at the U. of Illinois - Chicago. The nearly 250 photographs relating to American cities from the pre-Civil War decades to the eve of WWII are roughly divided into the four stages development, maturity, transformation, and diffusion. Earliest photographs from the 1830s and '40s capture plainly the crude, clustered buildings sprouting up in open spaces, as in uncomprehending witness to what was unfolding. Photographs from the latter 1800s reach into the impoverished, fragile, hectic lives of immigrants flooding into the cities. Jacob Riis's photographs figure prominently in this period. Into the 20th century, the photographs again change in subjects and perspectives to go along with modernism's tenets of Promethean, prodigious, growth, large-scale enterprises, and celebration of technology and design. Springing from the "discipline [of] American cultural history," this revised and expanded edition of the 1884 publication not only contains additional photographs, but also related added text reflecting the growth of government sponsorship, mass-market reproduction, the place of women and African-Americans, and the diminished presence of "individual studio practice." Yet despite this last new topic, Hale also in one part brings out the "photographic studio as itself [in italics in original] a part of the developing American urban fabric." Like the earlier edition which has now become a collector's item, this revised edition is patently the leading study on photography as it took cities as subjects and reflected evolving attitudes toward them.

I have seven of the Cube Books and love everyone of them. Sometimes I do chuckle at the information in them when it isn't quite real, but the intent is good and the photographs awesome!

This book is a real pleasure. Its photos of the sky at various times, places, angles show us how beautiful our life can be if we only look up. The book aside from the photos which are its heart explains what the 'sky' is and how it relates to our ordinary life perceptions and the insights into the universe given to us by our scientific instruments. When looking at this book I had in mind the traditional Jewish teaching , that a person should always 'look up' when they walk. That is the Sky is not only the Sky not only the colors and shapes of what we see but rather is suggestive of what is Beyond us, of a realm which helps us dream and hope.
This is a truly enjoyable little album, and one I think many guests would delight in taking from the coffee- table and leafing through.

Mike Sroka's photographs of the Canadian Forces 'Snowbirds' fighter planes would have been treat enough, but when paired with behind-the-scenes access into Snowbird team aviation history and daily details, it becomes an outstanding pick any military or aviation collection must have. Gorgeous color photos accompany insider's details that could only have been gained from a photographer who had access to the team as one of their official photographers. The history, aviation insights and eye-catching photos make for an extraordinary package.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This book is full of Canadian Pride. I have seen the the Snowbirds perform in the US a few years ago. As an avid airshow fan I was impressed. Their red uniforms stand out. The book gave a great account in the the life of a Snowbird. The pictures were first class. A great addition to my aviation collection of books. Larry S

Reviewing this book, which I have owned since it first appeared (thanks to the fantastic Urban Latino magazine for reviewing it so long ago), I feel a lot like Dracula opening the door to Jon Harker, saying *enter of your own free will*. This book is filled with darkness. Manmade darkness. Apapthetic darkness.

However, when you buy and open this book, it is filled with the light of love as well. A spirit that keeps these young people going amidst a hopeless cycle. The photographs illuminate in the greatest tradition of photojournalism. W. Eugene Smith would be proud. The photos never pander to our emotions, yet they don't allow us to stand above implacably indifferent either. You can feel the love from the photographer and his night guide: a priest who takes in some of the kids. An amazing intimate body of work.

But that's not all. You have a job to do after you open this book, as Bianca Jagger so eloquently pleads - what will we do *now that we are no longer ignorant*. It is a call of awareness and a call to action.

Human beings are leaving wide swaths of evidence for the prosecution to codemn us to our fate. This is a key piece of photographic evidence for you the jury to consider...

see the effects of the globalization of our work force, the effects of reducing a great nation from the revolutionary socialist hopes of the eighties to its entrapment through conservative and now arrested President Aleman into the multi-national industrial slave labor machine. See this book and its photos and feel for yourself what we do where we cannot see for the greater profit of Wall Street. In the Sandinista eighties these same people had housing, education, literacy and jobs. Now our USA victory leaves them nothing at all.

THe preface by Nicaraguan Mrs. Jagger (the inspiration for Brown Sugar) is worth the purchase alone.

What a terrific book. Arthur Grace takes you inside America via a stroll along the great midways of the country fair. What better way to find the real America. The use of B&W allows the viewer to delve into the contents of the photo, rather than being seduced by the color. Highly recommended.

These photographs are extraordinary capturing a vivid part of American life that many urban Americans no longer see. Some of its funny. Some of its poignant. Some of its immensely sad. Only in America. Kudos to a great photographer.

a very nice reading experience...each of the featured players has a photo or 2 and approx. a page of written text exploring their musical life and playing experiences...some very thoughful replies...among the featured players are: Henry Kaiser, Philip Catherine, Bill Frissell, Jim Hall, David Torn, Nels Cline, Mary Halvorson, Allan Holdsworth, John Mclaughlin, Mike Stern and many others.

This is a great collection of photographs, all guitarists of course, with a short one page text from the guitar player themselves which often is an insight into what makes them, them.

A total of 81 artists, a fine balance between the famous, the cult and the guys pushing the boundaries.

This is a work of art, highly recommended.

It's all a matter of taste of course, but I believe Sam Abell's "Stay This Moment" to be a stunning set of photographs.

The apparent simplicity of his technique and vision is an inspiration to a keen amateur photographer like me. Perhaps I don't need a new camera/lens/filter/gadget - just be able to look and really see.

I'm desperately hoping for a reprint so I can buy my own copy of this book - at a reasonable price.

I found the images in this book absolutely delightful and very beautiful. They simply took my breath away. I would love to find a copy to own but haven't had any luck in locating one. Please contact me if you know how to find this book.