Documentary-Collection Books

Big, bold, heavy, epic. A square 4 pounder on glossy stock with over 125 black and white photos.

Dustjacket Blub: "This superb photographic survey of the megalithic sites of England and Wales has been conducted by David Corio with the eye of a great landscape photographer as well as the passion of an explorer of the ruins of an ancient culture. These photographs go to the heart of prehistoric Britain."

Regarding Lai Ngan Corio's text, the book harkens back to the multiple, speculative, and often wholly speculative theories that have been put forward over the centuries to explain the purposes behind megalithic structures. She explicates "the rich layers of myth and legend that surround the stones. The oral history attributed to certain sites is as much a reflection of the limits of early knowledge, as the computer analysis of alignments is a reflection of the science of the modern astronomer or geometrician."

Melanie Manchot uses the camera lens like a hard question and sensuous caress. It shows, despite what some of the over-written essay material by art critics contained in her book may assert, that her own ambivalence toward social norms along with her sense of the erotic are the source of her inspiration to produce stark, confrontational, yet paradoxically intimate photographs. Love is a Stranger, the title of the book, is really a kind of metaphore for what Manchot knows -that intimacy is overflowing everywhere among us, complicated and diverted not by the social rules restricting it but by our own questioning of our basic preference for intimacy when occasions for its display arise. The various series of photos in the book alternate between being inspiringly lush and formally restrained, all with a headlong deliberate sense of viewership that her particular use of the camera brings. In producing these photos and video documentations Manchot utilizes the photographic medium to engage some of the most fundamental human impulses, free them from fixed ideas of their proper or accepted understandings, and provide us with permission to consider human relations on a less unencumbered, interpersonal level. She is working inside certain aspects of just what it means to be human in a sensible way. This puts her work on aesthetic terrain that may seem obscure because the specifics of her objective, while so large in scope for being rather neglected in photography, focus with such precision on psychological truths that are largely a matter of rigorous introspection. This is an admirable collection of photographic work that speaks closely to our fundamental ideas about ourselves. It has both a reposing classic sense of artistic achievement and revelatory, cutting edge charisma.

i felt deeply moved by the essence and the beauty of the subjects.
i was transported into a completely different world.
the captions make the photographs magic!
a work of art!

When in Sumatra - Indonesia I read this book, which convinced me to go to Pulau Siberut to see and experience the Mentawai.

Before leaving I was sceptical how much the book really reflected the way that the Mentawai actually live but when I got to Siberut, and experienced these people for myself I realised how true to life the book really is. It doesn't have anything in it that is not accurate, perhaps slightly glossier than reality at times, but not inaccurate.

I took the opportunity to stay with Aman Lao Lao, the Shaman featured in the book who - like all the Mentawai - is a warm, hospitable and often funny guy. They don't wear their dress for show or for photos, but genuinely do dress in the manner shown in the book, although they might have more modern clothes if they need to visit the port or come into contact with officialdom. The Mentawai people are extremely interesting and good natured and I would urge anyone who has any interest in tribal cultures to look at this book as there are very few places where one can see such an unspoiled civilisation, and this book shows with stunning photography how these wonderful people continue to live

An excellent resource. Insightful. Beautiful pictures. Highly recommend for folks in dance education, collaborative artists, school teachers, dancers, and children.

Yes! Finally a biography/photo collage, that does justice by Metallica. I picked this up a couple weeks ago because of an essay I had to write for a class of mine, and I was blown away! Metallica was the first band I ever saw live, and this truly captures the effect of the live experience. Minus the druken brawls, bonfires, and

This is an absolutely stunning book visually - from a purely aesthetic point of view, and as documentation of the way flowers change from bud to demise. There is also some interesting text accompanying, and a number of lovely poems and quotes.

For anyone who is a flower lover, a lover of nature, or a photographer, this book is a "can't go wrong" Also makes a great and unusual gift.

This is a take-you-back-in-time mural of the great Mickey Mantle and the other legendary ball players that brought major league baseball to its pinnacle in the 60's. If you were school age or older in the 60's, this brings it all back--live and in living color. Great action shots of Mick and his pals where you can hear the crack of the bat! And Sweet grabs many candid shots of Mickey that clearly bring back the glowing personality that he shared with the world. When you finish looking through this book, you'll know you own a chronicle of Baseball's greatest days and why the name Mickey Mantle has become a synonym for the word "Baseball"! Don't miss your chance to grab this book. It'll be a collectors item, just like Sweet's earlier book "Legends of the Field" published by Sports Illustrated. It's worth noting here that Ozzie Sweet is considered one of the ten best photographers that ever lived (and he's still click'n the shutter). In this collectors archive, you can see why!

In "Mid-Century City: Cincinnati At The Apex", the historic photography of Sarge Marsh is nicely supported by the brief narrative text of John Fleishchman to present the city of Cinncinnati, Ohio in the mid-nineteenth century at the height of World War II when this American Midwest metropolis featured downtown movie palaces able to seat 1500 people at a time, when there was an airport served by shiny, propeller-driven DC-3 and DC-4 aircraft and people dressed formally to fly, when a typical business office worker was equipped with a wooden desk and a black telephone, when afternoon shoppers got their lunch in noisy, boisterous cafeterias. A superb showcase presenting a now time-lost yesteryear of Cincinnati, Ohio, "Mid-Century City" is a nostalgic series of images that is especially recommended for anyone who still remembers what it was like more than half a century ago.

Reminiscent of both Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives and James Agee and Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Rick Nahmias' The Migrant Project is a revelatory and provocative book. Nahmias' black and white photographs of California migrant workers are haunting and starkly beautiful. The grinding poverty and arduous workplace conditions these people endure is heartbreaking and infuriating, yet their strength and dignity emerges in Nahmias' images and direct, unaffected prose. It's a deeply humanistic and necessary work of art that stays with you. Highly recommended!