Documentary-collections Books

Bill Wrights' PEOPLE'S LIVES is a straightforward approach that uses photography to show that our skins may be different colors, and our cultures may be diverse, but we are all tied together as members of the same humanity. Bill Wright is a photographer that shows us the world without making us voyeurs. His photographs invite us to have a clear understanding of our part in the family of man.

Bill Wright is an exceptional talent. His photographs celebrate the strength, courage, joy and hope of humanity. Mr. Wright's travels have taken him just about everywhere from Nepal to New York City. His images reveal an intimate view of the extra ordinary folks he encounters along the way.

A beautifully simple and simply beautiful book. Wonderfully seen photographs that really do capture and celebrate the human spirit. So many other photography books seem to be published solely to be jarring, hip, and fashionable. People's Lives stands out from this crowd as genuine, authentic, and mostly, just plain real. Well worth the price of admission to this more gentle view of our world.

Bill Wright's latest book is his best to date. Once you open the book, start looking at the beautiful images and read the text, you will become so engrossed you will not be able to put it down until you have read every page and studied every picture. With so many things happening in the world that are so negative, this book is extremely uplifting. Wright's book is a testament that the human spirit is alive and well and thriving everywhere...........you just have to look for it.

Bill Wright's wonderful photographs and commentary have a unique abilty to draw the reader/viewer into an emotional attachment to his subjects. I've yet to see one that didn't make me think, "I'd like to know this person."

Not that more to say than the title... This book contains many great photos made by a master, and the print quality makes justice to them (well, to confirm another review, there is one image that went too far on the reds, and has a deceptive burnt look - while many are great, and the splitND use is far more unobtrusive than Rowell's eg, with due respect ;o).
Page layout is more conservative than in other Muench books I have (I think to Primal Forces, great images but layout on the kitsch side), and that suits me well.

Besides the several landscape books from Muench, I have collected quite a few other landscape books from other famous photographers. By far, this is the one I like most (together with one by Apse called "New Zealand Landscape"). The photos in the book fully demonstrate that one can always breathe new life to old scenes with enough skill, perception and perseverence.

This is the first David Muench book that i've purchased and because of the beautiful photos inside it will not be my last.

This is a gorgeous book of southwest photographs. It has many examples of how to take great photographs. An interesting feature is the photographers comments about each photograph, found in the back of the book. There are only a few flaws in my humble view. Some of the photographs were printed with very exagerated color saturation. This is painful in some cases. Another problem is Mr. Muench's use of a split density magenta filter for several of the photographs. He tries to give the scenes a warm glow but the magenta color looks totally fake, especially when one sees it only across the top of the photograph. Please throw that split density magenta filter away and let the southwest present its beauty naturally. Still a great and valuable book to own.

This book offers a breathtaking view of the Colorado plateau. The full-page color photos are so incredibly vivid they almost jump off the page. It really makes you feel like you are there.

You get a look at towering mountains & magnificent nature made stone sculptures. Cascading waterfalls, meandering steams, peaceful snowscapes, brilliant autumn leaves, beautiful flowers & endless skies take your breath away.

Muench is a master at capturing detail and light, and this setting shows off his talent to the maximum. A narrative by James Lawrence provides a history of the area and conveys the feelings inspired by this natural wonderland.

Some images have small quotes & poems under them. In the back, each photo is shown in miniature with comments from photographer and technical details. This book provides a beautiful world to get lost in.

I first heard of Meatyard in a Lenswork interview with photographer Larry Wiese, and this casual reference aroused my interest. Rhem's well-researched account satisfied my initial interest, but then Rhem acheived something else as well. I gained an appreciation for Meatyard's work that I had initially avoided out of ignorance. Rhem brings to light the numerous influences that molded Meatyard and informed his work: influences as varied as Ezra Pound; Gertrude Stein; Flannery O' Connor; and Zen Buddhism. Rhem interviewed friends and family, combed through archival material and rare unpublished interviews with Meatyard.
The end product is one of the finest art books I've personally ever read.

This is a beautiful book: complicated, exhaustively researched, yet written to be accessible to the lay reader. Meatyard's work is gorgeous, comic, haunting, and virtually unknown except to photographers. James Rhem has done a masterly job of balancing scholarly rigor and critical transparency. In _Family Album_ he fills a void in the scholarship of photography. I look forward to seeing more work by this author.

I have always been amazed at the work of Meatyard. I gained more respect for his work and understanding of the man behind the camera in the work published by James Rhem. To know the feelings of all involved in the creation of Meatyard's work adds a greater understanding of this complex man. James Rhem has gone the step beyond to make all who read the book understand the creation of the Lucy Belle Crater Series!

EXCELLENT!

At last someone has written an extremely intelligent, well researched, and accessible book on Meatyard. Rhem takes on this complex and poignant piece of art, and reveals its mystery to us. As an artist, tired of reading badly written criticism and art-writing, I found this book to be a real gift. I've read most of the available writing on Meatyard and nothing approaches this. A must-buy.

In James Rhem's book Meatyard's well-known Lucybelle Crater photographs are reproduced in the family album setting that the photographer himself planned they should have, but never got during his lifetime. The photographs are printed on black pages, with handwritten captions underneath; the images are arranged in groups, & the groups are themselves sequenced. For those who like Meatyard's photography, or acknowledge his significant position in American photography, this new presentation is reason enough to want this book.
But there's a lot more being offered here. First, in an authoritative introduction, Rhem presents an overview of all of Meatyard's photography. This essay is a prelude to and a setting for Rhem's real (and groundbreaking) work: thoroughly researched, original & penetrating elucidation of Meatyard's Lucybelle Crater photographs.
Personally I have had difficulty in understanding what the Lucybelle Crater pictures were about since first seeing them in an earlier version 25 years ago. From comments by friends & other photographers I realized that I was not alone in having this difficulty. We faced page after page of photos of two people, one wearing a hag's mask, the other a mask of an old man. These figures are posed most often against suburban backgrounds that are familiar and mundane. Some pictures are visually interesting, others dull. As you turn the pages the images accumulate, asking be "read". But how? "What's going on here?" was my nagging question. I knew I was missing something important about these pictures. What was it?
Rhem's essay is valuable in answering that question. And what's striking is how he does this and how well he does it. Not with scholarly jargon (though he has the thorough-going mind of a scholar). Not with flights of imaginative "interpretation" based on his own subjective feelings and opinions. And certainly not by calling attention to himself as a critic, biographer or insider (all of which, by the way, he is).
James Rhem works from a dense gathering of factual information about Meatyard--some unknown until now (thanks to Rhem's wide, and thorough investigations into primary sources.) This factual information provides the basis for a conceptual approach to the Lucybelle pictures that is both lively with anecdotes and rich with insights. Rhem has a sincere desire (you can sense it in his sentences) to tell you what he thinks Ralph Eugene Meatyard's photographs are about. He approaches the photographer not as a subject for a thesis but as a man whose pictures continue to have something important to offer us. Rhem has taken up that offer and made it his job in this book to understand and interpret it, using the considerable (and considerably generous) means that he's accumulated for that very purpose.

27 oct 2002

William Greiner is definitely an artist to watch! This book is wonderful! The color photographs are haunting and the presentation honors a most memorable subject - graves and memorials to dead. Not just any dead people - but those quirky graves of New Orleans and vicinity are photographed here. The setting often combines the commonplace with the ethereal. A brillant theme photographed by a genuis at capturing the unusual around us. It's really a wonderful book to own and display.

To capture the ironies, poignancies, and soulful idiosyncrasies of the grave sites pictured in this book, William Greiner spent several years traversing the cemeteries of New Orleans and South Louisiana....Despite Greiner's obvious debt to William Eggleston, who is often cited as the father of modern color photography, his photographs stand out as originals. The compositions are provocative, and he renders garish colors into a lushly seductive palette..... Mr. Greiner's small, Louisiana-style models of the barren earth combine with Thomas Lynch's elegant foreward to make The Reposed a fascinating book. Nov/Dec 1999

William Greiner's first monograph is a welcome selection of photographs from his many years of work in color. Greiner's view of the world, mainly in his native Louisiana, is alternately witty, tender and rhetorical. THE REPOSED is a book that the viewer will want to look at again and again.

-- Deborah Bell, Private Dealer of Photographs, New York City

If one picture is worth a thousand words, then this book is worth sixty two thousands words to describe the surreal photographs. Definitely not enough room here to convey what I think is a remarkable look at cemeteries in and around New Orleans. William Greiner is a genius with a camera,who has taken the cemetery photograph and made it into a haunting, beautiful work of art.

If you only buy one photography book in your lifetime, this is it. Nobody has ever said so much with pictures about a dead subject.

I purchased a used book for $9.99 and I received the book in perfect condition. No scratches, no torn pages, no missing pages. Perfect! It only took the company about a week to send the book! It was worth it!

I was reading E.Lynn Harris's book "A Love Of My Own", in it was mention of this book so I went on line to make sure it was a real book and guess what I went brought it and it is just wonderful. I can not say enough. I intend on buying copies for my sisters and my close friends and giving them as gifts.

This is a touching and inspiring book, even for a man. I really enjoyed all of the essays and the photos were beautiful.

This book is inspirational for me because I grew up with six brothers and no blood sisters. I have grown to know that my sister friends are more of a blessing to me, than I initially realized. I have girl friends that fill that void, and it's okay. My friends are also my sisters!!!! I recommend this book for anyone that's ever felt like they didnt have anyone. You realize you have more that you know. Nicole

SisterFriends is a compilation of interviews with African American women regarding the various contributing factors in their relationship with their sisters. SisterFriends answers the question, "What makes a solid relationship".

I have never met any of the women profiled in SisterFriends, but Julia Chance not only made me feel as if we had been introduced, but the interviews are so up close and personal that I feel as if a bond had been forged between the interviewees and myself.

Some of the women are well known like, Mary J. Blige and Iyanla Vazant; others are not as well known, but all of the women have imitated some extremely personal detail of their lives and I applaud them for having the courage to be as open and as honest as they were because not every story is a pretty one.

Some of these very different stories are rather dark, but these women have made it through trying times, such as, the Shabazz sisters. Their mother grew up in a dysfunctional environment and was sexually abused as a child, which ultimately spilled over into the lives of her seven offspring, all of whom have different fathers. Having each other made life in general easier to deal with and because of each other, they have fulfilled dreams and aspirations. Like the Shabazz sisters, most of the women in SisterFriends have overcome great difficulties. What kept them strong during their personal struggle? Was it solely their relationship with their "Sisterfriend"?

At times, we all need someone to lean on and it appears that these women have uncovered the secret to a great relationship with one's same-sex sibling. Sisterhood is a unique type of relationship and each of these women in my opinion has definitely realized what makes for a productive relationship. They have learned to compliment, support, and draw from the strength of one another.

There are a few sisters interviewed who are not blood relatives, but the closeness of their relationship makes them as close as all sisters should be. The author, Julia Chance, has captured the essences of what a relationship should be. The reader can do nothing but benefit from all that the essays in SisterFriends reveal. The stories also point out life's lessons and are inspirational to say the least, this is why I consider this book to be a must read for us all.

This book is THE most popular I've ever given as a gift. Everyone likes it, people of all ages. Even cat people like it! Everybody has had a favorite dog and this book reminds them of happy times. The price is right, and this little book is welcome for all occasions. Gerry Morgan

This is an itty bitty book about a big subject, Southerners and their dogs. It's different from a lot of the other dog books out now, in that it's every bit as much about dog-lovers as dogs. The pictures are great. In one, a little Chihuahua peeks out of a macho guy's shirt front. You can't not love them both. There is humor and dignity and love in these photos. I salute the authors. In addition it's a compliment to the American South, for there are folks of all ages, colors, and economic strata co-existing between this book's covers. A great little book.

Excellent book!! This is high praise considering I am a cat person. The photographs and the verses are wonderful and fit well together. If you don't at least like this book, you do not have a warm spot in your entire body.

I love this book, and have given it to several people as a gift. Everyone has enjoyed it and always has their own stories to tell about their favorite dogs. Now if Priscilla and Bobbie would only write a book about favorite cats....!

The photography in this book is truly outstanding in capturing the "spirit of the south". The quotations of southern authors merely underscore the feelings evoked by the poignant photos. This book is perfect for canine lovers in every region of the U.S; but especially for those of us whose family members include the 4 legged ones.

Visual images from Steve Schapiro, documenting the 60's of America. You can find how the photographer captured the places, the people during the turbulent decade, and how the people projected out from the inner side of the faces. Contrasting and contradicting images provides the space for you to look deeper into the surface of the images.

As a young photographer, working out of New York during the 1960s, covering the mass cultural transformation sweeping the country. We'd bump into each other at places like Andy Warhol's Factory, or on a college campus during one form of civil disturbance or another. He was a LIFE photographer and his name was Steve Schapiro.Steve was a disciple of W. Eugene Smith, and shared Smith's passion for black and white documentary work. He had already set a mission for himself, to chronicle the "icons" of American Life. He traveled from coast to coast, from migrant farms in Arkansas, to Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. He covered the civil rights struggles and got to know the people who would shape a generation, and who were considered among the most dynamic of this past century.

As you go through the pages of "American Edge," you're conscious of the fact that these icons still stand out as defining figures forty years later. The Kennedys, the Rolling Stones, Martin Luther King Jr., and Andy Warhol, to name but a few. In contrast, Steve feels that we are now going through, as he calls it, a "period of American valium."

In Schapiro's moment, every picture contained pictures and every person was a picture too, pre-costumed, posed and they're to be taken. Look at his celebrity portraits of Jack and Jackie Kennedy, of Chuck Berry and Ray Charles, of Magritte doubling his own image, and Warhol mimicking the pose of his own self-portraits. Shapiro takes their pictures, but he also captures the cool opacity of creatures who understood that history had become pictures and that pictures became history. Everything and everyone self-evidently meant something, so people wore words as well as thinking them and speaking them. They bore their convictions on their sleeves, wrote them on walls, carried them as signs, painted them on their faces, stitched them to their hats, clipped them to their lips, aspiring to become those words incarnate.

a most beautiful book of balck and white images of americans. this book looks and feels like a collector's item. a great coffee table book

American Edge brings today's maturing baby boomers back to a clear turning point in their lives. Life was being challenged and changed, all about them...and many took the turmoil for granted, as just another, ho-hum, happening. Schapiro's lens puts us there, side-by-side with people we've only imagined knowing--and now, eyeball-to-eyeball, we are stepping back into their lives, and ours. It's a trip worth taking, and showing the grandkids, too.

It's rare to find a book with the depth and breadth of American Edge. Steve Schapiro has managed to do the impossible -- capture some of the most significant moments and people of our times in stunning and fresh new perspectives. Not only does Schapiro have a discerning eye but he also had access to people and places that few others did. The combination makes for a truly impressive collection of photographs that brilliantly conveys the fading innocence, raw emotion and turmoil of the times.

I thought that book is really nice. The pictures are very detailed and i thought that getting it used that it would be in bad shape. Really it was in perfect condition. I have been looking at this book alot to learn about tornado's. I really recommed this book.

Jim Reed's new book STORM CHASER: A PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNEY is nothing short of amazing. WIth breath taking photos and insightful anecdotes, the book takes the reader into the forces of nature that shape our lives and create historic, defining moments in time. I met Jim on the ground in Greensburg, KS and he was exceedingly kind and allowed me to spend a very enjoyable afternoon with him chronicling the aftermath of the tornado that struck there. Jim's soul shines thru in every photo and his passion for weather, photography and in the end people is wonderfully displayed in this work. I have his two previous works and all are works of art! Heed Jim's advice to get a weather radio- he knows what he is talking about! I don't look at the sky the same way after meeting him and seeing his work!

My wife bought this for her father, who is impossible to buy gifts for. She read it first and loved it. Anyone who is interested in nature or science will like it very much.

I received this book as a gift. The photos in the book are very good. Excellent in most cases. My only complaint, and it a very minor one, is that as an amateur photographer, I would love to have seen the EXIF data (i.e, shutter speed, ISO, F-Stop, etc.) from the camera published at the bottom of each photo. However I understand this is a book of photos, not a photography book. Given the photos, the author must have a lot of waterproof equipment.

The title "Storm Chaser" might lead one to believe this is a book about tornado chasing. It is but it's a whole lot more! Photographer Jim Reed takes his readers on a journey of land, sea, and sky covering the four seasons. Along the way we learn how Reed, once an eight year old boy, quickly became hooked on weather and began keeping a diary of events. As an adult he's traveled across North America photographing devastating tornadoes, hurricanes, raging flood waters, spectacular lightning displays, and blinding blizzards. Yet he also focuses on more benign (yet still beautiful) events such as rainbows, aurora, fall foliage, and migrating butterflies. Perhaps the book should have been titled "Open your eyes and take a look at all the interesting weather out there" because Reed shows us that there's natural beauty and wonder everywhere --if one just takes time to stop and smell the roses. Storm Chaser makes a great coffee table book but it's also a good study guide for those looking to improve their skills in photographing nature.

This is not National Geographic stuff, but if you find that being able to combine war coverage from the eyes of soldiers with a documentary approach of photojournalism done by complete amateurs, then you will be impressed. The book takes pictures that our brave young men and women shot with a simple digital camera and turns them into life in Iraq for our armed forces. Sometimes it's humorous and sometimes it's serious, but all the time, it is real and from the eyes of soldiers.

I love it and I recommend it.

This book is great and would have recieved 5 stars instead of 4. But some of it was kinda cheesey. Like the pics of the guys girlfriend. Who cares?And some jerk standing in front of the flag with praying hands trying to look hard. That guy sucks. Other than that. The pics are great and show alot of emotion. That's the good part. Guy looking hard standing in front of the flag with prayin hands. Uh no. That guy sucks

THIS IS OUR WAR: A SOLDIERS' PORTFOLIO: SERVICEMEN'S PHOTOGRAPHS OF LIFE IN IRAQ is simply outstanding: it offers powerful and personal photos all taken by the men and women serving in Iraq, thus going beyond a reporter's outsider impressions to provide nearly three hundred images culled from tens of thousands GQ collected from servicemen and women. From everyday life to combat, all aspects of the Iraq experience are illustrated.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This book is a remarkable look into the daily lives, trials, and hardships our troops in Iraq are facing. The beauty and truth in the images taken by soldiers is a priceless glimpse into our mission there that every American ought to see.

As I write this review, it is Memorial Day in the United States, a time for remembering those who have sacrificed in conflicts past and present in defense of the nation. We are currently engaged in a conflict, one like no other in many ways (however, I am reminded of the words of Anthony Swofford, who wrote 'Jarhead', that every war is different, and every war is the same). One of the differences of the war in Iraq is the ubiquitous nature of personal recording devices - virtually every soldier and marine on the ground there has a digital camera, a cell phone that takes pictures, a video camera, or other way of making a personal chronicle. This gives a remarkable view and insight into the daily life and work of those who are fighting in Iraq.

This book is a collection of these photos. They are not professional-quality photojournalistic spreads - quite a number of pictures are blurry, grainy, or otherwise lacking in what would be considered 'professional' aspects. However, what they lack in that regard is more than made up for in the individual power of the subjects - the subjects in this case being both the photographers and the photographed.

The pictures here show victory and defeat, as such comes in small and larger ways each day in Iraq. There is hope and there is despair, but above all there is humanity, and this book captures current history in its most basic raw form.

This book has no particular political bent - like many images and icons, those contained here will be subject to multiple interpretations. What I took most from this is the need to remember those in the pictures, and realise that these are people who, like me, hope for a time beyond the war, and that such a time may come soon. This book is a tribute to current day heroes.

This colorful and brilliantly photographed work is a marvelous addition to any collection. It is handsome and is full of beautiful images. My only real criticism is that i wish the models were more fully aroused. Many of them are in a semi or totally flacid state. But the images are beautiful and it is a worthwile book of fine images.

this is one of the best books.
the photography is excellent and they really know how to pose there men
****** stars if the system would take it

If you have seen any of Titan Media's videos you know the men are hot, hairy, humpy, muscled, beefy - definitely my type of guys! This is a top-notch collection of many of the hunks you'd see in the various Titan videos. It's definitely worth adding to your collection!

"Bruno Gmunder presents Titan Men. A book with a great look at the sexiest men from [T]itan [M]en magazine. Men hanging out looking fine as ever. You deserve a look. Don`t Miss this 2006 Collector's Edition! FULL COLOR!"--© zebraz

Rugged, rough, sexy, sleazy, hypermasuline, poetic...these are only some of the words that describe this photo journey through the studs of Titan.