Documentary-collections Books

The written word with photos gives us some historic background of jews who came from Spain, because of being persecuted. While they gave up their jewish religion, we find out that many rituals were kept and practiced. Fasinating book.

This is a well written and very informative book about the survival of a tenacious people and about a part of the hidden history of the state of New Mexico. I would recommend it to any one interested in Jewish history, Sephardic Judaism, Crypto-Jews, Spanish culture and New Mexico history.

The culmination of years of heartfelt, dedicated work by a fine artist, the photographs reveal the depth and complexity of this story with beauty and true humanity.

I'll admit I am biased but this book finally puts a real human face on this southwest phenomena. Haunting images of a living glimmer of an almost forgotten people. Cary Herz performs a mitzvah by remembering us and in a small way provides help along the road to redemption of this small remnant.

One of the most compelling human needs can be summed up in four words: Tell me a story. Sudye Cauthen is a storyteller; from the first paragraph of the preface, I was hooked on Southern Comforts.

Cauthen writes, "This work emerged from a struggle to see my home community and myself in perspective . . . Who I am is intrinsically entwined with place." Her place is Alachua, a small, rural community in northern Florida. A fifth generation Floridian, Cauthen is a writer, poet, folklorist and oral historian who has made a decades-long study of Alachua. She has preserved on tape the voices and stories of generations now gone or almost gone, as the community and the world around it changed. Those voices are added to Cauthen's own in her narrative.

Cauthen has been part of the change, but she has also been the watcher, the seeker, the chronicler of the community's fitful struggle to adapt to a new reality. Her strength of feeling for place, her simple and graceful prose, and her understanding of the ties between rural people and their land bring to mind Wendell Berry. But her voice is all her own - wry and insightful, with a restrained passion for the place that defines her. She has an acute eye for the telling detail. And like good poetry, her work carries a weight that is more than the sum of its parts.

To read Cauthen's words - like hearing the wind in longleaf pines, the calls of sandhill cranes, or the songs of Will McLean - is to be touched by the real Florida. Southern Comforts is at once a rewarding memoir, an astute social history and an evocation of a unique place that is disappearing. Don't miss this book. Really.

"Southern Comforts" is an evocative prose poem of a place - Alachua, Florida - its countryside and town - its people, Native Americans, black, white, young, old, family, friends, living, and dead - and their stories, fact and fable, that coalese and collect in one woman's search for herself. The author is a rare species, a fifth-generation Floridian whose ancestors came to Alachua in horse-drawn wagons in a state ever increasingly populated with transplants.

"Tell me the landscape in which you live," Cauthen quotes Jose Ortega y Gasset, "and I will tell you who you are." Through her exploration of all aspects of her landscape comes, if not peace, self-knowledge and the comforts of understanding, a portal to the present through memories of things past. "Southern Comforts" points a way to those of us who seek why we are who and where we are and how we may find our way and place in today and tomorrow.

Beautifully written, beautifully bound - I purchased six copies and gave five to friends, all of whom love this book.

Sudye Cauthen is a fifth-generation Floridian who blends memoir, oral history and cultural geography to consider the vanishing elements of a place she holds dear. Southern Comforts: Rooted in a Florida Place is a recommended pick for any library strong on Florida history and culture, surveying the roots of changes to tradition and sense of place and considering archeology as well as history in the process.

What Weegee was to photojournalism in the 1930s and 1940s, Allan Tannenbaum is to the 1970s. This volume of Tannenbaum's critical mass of New York's underside establishes him as one of the most important photographers of his time, in a city that has one of the most historic traditions of documentary photography.

...All the excitement and desperation, the madness and creativity, the fun and the fatalities of that extraordinary decade are there. If you learn nothing more from it you will discover the Keith Richards always looked as old and raddled as he does now.

A fantastic document of a time and place like no other. New York in the Seventies was a thrill a second, and it seems like Tannenbaum was everywhere, taking beautiful clear pictures of everyone and everything. An exciting social document!

I had this out during my holiday party last weekend and it was the hit of the night! I couldn't drag people away from it . . . the photos are really fun and sexy, but even better are the stories and memories they spark. All night people were saying "Oh! I totally remember that!" and launching into their own favorite stories from the 70s. Definitely my top pick for a coffee table book.

I gave this book to my sister because her dream is to go to New York and she was extremely happy with it.

The book contains beautiful pictures from many different years (the book includes many black-and-white photos) and many different places and gives a very good overview of how fantastic New York is.

I've never been in New York, but once I'll go there, maybe together with my sister?

A thick, 744 page book presenting the flavor of the world's premier city. Though the title suggests a visual year it is more a selection of photos arranged round themes: sports, travel, markets, the weather, construction, entertainment, civic events, personalities etc. Each gets a few pages with some images going back to the nineteenth century though most are from the thirties onward.

I thought the selection was quite impressive, there is something for every New Yorker here. Some of the names of the fifty-one photographers in the index will be familiar to readers of the Times. Neal Bonenzi, Sam Falk, Vincent Laforet and Ernie Sisto get the largest showing. Two of Laforet's are particularly stunning: his night time Manhattan skyline from July four 2005 with the sky alight with fireworks and the amazing shot from January thirteen, 2001 looking down on two workman repairing a colored light at the top of the radio mast on the Empire State (I was always curious about this photo because neither of these guys are wearing hard hats). An unfortunate omission, perhaps, is any work by Weegee. He brilliantly captured the lives of the working class over the years but his photos only appeared in the down-market tabloids.

The landscape format of the book works perfectly, the photos (with some in color) are either one to a page or one to a spread, and all have comprehensive captions. This is a fascinating book, dip into it anytime to remind you of the rhythm of the city.

*I wonder if the publishers will do similar versions using the photo libraries of other great metro papers like the San Francisco 'Chronicle', Chicago 'Tribune' or the Washington 'Post'?

Nice book, not very expensive, mixing old and news photographs of subjects
about New York.
A good journalistic panorama.

This is just an amazing collection of fascinating photographs from the archives of the New York Times. Gay Talese offers a brief introduction, but the stars of the production are the incredible photographs drawn from the turn of the 20th century to the present, one for each day of the year--with some in color. There is no table of contents; it is best to just start thumbing at random. Common topics are: personalities; buildings; neighborhoods; music performances; subways; bridges; contruction; weather; immigrants; sports; and politicians. Each picture is captioned and has a short write-up, often a brief excerpt from the NYT story where it originally appeared. Some fotos I found especially moving: returning World War I troops marching past the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1919; early shots of the lower East Side; LBJ and John Glenn in a tickertape parade; JFK visiting the city; plus a 15 page collage of sunsets, morning with fog, and sunrises. The common theme is people living and interacting in the city. Beautifully printed by Abrams, there is an index to the pictures and photographers. I can't think of another book that so artfully conveys the essence of NYC as completely as this inexpensive volume.

This book is a tour through the southwest landscape by an outstanding photographer with an eccentric eye and a sense of humor. It's smart and beautiful and I recommend it.

This nicely printed book of landscapes and townscapes examines human elements amidst the scenery of the American southwest.

Falke is an observational photographer. He looks for details, incongruities, humorous juxtapositions, and beauty in sometimes-contradictory situations. Like others in his branch of contemporary landscape photography (Len Jenshel, Karen Halverson, Beahan & McPhee, etc.), Falke's photographs combine skilled photographic technique with an untraditional eye for landscapes that have been affected by humanity. His command of the of the 8x10 camera and the light and color in the landscape is obvious, without being the sole subject of the photos which meditate on the human elements.

Evidence, obvious or subtle, of the people who live on or visit these landscapes can be found in every picture. The view of a magnificent mountain range includes an electrical power installation; a stately butte is framed by a meager picnic shelter; a large old tree bears the indignity of hundreds of pairs of shoes hung from its branches; a moonscape desert is littered with painted tetherballs put there by a Disney movie crew to mark locations for computer-generated dinosaurs.

Some of the pictures need more than a casual glance. Like one in which you first see a car parked along a winding road at the base of a tall rock cliff. Looking closer you see a Spiderman-like rock climber inching his way up the rock face. In "Lake Estes, CO," a picture that really needs to be bigger, people are fishing, feeding ducks and staring at the photographer, while a group of elk bathes behind them unnoticed. Others benefit from contemplation. For example, there are several page spreads where the images side-by-side make an observation about something, like desert water use or the appropriation of Native American icons. A couple have similar compositions, but reverse the elements in the juxtaposition of natural vs. manmade.

The absurdity of the human elements is the subject of several pictures. In "Gallup, NM," an array of signs and power poles surround some garishly colored fake totem poles. These were apparently provided by a gas station for tourists, even though to my knowledge, Native Americans in the southwest never made totem poles. In "Bagdad California," a mystery is implied by a homeless man's shopping cart, loaded with his possessions, which appears to have been abandoned in the desert as a train speeds past in the background. Yet another records layers of absurdity by showing a large motorhome "camping" in a treeless park next to resort built with an old west theme, although it is surrounded by a roller coaster.

A quote from a museum curator on the back cover says that, "The images walk a fine line between expectation and surprise, confrontation and questioning." I would say that if you appreciate large format camera craft and landscape photography with a quirky cultural twist, I think you will like this book.

From the March/April issue of Photo Techniques Magazine:

"In his beautiful color images, Falke turns on their head all the clichés of photographing the American West. Balanced Rock is framed by signs offering hikers rules and advice, an amusement park ride towers over the distant Rockies, and the Sierra Nevadas are laced with electric wires. Instead of finding a way to crop this evidence of modern civilization out of his photos, Falke acknowledges the elephant in the room, and shows us what the landscape is, rather than what we wish it to be."

Falke is a brilliant, although grossly under recognized, photographer. His photographs dare to be quiet and thoughtful in a time when media saturates us with disposable imagery. Humorous and poignant, his masterful images are observations of social behavior. DO NOT be seduced into thinking that these are merely landscapes in an old tradition. This book reveals a unique and powerful vision and Falk's ability to craft acute cultural and visual connections.

Miller knows his subjects (the people) and his subject (their desperation) with a clarity and fearlessness that most people would prefer to avoid. Viewing his photographs are no easier a task than living wholly and honestly. Skinheads, speedfreaks, Tenderloin whores, friends and neighbors. Lucid, terrifying, and ultimately beautiful photographs from a man of the same qualities.

Miller knows his subjects (the people) and his subject (their desperation) with a clarity and fearlessness that most people would prefer to avoid. Viewing his photographs are no easier a task than living wholly and honestly. Skinheads, speedfreaks, friends and neighbors. Lucid, terrifying, and ultimately beautiful photographs from a man of the same qualities.

The black and white photographs in this volume are strikingly beautiful, achingly poignant, and gritty at the same time. Unflinching, honest portraits of the darker side...

Miller knows his subjects (the people) and his subject (their desperation) with a clarity and fearlessness that most people would prefer to avoid. Viewing his photographs are no easier a task than living wholly and honestly. Skinheads, speedfreaks, Tenderloin whores, friends and neighbors. Lucid, terrifying, and ultimately beautiful photographs from a man of the same qualities.

Our True Intent Is All for Your Delight will transform you for a moment and take you to another time and place. The photographs are fantastic, and it is interesting to find at least one person in a crowd looking in the camera in many shots. Indeed, you find yourself wondering about the lives of the people in the pictures and where they are now. The write ups are nicely done and help put things in better perspective for people not familiar with Butlin's. Four people saw my copy and asked to borrow it since I bought it last week. I imagine that they will find themselves planning their vacations to Butlin's as I wish I could.

I am a big fan of Bruce McCall and his work (Zany Afternoons,New Yorker, early National Lampoon). These photos look like his art come to life. Funny, oddly touching, "real life" photos. A joy!

John Hinde's wonderful photos capture a peculiarly British phenomenon, the Butlin's vacation camp. As photographer Martin Parr says in his intro...Billy Butlin had the great idea of providing a holiday park for the working class, where they could have a good time despite the English weather. The price included everything, accommodation, food and entertainment so the camps where very popular with families, ma and pa could do what they wanted knowing that the kids, not being able to stray from the enclosed site, could play all day in safety.

The fifty-five large, pin-sharp photos in this book capture exactly the feel and ambience of the various Butlin camps around the country. They all show groups of people, indoors and out, eating, dancing (ballroom dancing was always a big draw for pensioners) swimming, relaxing or whatever. Hinde used real campers for these photos and in nearly every one, if you look closely, you can always spot one person who is looking at the camera, I bet they were told to ignore the camera and all the lights and look as if they were having a good time. As these pictures show the British relaxing on vacation there are naturally plenty of men wearing a jacket, collar and tie, on sunny days too!

I think this is a lovely book that captures, with documentary style photos, the seventies look of a unique English institution.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Postcard renderings of the sixties as its kitschiest and most fabulous, completely without any hint of irony to spoil the mood.
The book could have served as a style reference book for the set design of Edward Scissorhands.
I bought it as a style reference for my work. I used to collect old Life magazines, catalogues, books whatever but this is everything you'd like to imitate from the sixties design-wise all in one.
And the reproductions are in perfect brilliant technicolor and the book is beautifully done.

I am Ms.Rice's student from Bogazici University in Turkey. I have read a couple of chapters of this book yet, however only that much was enough to take my attention and keep me going on. The things that normally we know nothing and do not really wonder much about is presented in a way that would attract intention from both proffesional and amateur readers. Its language is a little bit difficult but the content is very interesting. It is very obvious that a real amount of effort has been put in creation of this book.

This book begins with the first photograph ever taken, in 1838, in Paris, which co-incides with the beginning of Paris' physical modernisation (under Hausmann in the 1850's). Two parallel tracks: of the development of photography and how that influenced our *viewing* of the physical world; of the development of urban-planned and -modernised Paris and how that influenced our viewing of a city. Both developments began with a difinitive demarcation from the past. I can't remember if I've ever read a *scholarly* anlysis that has been so *lively* and immediate.

Shelley Rice's superb PARISIAN VIEWS is a stimulating collection of essays on aspects of 19th century photography in Paris, especially during that period of time in which Baron Haussmann was in charge of gutting medieval Paris and rebuilding it as the city we know today. Like a flaneur, the essays range almost randomly over a host of subjects, overlapping to a great deal in the end, but not having a particular or central thesis that permeates them all.

The photographs themselves are both beautiful and profoundly disconcerting. I found myself looking at particular photographs for extended periods of time. One in particular that troubled me was an 1838 photograph by Daguerre of the Boulevard du Temple, one of the first ever made. Because of the long exposure time, despite the boulevard's being an extremely busy street, only a single individual is visible, and he only because he was standing at a boot black to have his boots polished. Otherwise, we see an eerily deserted street, devoid of people. One of the earliest photographic images of a human being in history, if not the earliest, and the man himself was utterly unaware of his historic moment. Many of the photographs in the book inspire reflections along these lines.

Rice's book should be of interest to individuals interested in a variety of subjects: history, the development of photography, art, city planning, and cultural criticism, to name but a few. The focus of the book is not narrowly restricted to any one subject, as the wide-ranging bibliography will demonstrate.

A book that makes a perfect companion volume is the one that Rice credits with inspiring the initial work on this book: Marshall Berman's ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR, which traces developments in modernism in the past two centuries. All his chapters are exciting and riveting, but one of the finest is the one on Haussmannization, both in Paris and elsewhere, in places like New York with the work of Robert Moses. In addition to Berman, the ghosts of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin hover over many of the pages in the book.

Rice produced a fascinating study of Parisian photography in the age of Haussmannization, when artists predicted and hundreds of thousands literally watched their familiar Old Paris uprooted and its sites of historic memory obliterated one by one. The book makes a nice contrast to T.J. Clark's The Painting of Modern Life in its sensitivity to the worldview of the historical agents themselves. Whereas Clark sees in modernist paintings a failure of Parisians to recognize the ongoing class struggle and the embourgeoisement of the proletariat, Rice pays more attention to the actual discourse of mobility, loss of unity, fragmentation of meaning, and a sense of loss of self in this constantly changing "soulless" city. Its inhabitants are alienated in time as much as in space, and the one most sensitive to this change (Baudelaire) acknowledges the degree to which urban space has come to inject social meaning in his most private and intimate affairs: love. The book equally deserves high praise for its beautiful and moving prose. Plus, it has plenty of fun pictures! Rice, without a doubt, lives and breathes the world of the people she depicts. It is the most enjoyable and powerful book I read in this entire school year, and for a grad student in history at Berkeley, that says a lot!

If you are a fan of Galen's work you will certainly enjoy this book. The concept, comparing and contrasting the two poles, is brilliant.

The photographs are typical Galen - beautiful, engaging, illuminating. The accompanying text provides context and insight.

There is an essay section at the back that provides some insight into how Galen thought about the photos that appear in this book. Very interesting reading and a great teaching aid for amateur photographers and photojournalists.

Turning to page 74, my Danish-born wife, Aino, was amazed to discover her little town of Scoresbysund. She spent her fomative years(age 5-12)growing up there, where her father, Dr. Werner Mortensen, served as the sole doctor for the area of 3 villages.

Galen Rowell's photography captures the typical beauty of a Scandinavian mileau, even though it is truly a facade for the garbage that the typical native Greenlander casts no further than his front door!

His words portray the many problems of the native Inuits, who have been unable to adapt to the influence of Danish culture and progress. For Rowell to elaborate on the problems of alcholism, violent crime, and the high rate of suicide in a village of only 500, distinguishes him as an author that researchs his subjects quite well! It brought back memories for my wife of the "Grundlander" that beat his wife with the carcass of a frozen seal, only to have his wife bite of his ear.

The large yellow building in the left foreground is the eight bed hospital; the little red house with white trimmed windows that is over to the immediate left is where family Mortensen grew up from 1966-72. This book really takes my wife back,and helps me see things that were only in her mind's eye. It also brings her up to the what the present day Scoresbysund has become. And now that my family will be moving to Fairbanks,Alaska, my wife can get a sneak preview of our future from this marvelous book. Having lived in Alaska myself, I definitely recommend this book for its shear splendid photography and candid commentary. Great job Galen!

This is much more than a coffee table book, though its unique photographs of the pristine beauty of the Arctic and Antarctic would impress even the most casual of browsers. A short story about each photo is included, along with more general, thoughtful and poignant commentary from someone that is truly in touch with the global environment. Rowell is one of the great nature photographers, and this is a stunning collection

Wow, what a great and such awesome picture volume. This book not only shows you pictures from the Arctic and the Antarctic, it particularly reveals the true differences between the two polar regions...they ARE truly different and fascinating! This book also delivers very-high quality photography, which can easily tempt you into travelling to such exotic destinations.

In the book, you will find 2 pictures side by side-one showing the Arctic, the other showing Antarctic. That way, you will get an idea of its differences. In addition, there is a separate chapter that dedicates to interesting stories regarding these regions, anything from life in Siberia, Inuit life in northern Alaska, to the South Georgia Islands & the South Pole. Last, but not least, there is also a whole section reviewing all the pictures showed in the book, including background information describing each photo, etc.

This is truly an amazing picture volume that is a MUST-HAVE for any polar fanatic. Get prepared for over 180 pages of some superb photography and much info on these fantastic regions. For the money, it was quite worth it...

all the images are captivating. it's wonderful to the point where i don't want to send them to anyone in fear that they'll get ruined. i'm very tempted to frame them all and stick them up on my wall. it's amazing... all these pictures of the world that you never knew existed. it's like the real life part of the world, not the media part. i highly suggest you purchase this it you love unique items, art, postcards, and the like. i'm now planning on buying the book that inspired these postcards.

"Magnum postcards is a unique gift and souvenir collection of 50 of the best images from the book magnum. Offering a vision of the contemporary world at the turn of the century by the photographers of the celebrated Magnum agency, they accompany the major exhibition, now touring worldwide.

"Selected from the hundreds of photographs featured in magnum these are powerful and poetic images by Magnum's best-known photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rene Burri, Steve McCurry, James Nachtwey, Inge Morath, Martin Parr and Miguel Rio Branco, the collection is richly varied; some images make strong and exciting statements about the reality of the world, others are playful, delighting in colour and form. With the cards using the unusual square format, the packaging of magnum postcards too is a work of art in its own right.

"Whether to send or to collect, magnum postcards is a stunning gift item which will appeal to all lovers of contemporary design and photography."--Alibris

The cards are not only beautiful, but are very fine teaching aids. I use them as writing prompts for upper elementary and middle school kids, and they would work for adults as well. I've also used them in teaching English as a Second Language. It is nice to have interesting images to discuss, in any language. And, of course, they are excellent for art classes -- for discussions of line, shape, foreground, background, movement, focal point, etc. Oh, one more thing I use them for. My kids pick one a night, and we make up stories about what we see, or imagine we see, in the card -- where it might be, what the people might be doing, or some such flight of imagination. In short, this excellent set is a very versatile communication tool.

I have a bunch of the postcards from this collection hanging on the wall of my apartment. They are beautiful and striking - mini works of art! The postcards are square shaped and on high quality paper. They come in a funky metal tin. This collection is a really good value either as decor or to actually send the postcards. It would make a great gift. It is a well-edited collection of images from around the world which I highly recommend.