Photojournalism

Wisconsin Death Trip

The last decade of the 19th century was, for some Americans, a time when great fortunes were to be made. For many others, however, the period was a time of economic dislocation, when the gap between city and countryside, rich and poor, grew ever wider. As the Indian Wars ended and the Gilded Age extended into America's first Imperial Age, social critics such as Mark Twain and William Dean Howells began to examine the dark side of the American dream: violence, poverty, degenerate behavior, suicide, and insanity.

In the late 1960s, another desperate time, historian Michael Lesy took a long look at fin-de-siècle America. Examining a collection of several thousand glass plate negatives and historical documents from Jackson County, Wisconsin, he concocted a sprawling treatise on a past that had been willfully forgotten, a brooding rejoinder to Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology. First published in 1973, Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip, now reissued in a handsome paperbound edition, became a key text of the counterculture, a book to shelve alongside Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Custer Died for Your Sins--and it sometimes reads like a hip product of its time. Lesy documents the unsettling record of one small corner of rural America, turning up accounts of barn burnings, attacks by gangs of armed tramps, threatening and obscene letters, death by diphtheria and smallpox (the Wisconsin townsfolk had, some years, to attend several funerals a week), alcoholism, madness, business and bank failures, and even a case or two of witchcraft.

After reading Lesy's texts and viewing the sometimes unsettling images he's turned up, you would be forgiven for thinking that no one in small-town Wisconsin in our great-great-grandparents' time was well-adjusted--which is, of course, not the case. Hyperbole notwithstanding, this is a remarkable study, one that Lesy himself rightly calls an experiment in both history and alchemy. --Gregory McNamee

First published in 1973, this remarkable book about life in a small turn-of-the-century Wisconsin town has become a cult classic. Lesy has collected and arranged photographs taken between 1890 and 1910 by a Black River Falls photographer, Charles Van Schaik.

Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait: The Art of Celebrity and Editorial Photography

Priceless--yet practical--ideas and insights from the master of portrait photography
* Ready-to-use insider tips for photographers at every level
* Author teaches across the country and is renowned for sharing his secrets

Michael Grecco is one of the best-known celebrity photographers in the world. His beautiful, insightful work is all around us--on movie posters, in advertising, on magazine covers, everywhere. "I delight in inspiring people," he writes. "I want them to stop, think, and feel." Now Grecco shares the secrets of great portraits with photographers at every level, in Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait. Sections on cameras, illumination, film and digital, creativity and conceptualization, connecting with the subject, and having a point of view, plus intriguing case studies that show "how I got that picture," make this book a resource photographers will use again and again through the years. Whether the subject is a star or a soccer mom, Grecco shows how to add artistry, drama, wit, humor, and personality to their portrait.

Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals

Winner, 2010 Ken Book Award presented by the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City Metro (NAMI-NYC Metro).

"Payne is a visual poet as well as an architect by training, and he has spent years finding and photographing these buildings—often the pride of their local communities and a powerful symbol of humane caring for those less fortunate. His photographs are beautiful images in their own right, and they also pay tribute to a sort of public architecture that no longer exists. They focus both on the monumental and the mundane, the grand facades and the peeling paint."
—Oliver Sacks, Asylum

For more than half the nation's history, vast mental hospitals were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients. The blueprint for these hospitals was set by Pennsylvania hospital superintendant Thomas Story Kirkbride: a central administration building flanked symmetrically by pavilions and surrounded by lavish grounds with pastoral vistas. Kirkbride and others believed that well-designed buildings and grounds, a peaceful environment, a regimen of fresh air, and places for work, exercise, and cultural activities would heal mental illness. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these beautiful, massive buildings—and the patients who lived in them—neglected and abandoned.

Architect and photographer Christopher Payne spent six years documenting the decay of state mental hospitals like these, visiting seventy institutions in thirty states. Through his lens we see splendid, palatial exteriors (some designed by such prominent architects as H. H. Richardson and Samuel Sloan) and crumbling interiors—chairs stacked against walls with peeling paint in a grand hallway; brightly colored toothbrushes still hanging on a rack; stacks of suitcases, never packed for the trip home.

Accompanying Payne's striking and powerful photographs is an essay by Oliver Sacks (who described his own experience working at a state mental hospital in his book Awakenings). Sacks pays tribute to Payne's photographs and to the lives once lived in these places, "where one could be both mad and safe."

Material World: A Global Family Portrait

In honor of the United Nations-sponsored International Year of the Family in 1994, award-winning photojournalist Peter Menzel brought together 16 of the world's leading photographers to create a visual portrait of life in 30 nations. Material World tackles its wide subject by zooming in, allowing one household to represent an entire nation. Photographers spent one week living with a "statistically average" family in each country, learning about their work, their attitudes toward their possessions, and their hopes for the future. Then a "big picture" shot of the family was taken outside the dwelling, surrounded by all their (many or few) material goods.

The book provides sidebars offering statistics and a brief history for each country, as well as personal notes from the photographers about their experiences. But it is the "big pictures" that tell most of the story. In one, a British family pauses before a meal of tea and crumpets under a cloudy sky. In another, wary Bosnians sit beside mattresses used as sniper barricades. A Malian family composed of a husband, his two wives, and their children rests before a few cooking and washing implements in golden afternoon light. Material World is a lesson in economics and geography, reminding us of the world's inequities, but also of humanity's common threads. An engrossing, enlightening book. --Maria Dolan

Profiles thirty international and statistically average families, documenting their economic standings, needs, hopes, and beliefs about the future of the planet, in a study that reveals the environmental cost of materialism. Reprint. 45,000 first printing.

Through the Lens: National Geographic Greatest Photographs (National Geographic Collectors Series)

Since the 10.5 million images in National Geographic's possession won't fit in a book, the 250 in this moderately glossy, minimally costly collection will do nicely. Through the Lens is a stunning collection of photos judiciously apportioned to represent the regions of the earth, the sea, and outer space; humans and nature; and even the history of the medium--a few historic black and whites contrast dramatically with the eye-popping modern color shots that dominate the book. As ever, the esthetic key to their impact is the use of big, emotional pictures with witty little captions, and whenever possible, startling juxtapositions. A Boston matron's faux-fur coat looks just like her pet Dalmatian (the caption identifies them as "spots fans"). The world's widest street (in Buenos Aires) by night looks great next to a grassy highway overpass for grizzly bears in Alberta. The famous green-eyed Afghan refugee poses in a purple burkha with her 1985 National Geographic cover. A Moscow shopper tries on a snowsuit, oblivious to the huge face in the ad on the wall behind him, whose nose he obscures and smile he bisects. A fuzzy shot of a 1907 inventor testing a multiwinged "Katydid" flying machine contrasts with a crisp 1974 shot of Skylab soaring far above fluffy clouds. Often, what's striking is the juxtaposition of ideas. An Arctic wolf making an impossible leap between ice floes arcs in midair, only its reflection hitting the frigid water. A 1935 Model T "surfs" a steep dune in White Sands, New Mexico. Chorus lines of stuffed cane-toad corpses with surreally clothespinned snouts perform on a taxidermist's shelf. Newborns are lined up like bread loaves in Shanghai. A woman in a white chador sits in the Tripoli airport, the white lines of fluorescent ceiling bulbs radiating behind her head like a saint's halo. This isn't the fanciest photo book of the season, but it certainly is a good deal. –Tim Appelo

For more than 100 years, National Geographic has set the standard for nature, culture, and wildlife photography. In Through the Lens, 250 spectacular images—some famous, others rarely seen—are gathered in one lavish, newly formatted volume.

Through the Lens is divided into geographical regions with a special section devoted to space exploration. Each geographical section features an outstanding array of photographs that exemplifies the area’s unique people, wildlife, archaeology, culture, architecture, and environment, accompanied by brief but informative captions. From Barry Bishop’s heroic Mount Everest climb in the 1950s to the glorious wildlife of Asia and Africa, from ancient Maya culture to the Afghan woman found 17 years after her piercing green eyes captivated the world, these are some of the finest and most important photographs ever taken.

Featuring master photographers from the late 1800s to today, including Frans Lanting, David Doubilet, David Alan Harvey, Jodi Cobb, William Albert Allard, Nick Nichols, and Annie Griffiths Belt, Through the Lens is an extraordinary photographic celebration of some of the greatest the world has to offer.

National Geographic Image Collection

Book Description
Behind National Geographic’s worldwide reputation as a powerhouse of photography lies one of the finest, most extensive, and most unique graphic resources on Earth: the National Geographic Image Collection. For the first time ever, readers will plumb the fascinating depths of this immense archive from the earliest photographs collected in the late 19th century to the cutting-edge work of today. Both iconic and never-before-seen images from virtually every corner of the globe, every species of wildlife, and amazing human achievements in exploration, adventure, science, and more are showcased and placed in historic, artistic, technical, and journalistic context.

Following this lavish visual journey, readers will be awed by a behind-the-scenes profile of the entire collection, its size, its richly diverse character, and its special collections, ranging from delicate and beautiful Autochromes to the famous Alexander Graham Bell collection to the amazing stratosphere collection. Fine artwork and imaginative illustrations are also featured.

Finally, a listing of photographers whose work is represented stands as a fitting tribute to those without whose tireless and brilliant efforts the Collection would not exist.

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National Geographic: The Photographs (National Geographic Collectors Series)

This stunning volume was the gift book of the year when it first published, and the images that grace its pages remain iconic. From the famous Afghan girl whose haunting green eyes stare out from the book’s cover, and her poignant story that captured the world’s interest, to award-winning photography culled from the Society’s vast archives, The Photographs offers readers an inside look at National Geographic and a sharp-eyed view of the world. The book showcases the skill and imagination of such notable Geographic photographers as David Doubilet, William Albert Allard, Sam Abell, Jim Stanfield, Jodi Cobb, Jim Brandenburg, David Alan Harvey, and many more. They share their techniques, as well as personal and colorful anecdotes about individual images and their adventures in the field—sometimes humorous, sometimes terrifying, always vividly compelling. Author Leah Bendavid-Val writes about the photographers’ achievements from technical, journalistic, and artistic perspectives.

Five chapters cover core National Geographic themes—wildlife on land and water; cultures in the United States and around the world; and science, from astronomy to archaeology to the human senses. The photographs in each chapter capture rare moments in nature and the lives of animals, along with defining events in the lives of people everywhere. This exquisite collection is as elegant as it is timeless.

Polar Obsession

Product Description
The Arctic is in Paul Nicklen’s blood. Born and raised on Baffin Island, Nunavut, he grew up in one of the only non-Inuit families in a tiny native settlement amid the ice fields, floes, and frigid seas of Northern Canada. At an age when most children are playing hide-and-seek, he was learning life-and-death lessons of survival: how to read the weather, find shelter in a frozen snowscape, or live off the land as his Inuit neighbors had done for centuries.

Today Nicklen is a naturalist and wildlife photographer uniquely qualified to portray the impact of climate change on the polar regions and their inhabitants, human and animal alike. In a wise and wonderful intertwining of art and science, his bold expeditions plunge him into freezing seas to capture unprecedented, up-close documentation of the lives of leopard seals, whales, walruses, polar bears, bearded seals, and narwhals. Bathed in polar light, his images, inspiring and amazing, break new ground in photography and provide a vivid, timely portrait of two extraordinary, endangered ecosystems.

Look Inside Polar Obsession

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The Best of Wedding Photojournalism: Techniques and Images for Professional Digital Photographers, 2nd Edition

Big Book of Breasts

Say no to silicone: The greatest natural breasts of our times

Some call it the American obsession, but men everywhere recognize the hypnotic allure of a large and shapely breast. In The Big Book of Breasts, Dian Hanson explores the origins of mammary madness through three decades of natural big-breasted nudes. Starting with the World War II Bosom-Mania that spawned Russ Meyer, Howard Hughes’s The Outlaw and Frederick’s of Hollywood, Dian guides you over, around, and in between the dangerous curves of infamous models including Michelle Angelo, Candy Barr, Virginia Bell, Joan Brinkman, Lorraine Burnett, Lisa De Leeuw, Uschi Digard, Candye Kane, Jennie Lee, Sylvia McFarland, Margaret Middleton, Paula Page, June Palmer, Roberta Pedon, Rosina Revelle, Candy Samples, Tempest Storm, Linda West, June Wilkinson, Julie Wills, and dozens more, including Guinness World Record holder Norma Stitz, possessor of the World’s Largest Natural Breasts.