Examining the history of photography and the medium's uses beyond fine art

Since photography's beginnings in the 19th century, the medium has constantly evolved--in its purpose, its audiences, its collectors and its technology. Reframing Photography: Multiple Histories surveys photography's past, present and future transformations through thematic groupings pulled from the preeminent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The diverse selection of objects explores images made not just for a fine art context but also for documentation, the printed page, science, architecture, surveys, publicity and more. Photographers revealing these multiple narratives include Southworth and Hawes, Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Hine, James Van Der Zee, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Catherine Opie, Gohar Dashti, Martine Gutierriez and Alejandro Cartagena. This publication celebrates the centennial anniversary of Alfred Steiglitz's founding gift to the museum's photography collection.

Dark, surreal scenes hidden in an iconic photographic archive of Depression-era America

Drawing from approximately 40,000 works of the Farm Security Administration Photographic Archive (1935-42) housed at the New York Public Library, Omen reviews and reframes this landmark project of modern American documentary photography. The monumental project features works by storied photographers such as Russell Lee, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Gordon Parks and Jack Delano. Many of the more iconic images that arose from this initiative were instrumental in constructing a hegemonic narrative of triumph against adversity in Depression-era America. In scrutinizing the backgrounds and secondary characters of some lesser-known photographs, however, a more turbulent story emerges.
Omen is co-edited by Mexican artists León Muñoz Santini and Jorge Panchoaga, providing a fresh perspective on this quintessentially American study. The image sequence amplifies the eerie details in enlarged, stark black-and-white images, creatively cropped and abutted together to form insidious connections. These hidden stories are premonitions of the visible and invisible specters of systemic injustice that characterize American society, their cycles renewing with each successive generation. Thus, Omen at once serves as a mirror for the anguished reality of today, and as a device for reflection on how historical and documentary photography is read and understood: taking the editorial gaze to its ultimate consequences. The book includes a narrative text by novelist and poet Lucy Ives.

Never-before-published images by 42 female photographers from Lotte Jacobi to Susan Meiselas

Women have been professional photographers since the inception of the medium, yet their work has received far less attention than that of their male colleagues. From the more than 15 million photographs stored in the Dutch National Archives in The Hague, the editors of Pioneers: Photography by Women selected a compilation of more than 200 images by 42 female photographers created between 1859 and 1999. It highlights well-known photographers in the Netherlands and abroad, such as Margaret Bourke-White and Eve Arnold, while also spotlighting under-recognized artists creating profound work. Whether through composition, technique or subject matter, their innovations paved the way for future generations of photographers.
Photographers include: Laure Albin-Guillot, Emmy Andriesse, Eve Arnold, Ilse Bing, Diana Blok, Margaret Bourke-White, Marianne Breslauer, Hester Carsten, Dickey Chapelle, Violette Cornelius, Augusta Curiel, Françoise Demulder, Maria Fialho, Gisèle Freund, Elisabeth Hase, Florence Henri, Abigail Heyman, Lotte Jacobi, Ata Kandó, Marion Kaplan, Germaine Krull, Catherine Leroy, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas.

The South is perhaps the most mythologized region in the United States and also one of the most depicted. Since the dawn of photography in the nineteenth century, photographers have articulated the distinct and evolving character of the South's people, landscape, and culture and reckoned with its fraught history. Indeed, many of the urgent questions we face today about what defines the American experience--from racism, poverty, and the legacy of slavery to environmental disaster, immigration, and the changes wrought by a modern, global economy--appear as key themes in the photography of the South. The visual history of the South is inextricably intertwined with the history of photography and also the history of America, and is therefore an apt lens through which to examine American identity.

A Long Arc: Photography and the American South accompanies a major exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, with more than one hundred photographers represented, including Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Gordon Parks, William Eggleston, Sally Mann, Carrie Mae Weems, Dawoud Bey, Alec Soth, and An-My Lê. Insightful texts by Imani Perry, Sarah Kennel, Makeda Best, and Rahim Fortune, among others, illuminate this broad survey of photographs of the Southern United States as an essential American story.

Copublished by Aperture and High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Transformative decades of contemporary photography from the collection of MoMA

Talented local photographers capturing historic sites and their stewards

From traditional Ashanti buildings in Ghana to Sumba in Indonesia, Yanacancha-Huaquis in Peru, Tiretta Bazaar in India and the Garcia Pastures in the US, this book takes you on a journey around the world and its places of beauty and history. The result of a collaboration between the Magnum Foundation and the World Monuments Fund, it illustrates the complex and reciprocal relationship between humanity--especially local communities--and the monuments and landscapes they shape. Eleven photographers offer overlapping narratives--those of the monuments that bear witness to history, those of the local communities that are their stewards, and that of the photographer--so that each shot becomes a sedimentation of times and points of view. This series of photographs not only illustrates the diversity of the world's cultural heritage but also warns us of the threats to its environment.

A cavalcade of color photos by everyone from Alex Prager to William Wegman

This book, Chromotherapia: The Feel-Good Color Photography, offers genuine relief from the black-and-white world. Often disparaged, not always taken seriously, color photography has nevertheless allowed artists to get out their palettes and paint. Many have freed themselves from the medium's documentary status to explore the common roots of the image and the imaginary, flirting with the worlds of Surrealism and Pop. Famed Italian visual artist and curator Maurizio Cattelan and curator Sam Stourdzé offer a rereading of the history of color photography through the 20th century into the 21st, and through the works of over 20 artists who take us on a journey into vibrant, acidulous worlds. Treat yourself to sunny yellow, azure blue, bright red, bubbly orange and more, straight from the lenses of the biggest names in color photography.
Photographers include: Yevonde Middleton, Harold Edgerton, Erwin Blumenfeld, Walter Chandoha, William Wegman, Hiro, Guy Bourdin, Alex Prager, Juno Calypso, Adrienne Raquel, Miles Aldridge, Ouka Leele, Hassan Hajjaj, Ruth Ossai, Pierre et Gilles, Sandy Skoglund, Martin Parr, Arnold Odermatt, Maurizio Cattelan, Pierpaolo Ferrari.

This, the fifth volume in the series Double Exposure, presents fifty images of African Americans in uniform, from the Civil War to the War in Iraq. The selection of photographs, which exemplify stories of patriotism, courage, and dignity, are enriched by the unique perspective of Frank Bolden, Jr., 12th Administrator of NASA and Gail Lumet Buckley, author of American Patriots. Photographers include Anthony Barboza, a staff photographer in the U.S. Navy, Henry Clay Anderson who studied photography at Southern University under the G.I. Bill, and Robert Scurlock whose famous photographs of the Tuskegee Airmen still live with us today.

The eighth volume in the Double Exposure series, Movements, Motions, Moments draws upon the visual images in NMAAHC's collection to explore the dynamic ways religion is engaged and practiced by African Americans.

Movements, Motions, Moments shows how African Americans have negotiated their participation and engagement in religious spaces. The book is divided into three sections--Movements, Motions, and Moments. Images of figures including Rev. Henry Highland Garnett, Noble Drew Ali, Father Divine, Prophet Elijah Muhammad, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Pauli Murray, Bishop Myokei Cain-Barrett, and others are depicted next to photographs of religious celebrations, ritual practices, and individual moments of faith and spirituality. Photographers include Lola Flash, Chester Higgins, Jason Miccolo Johnson, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Kenneth Royster, James Van Der Zee, Milton Williams, Lloyd W. Yearwood, and others.

Photographs in this volume range from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries and include religious traditions such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, African indigenous, non-secular, and other religious traditions (Humanism, Atheism, Spiritualism, and others). It also includes photography capturing contemporary events and movements including Black Lives Matter and the global pandemic.

A Spanish collector's selection of photography's most iconic moments

This homage to Cartier-Bresson's famous dictum collects some of the most important images by some of the best photographers of the 20th century. Featured here are Man Ray's Surrealist portraits of women; Berenice Abbot's images of a modernizing New York; and Alberto Korda's iconic portrait of Che Guevara. Presenting the work of 58 photographers from the collection of Julián Castilla, this essential volume of 20th-century photography is accompanied by essays from Spain's leading authors on photography, exploring the evolution of the medium.
Photographers include: Berenice Abbott, José Manuel Ballester, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Francesc Català-Roca, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Robert Doisneau, Elliott Erwitt, Philippe Halsman, Horst P. Horst, André Kertész, William Klein, Alberto Korda, Chema Madoz, Vivian Maier, Ramón Masats, Nicolás Muller, Man Ray, Carlos Saura, Alfred Stieglitz, Juan Ugalde and more.

A gorgeously printed panorama of the 20th century's defining photographs

Over the course of the 20th century, photography evolved as an art form while serving as an eyewitness to social, cultural and political change. This book presents more than 80 significant images--many from unique vintage prints--that came to define their times, and invites us to take a fresh look at celebrated photographs by such masters of the medium as Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Consuelo Kanaga, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and Edward Steichen.

Drawing on the unparalleled Howard Greenberg Collection--446 photographs recently acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston--Viewpoints brings to vivid life the transformative power of photography, and invites the reader into a collection assembled with a connoisseur's eye by a former photographer who is also a gallery dealer and a strong advocate for artists.

An epic dive into modernist photography by the museum that helped shape its history

The history of photography has been told many times, but never before through the incomparable collection of photographs at The Museum of Modern Art. As the second volume in a set of three books that together present a new and comprehensive history of photography through works from MoMA's collection, this publication charts the medium during the height of the modernist period, from 1920 to 1960.

Only one other volume--Looking at Photographs, published in 1973--highlights the photographic treasures of MoMA's collection; neither Beaumont Newhall's classic History of Photography nor John Szarkowski's Photography Until Now used the Museum collection as a springboard to approach photography's distinctive history. The Museum's significant role in the development of this history, and in the construction of a canon that championed photography as an art form (but also eclipsed certain alternative or unfamiliar practices) requires a reconsidered history for the 21st century. This publication offers a fresh critical lens through which to appreciate works of exceptional significance, surprise and influence, encouraging creative new readings.

The book begins with an in-depth introduction followed by eight chapters of full-color plates, each introduced by a short essay. Masterworks by photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Man Ray and Aleksander Rodchenko appear alongside lesser-known gems, and diverse notions of modernism enrich classic interpretations, so that the beautiful fictions and messy realities of photography are complicated, refreshed and, above all, enjoyed.

In summer 1862, Minnesotans found themselves fighting interconnected wars--the first against the rebellious Southern states, and the second an internal war against the Sioux. While the Civil War was more important to the future of the United States, the Dakota War of 1862 proved far more destructive to the people of Minnesota--both whites and American Indians. It led to U.S. military action against the Sioux, divided the Dakotas over whether to fight or not, and left hundreds of white settlers dead. In Columns of Vengeance, historian Paul N. Beck offers a reappraisal of the Punitive Expeditions of 1863 and 1864, the U.S. Army's response to the Dakota War of 1862.

Whereas previous accounts have approached the Punitive Expeditions as a military campaign of the Indian Wars, Beck argues that the expeditions were also an extension of the Civil War. The strategy and tactics reflected those of the war in the East, and Civil War operations directly affected planning and logistics in the West. Beck also examines the devastating impact the expeditions had on the various bands and tribes of the Sioux. Whites viewed the expeditions as punishment--columns of vengeance sent against those Dakotas who had started the war in 1862--yet the majority of the Sioux the army encountered had little or nothing to do with the earlier uprising in Minnesota.

Rather than relying only on the official records of the commanding officers involved, Beck presents a much fuller picture of the conflict by consulting the letters, diaries, and personal accounts of the common soldiers who took part in the expeditions, as well as rare personal narratives from the Dakotas. Drawing on a wealth of firsthand accounts and linking the Punitive Expeditions of 1863 and 1864 to the overall Civil War experience, Columns of Vengeance offers fresh insight into an important chapter in the development of U.S. military operations against the Sioux.

The 826 photograph collections that this guide thus details encompass Native American culture; frontier and pioneer life in Oklahoma and Indian territories; Wild West shows; the range cattle industry; the petroleum industry; and gunfighters, outlaws, and lawmen. New additions include the Lucille Clough Collection of 1,800 prints, postcards, and stereograph cards of American Indians and Alaska Natives, and First Peoples of Canada.

This powerful collection highlights the importance of snapshots in Black American life: as tools to challenge stereotypes, and as a way to document family and culture

Thoughtfully illustrated, this volume highlights a selection of photographs of African American family life between the 1970s and the early 2000s--pictures that were lost by their original owners and then found by the artist Zun Lee on a street in Detroit in 2012, marking the beginning of the Fade Resistance collection of more than 4,000 Polaroids. Lee describes the collection as an important record of Black visual self-representation and a means to reflect the way Black people saw themselves on their terms--without the intention of being seen, or judged, by others. To Lee, these powerful photographs are an expression of Black life mattering.
These vivid images chronicle milestones such as weddings, birthdays and graduations, as well as quiet daily moments, offering contemporary views long ignored or erased by mainstream culture. Together, these works highlight the role snapshots have played in Black life, as tools to challenge stereotypical portrayals and as a means to memorialize family, culture and heritage.
Topics such as self-representation, visual history and the social power of photographs are addressed in critical texts by Sophie Hackett, Stefano Harney, Zun Lee and Fred Moten, and an original contribution by celebrated poet Dawn Lundy Martin.

Nearly 160 images by some eighty photographers, selected from Judy Glickman Lauder's collection of over 650 prints, explore the idea of presence of the human spirit. This stunningly designed album showcases the imagery of beloved and influential photographers of the twentieth century, such as Berenice Abbott, Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Imogen Cunningham, Nan Goldin, Susan Meiselas, Gordon Parks, Sebastião Salgado, Weegee, and James Van Der Zee. Spanning Pictorialism, portraiture, and fashion, to documentary and photojournalism, and featuring iconic figures from the fields of art, politics, entertainment, and social justice, Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder celebrates photography's ability to capture the human experience. Essays by Anjuli Lebowitz and Adam D. Weinberg provide historical and artistic context, while an autobiographical essay by Glickman Lauder tells the story of her collection. This book accompanies an exhibition drawn from the Judy Glickman Lauder Collection at the Portland Museum of Art, to which the Collection has been gifted.

Published by Aperture in partnership with the Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Themes of gender, race, class and social change across three generations of African photography

This book is a comprehensive investigation of photographic works by artists from the African continent and its diaspora. Taking the politics of the colonial gaze as its starting point, Events of the Social looks at the diverse complexity of the 19th-century archive through a selection of vintage portraits, cartes de visite, postcards and album pages. Three generations of African artists from the 1940s to the present chart the changing features of African societies through portraiture, exploring notions of the self, gender, sexuality, race, social status and politics.
The book also examines landscape and the built environment, showing how architecture and spatial planning convey social order and ideology while reflecting experiences of migration, colonialism, war and industrialization. Another group of artists, born after the mid-1970s, explores issues of social identity, lineage, questions of belonging and personal experiences.
Artists include: Sammy Baloji, Jodi Bieber, Mimi Cherono Ng'ok, Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin, David Goldblatt, Seydou Keïta, Zanele Muholi, Malick Sidibé and Mikhael Subotzky.

Contributions by Robert Adams, Linda Gammell, Frank Gohlke, Edward Ranney, Kimberly Roberts, and Terri Weifenbach.

David Hartt's visual excavation of the politics of landscape, photography and empire

Published for an exhibition curated by artist David Hartt, this volume focuses on the concept of terraforming--how land is shaped for human use throughout history--within the unique context of the monumental 250-acre earthwork at Frederic Edwin Church's Olana in Hudson, New York. The book is composed of over 130 19th-century images, drawn from Olana's permanent collection, by Désiré Charnay, Eadweard Muybridge and Carleton Watkins; these are seen as a nascent technology that became tools for expanding empires that used photography to chart new frontiers and to document the sediments of previous civilizations. The book also features documentation of the newly commissioned artistic intervention by Hartt that responds to the historic context of Olana itself, the artistic legacy of Church, and the way land is constantly shaped and reformed to reflect different and competing cultural values.