Both Sides of Sunset: Photographing Los Angeles - Jane Brown and Marla Hamburg Kennedy (Editors)

Dorothea Lange: The Photographer Who Found the Faces of the Depression - Carole Boston Weatherford

The Photographers Black and White Handbook - Harold Davis

Insomniac city - Bill Hayes

Hold still - Sally Mann

Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs - Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs - Adams, Ansel

Summary: A visual celebration of the eminent photographer's most significant works collects four hundred chronologically arranged, essay-complemented pieces, from his first landscapes of Yosemite and the High Sierra in 1916, to his depictions of national parks in the 1940s, to his last achievements from the 1960s.

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Much Loved - Mark Nixon

Much Loved - Nixon, Mark

Summary: Award-winning photographer Mark Nixon has created a trove of quirky and nostalgic portraits of teddy bears and other stuffed animals that have been lovingly abused after years of play.



PW Annex Reviews
Dublin-based photographer Abrams collects 65 portraits of well-worn stuffed animals and shares their ages and stories of their origins. Claiming Irving Penn as an influence to this project, Abrams embraces "the idea of making an everyday object become visible again." These "much-loved" objects are world travelers, defenders against unruly terriers, pirate adventurers, and comforters of the ailing. The youngest is 5 years-old, the oldest is 102. Some are tattered and dread-locked, missing ears, limbs, eyes, and stuffing. One owner claims hers suffers from "teddy leprosy," another mild Tourette's. In addition to Bono's and Mr. Bean's bears, Abrams also includes his own childhood panda, as well as his son's Peter Rabbit—both of which inspired the project. He also introduces readers to Dublin's Dolls Hospital, a business specializing in the repair of dolls and stuffed toys. Finally, the book contains a blank page for the reader to add an image of his or her own special stuffed animal. The photographs range from hilarious, like the cover image of a bright pink bear with a pronounced frown, to monstrous, like the remnants of a giraffe that resemble a horror movie prop. The project is both aesthetically pleasing and exceedingly charming.

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The Public Library - Robert Dawson

The Public Library: A Photographic Essay - Dawson, Robert

Summary: There are more than 17,000 public libraries in America. Over the last eighteen years, photographer Robert Dawson has traveled the nation, documenting hundreds of these institutions--from Alaska to Florida, New England to the West Coast. The Public Library presents a wide selection of Dawson's photographs, revealing a vibrant, essential, yet seriously threatened system.

Publishers Weekly Reviews
This beautifully crafted book celebrates public libraries across the U.S. in both color and black and white images captured by photographer Dawson over an 18-year period. Artfully arranged in such chapters as "Civic Memory and Identity" and "Literature and Learning," the book includes a foreword by Bill Moyers and an afterword by Ann Patchett. Writers, including Anne Lamott, Barbara Kingsolver, and Amy Tan, share childhood experiences at their local libraries and the significance this sanctuary had on their literary development. Throughout, Dawson contrasts libraries of different sizes and locales: from those in poor, rural towns to those in bustling cities; from what used to be libraries but are now abandoned structures to architectural marvels. These buildings speak to the breadth, scope, and makeup of America, and how libraries provide culture, computers, and sometimes shelter. In addition, Dawson touches on the fragile nature of these institutions, which he feels are vital to our well-being as a nation. He challenges the notion of what a library looks like—some are scarcely bigger than a one-room house or share space with the local post office. Dawson goes beyond the physical structures and touches on how viscerally and nostalgically Americans feel about public libraries, and suggests that, as a culture, we depend on them more than we know.

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Bill Cunningham New York (DVD)

Bill Cunningham New York (DVD)

Summary: Bill Cunningham has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirees for the New York Times Style section in his columns On the Street and Evening Hours for decades. Presented is a delicate, funny, and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.

Video Librarian Reviews
Richard Press' documentary offers an affectionate portrait of photographer Bill Cunningham, whose snapshots of fashion shows, high society events, and distinctively dressed people on the street have graced the pages of the New York Times for years. What makes this film particularly noteworthy are Cunningham's contradictions. While the octogenarian shutterbug is fanatic about unusual dress—he spends his days on the city streets, scampering around to shoot passersby whose clothes pique his interest—his personal wardrobe is utterly functional. Cunningham moves easily among pampered celebrities, but he travels around on his 28th bike (the previous 27 having been stolen). The shutterbug admits to never having had a serious romantic relationship, but enjoys a bevy of friends, and while he's at home in rarefied social circles, he lives a positively spartan existence, occupying a tiny rent-controlled Carnegie Hall studio lacking kitchen or private bath and almost bereft of furniture aside from the file cabinets where he stores the negatives of all the pictures he's ever shot (at least until he's evicted and forced into a larger place). Cunningham's lifestyle is partially explained by his indifference to money; the photographer has frequently turned down payment in order to maintain his prized independence. Press' approach to his subject is laidback, benefiting from interesting interviews with the voluble Cunningham, his colleagues, and myriad friends and associates. A film about single-mindedness of a cheerful, contented sort—a genial surface beneath which one can glimpse something rather poignant—this is recommended. (F. Swietek) Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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The shadow catcher - Marianne Wiggins

 The shadow catcher - Wiggins, Marianne

Summary: A series of tales about a photographer's developing relationship with the Native Americans he astonishes by showing them pictures of themselves is interspersed with parallel tales about an unsung soldier, a husband, and a father.



Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Wiggins is a writer who paints elegant pictures with words. So who better to tell the story of Edward Sheriff Curtis, the enigmatic photographer of the American West, protege of J. P. Morgan, and friend of Theodore Roosevelt? She chooses to tell the story from her own point of view, through a fictionalized version of herself, called by her own name. Summoned to Hollywood to discuss turning her book about Curtis into a movie, Wiggins makes it plain to the director, who wants to make him a romantic hero, that he was anything but. He paid the Bureau of Indian Affairs a fee to photograph inside the reservations that he drove to in his car, abandoning his wife and four children and spending all their money to follow his obsession. At the same time she is pitching the movie, her personal life gets a bit hectic, and the links between Curtis' past and her present intertwine, if a little too coincidentally, at least very interestingly. The book slips from Wiggins' point of view to that of Curtis' long-suffering wife, Clara. The pages are liberally sprinkled with photographs, insights, realistic pathos, and human situations. This creative novel will not disappoint. ((Reviewed May 1, 2007)) Copyright 2007 Booklist Reviews.


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