"Stieglitz is as scholarly a production as anyone could wish, crammed with facts and trailing informative appendixes. It is also a loving and occasionally exasperated look at a contentious relative and the intimate circumstances that formed him."
--Time
Who was Vivian Maier? Many people know her as the reclusive Chicago nanny who wandered the city for decades, constantly snapping photographs, which were unseen until they were discovered in a seemingly abandoned storage locker. They revealed her to be an inadvertent master of twentieth-century American street photography. Not long after, the news broke that Maier had recently died and had no surviving relatives. Soon the whole world knew about her preternatural work, shooting her to stardom almost overnight.
But, as Pamela Bannos reveals in this meticulous and passionate biography, this story of the nanny savant has blinded us to Maier's true achievements, as well as her intentions. Most important, Bannos argues, Maier was not a nanny who moonlighted as a photographer; she was a photographer who supported herself as a nanny. In Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife, Bannos contrasts Maier's life with the mythology that strangers--mostly the men who have profited from her work--have created around her absence. Bannos shows that Maier was extremely conscientious about how her work was developed, printed, and cropped, even though she also made a clear choice never to display it. She places Maier's fierce passion for privacy alongside the recent spread of her work around the world, and she explains Maier's careful adjustments of photographic technique, while explaining how the photographs have been misconstrued or misidentified. As well, Bannos uncovers new information about Maier's immediate family, including her difficult brother, Karl--relatives that once had been thought not to exist. This authoritative and engrossing biography shows that the real story of Vivian Maier, a true visionary artist, is even more compelling than the myth.
Walker Evans (1903-1975) is best known as one of the leading documentary photographers of the Depression Era, and for his photographs of Alabama sharecroppers in James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. His FSA photographs have become icons in the American consciousness, and are perhaps the most influential body of photographic work in this century.But Evans was not the propagandist for social causes he was presumed to be; he was, instead, a fastidious observer, recording, simply, the way things were. His instinctive aversion to "artiness" contrasted him sharply from his senior Alfred Stieglitz, and his immediate contemporary, Ansel Adams. Evans' eye took him toward the dusty particulars, the backroads of American life, its rundown mill towns, roadside stands, torn movie posters and advertisements for departed minstrel shows. He developed a peculiarly American vernacular, his particular trademark that makes an Evans photograph almost instantly recognizable.With unrestricted access to all of Evans' diaries, letters, work logs and contact sheets, James R. Mellow has produced one of the most finely wrought portraits of a major American artist ever. Also, it is a deeply informed cultural history of the 1930s and '40s and a lively account of friendships and influences with the likes of Lincoln Kirstein and James Agee.
In 1971, Art in America published an interview with Walker Evans conducted by Leslie George Katz, writer and publisher of the Eakins Press.
The interview is charming and illuminating in its clarity and candor. Nearing the end of his life, Evans speaks freely about his influences and how he got started as a photographer ("I was damn well going to be an artist and I wasn't going to be a businessman," he remembers), and reflects back on his work and his thinking. The interview has become legendary, consulted by curators, scholars and students for half a century and considered a definitive source for insights into the process, philosophy and personality of one of America's greatest photographers. In 1995, the Eakins Press Foundation republished Evans' interview in a deluxe clothbound edition titled Walker Evans Incognito. More than 20 years later, this new edition brings the Evans interview back into print in an elegant and affordable volume for a new generation. Walker Evans scholar Anne Bertrand introduces the interview and its publication history, and contributes notes throughout the text that provide important contextual information. Walker Evans: The Interview offers an opportunity to rediscover the man behind the famous images, in his own words. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Walker Evans (1903-75) took up photography in 1928. His book collaboration with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), which portrayed the lives of three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Depression, has become one of that era's most defining documents. Evans joined the staff of Time magazine in 1945, and shortly after moved to Fortune magazine, where he stayed until 1965. That year, he became a professor of photography at the Yale University School of Art. Evans died at his home in Old Lyme, Connecticut, in 1975. Leslie George Katz (1918-97) was the founder and publisher of the Eakins Press Foundation. Until his death in 1997, he wrote extensively about American art and culture, and through his sustained efforts to celebrate his heroes--Thomas Eakins, Walt Whitman, and Walker Evans--found a way to define a new sort of democratic, patriotic intellectualism.
Wedding photography is one of the most competitive genres in photography. With so many other professional photographers (not to mention "Uncle Bobs") fighting for a chance to document all of the important moments and nuances of the wedding day, how can you rise to the top and win your prospective clients' trust and business? Follow Pete and Liliana Wright as they guide you through all of the steps you'll need to take in order to build a successful wedding photography business. In this book, you'll learn about branding, identifying and targeting your ideal client demographic, making great connections at bridal shows, creating a successful workflow on the wedding day, and creating strong relationships with vendors to boost your referrals. You will learn to avoid the myriad mistakes that other photographers fall prey to and will discover surefire tips for surviving in the ever-changing wedding industry while surpassing your competition.
"Wise and ebullient." - Dwight Garner, The New York Times
The first definitive biography of Richard Avedon, a monumental photographer of the twentieth century, from award-winning photography critic Philip Gefter.
In his acclaimed portraits, Richard Avedon captured the iconic figures of the twentieth century in his starkly bold, intimately minimal, and forensic visual style. Concurrently, his work for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue transformed the ideals of women's fashion, femininity, and culture to become the defining look of an era. Yet despite his driving ambition to gain respect in the art world, during his lifetime he was condescendingly dismissed as a celebrity photographer.
What Becomes a Legend Most is the first definitive biography of this luminary--an intensely driven man who endured personal and professional prejudice, struggled with deep insecurities, and mounted an existential lifelong battle to be recognized as an artist. Philip Gefter builds on archival research and exclusive interviews with those closest to Avedon to chronicle his story, beginning with Avedon's coming-of-age in New York between the world wars, when cultural prejudices forced him to make decisions that shaped the course of his life.
Compounding his private battles, Avedon fought to be taken seriously in a medium that itself struggled to be respected within the art world. Gefter reveals how the 1950s and 1960s informed Avedon's life and work as much as he informed the period. He counted as close friends a profoundly influential group of artists--Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Harold Brodkey, Renata Adler, Sidney Lumet, and Mike Nichols--who shaped the cultural life of the American twentieth century. It wasn't until Avedon's fashion work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the late 1970s that he became a household name.
Balancing glamour with the gravitas of an artist's genuine reach for worldly achievement--and not a little gossip--plus sixteen pages of photographs, What Becomes a Legend Most is an intimate window into Avedon's fascinating world. Dramatic, visionary, and remarkable, it pays tribute to Avedon's role in the history of photography and fashion--and his legacy as one of the most consequential artists of his time.
