No comments about Panda: An Intimate Portrait Of One Of The World's Most Elusive Characters.

5 comments about Atget.

1. if you are looking at a way to make the ordinary special, looking at the images contained in Atget definitely intrigues your imagination. details and compostion place the viewer in the scene, an active particpant.



2. Eugene Atget is known to everyone, perhaps not by name in all instances, but at least by the images of Paris and environs that grace all manner of books, essays, brochures, museums, art collections, and postcards throughout the world. At the time of his death in 1927 his enormous output of images was archived and has subsequently been studied, purchased and shared with exhibitions too numerous to mention. Yet in this fine book the essence of Atget the observer is appreciated as well as any publication of the many about the pioneering photographer, a man who served as an important bridge from studio formality of the art to entering the human realm of images of people on the streets of Paris and the surrounding areas.
   
   Each of the 100 tritone and 5 duotone photographs in this elegant volume is accompanied by an insightful comment by the superb writer John Szarkowski who also happens to be the former director of the Department of Photography at the MOMA in New York. Rarely have photographic images been so enhanced by the written word: Szarkowski is in complete synchrony with the vision of Atget. Here are images of simple people of early 20th century Paris, images of streets, still lifes, woods, streams, rivers great and small, each captured with immediacy and yet with timelessness.
   
   For those looking for an affordable introduction of Atget's work for the library, this is certainly the volume of choice. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, March 06



3. Now that it is so cheap, don't miss this great book! Excellent prose by Szarkowski and beautiful pictures by a master... hard combination to beat.



4. Again, John Szarkowski takes us by the hand and leads us into the photographs of Eugene Atget, as through the magic of a looking glass. In these writings, on a selection of photographs from the first quarter of the 20th century, in his historically aware and individual way, Szarkowski instructs on how to read a photograph by doing so himself. We not only see into the environs of Paris through the eyes of the eclectic, determined and tender Atget, but also through the eyes and the keen, attentive mind of Szarkowski, who writes as though he lives inside these pictures, and tends them, and the photographer, with great devotion.

   This edition is set up by the previous 4 volume study, The Work of Atget, by Maria Morris Hambourg and John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art, 1985. But this new book comes from a persistent, deep seam miner, one who knows that what it is about these photographs is so fertile, they can be studied throughout one's life, and still give more.

   How rich is the mind that can bring another mind to light? Would it be bearable if everything in life could be keyed into focus, for us too busy and bothered to pay attention, by a poet as revelatory as Szarkowski? When considering entree des jardins, 1921-22, he says, "except occasionally, as (for example) during revolutions, the French have managed very well to sublimate the periodic human tendency to behave violently toward one's fellow human men, and have directed these impulses toward their trees", you cannot help but love the gardener who built the gate here, the photographer for seeing it, and Szarkowski, for bringing it to our attention in this way. He tells you what is on the menu, who lived in the house, how the hotel got its name, who built it, what may have motivated them to sculpt a Dionysus over a doorway, what member of the court of Louis the XIV was cast to live where, what other photographer may have attempted to photograph the same scene, and sometimes, what led Atget there.

   The book is a beautiful masterpiece, and an accomplishment worthy of a life spent looking deeply. If you love (really looking at) photographs, you should consider your shelves incomplete without it.




5. This book is another gift from a great writer and observer, an homage to Atget, to photography, to art and to Western civilization. For anyone who pretends to be a photographer or to love Art, it is a joy to share Szarkowski's easy erudition, one or two pages at a time.
   
   Atget showed us the axioms of photography and axioms cannot be explained by analysis. The test of an Atget, Bach, or Cezanne, is that it is impossible to find the source of their revelation and impossible not to find their influence in future artists.

   "Good pictures are not explained by words...With exceptional good luck criticism might with words construct meanings that are different from but consonant with the meanings of pictures. Such constructs of words might possibly guide us toward the neighborhoods where pictorial meanings live.", he says in this book. (Please, if you are an art historian or critic, take this pledge!)

   Thus Szarkowski tours the photographs he has selected and writes a thought or two somehow connected to each one - sometimes a revelation, often a question. Each page of writing stands alone and will engage the reader in a conversation with the author and the photographer. Many times Szarkowski puts us somewhere behind the camera a hundred years ago, or on a bridge in Paris 600 years ago. He really brings Atget to life by putting us in his time and place.

   There are plenty of revealing facts stashed throughout the writing. Szarkowski talks of the influence of Atget on Weston, Walker Evans, Winogrand, and others and leaves us to recognize the Atget in Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, and ourselves. He mentions just the relevant technical and biographical details.

   He shows examples of how Atget handled Time,the essence of photography. As he wrote in "Photography Until Now" about Atget, "Perhaps from the practice of looking attentively and repeatedly at the same thing from different vantage points and in different lights he came to see that ...one tree, or one reflecting pool, was never twice the same, and would therefore last as a subject as long as one's concentrated attention. With this realization he became, surely not intentionally, a modern artist."

   The reflecting pools and trees are in this book along with the more familiar Parisian architecture. Different views of the same subjects are also in other books such as Berenice Abbott's "The World Of Atget". Szarkowski thus, enriches the literature on Atget, giving meaning to many of the published mindless catalogs of his photographs.

   Szarkowski shows another reason Atget is a modern artist. His work is meticulously constructed in the same cultural elements as the works of his more famous contemporary French painters and sculptures. There are no accidents and no mistakes in his work. The result is a richness that reveals something new every time we look at it.

   The same is true of this book by Szarkowsi. I've read it three times. It is a masterpiece, "...seductively and deceptively simple, wholly poised, reticent, dense with experience, mysterious and true." To use the words Szarkowski wrote of Atget in Looking At Photographs.

4 comments about Panoramic Photography: From Composition and Exposure to Final Exhibition.

1. A very disappointing book, no real secrets are given away here..not enough user knowledge to hold my interest..it is basically a nice photo coffee table book.



2. This book provides great information on the various types of panoramic imaging available today. I'm very impressed by how the author goes into good detail and shows in sketches how different things are done. A must read for any panoramic photographer - flat back, rotating back or, stitcher!



3. I received the book in this morning. And after a quick flipping, i was disappointed by the content.
   
   Almost half of the book is showing you panoramic photography equipment in the market, from camera to tripod, panohead, software, etc. And also some history on panoramic photography. Well i appreciate all these for general information purpose, but that's not why i bought this book in the first place. Rather than what the book suggests "From composition and exposure to final exhibition", so little information is provided on the technical aspect.
   
   Also, one thing really annoys me is that the book includes quite some panoramas made by other photographers, not the author.
   
   So if you are looking for some oringal panoramas and techniques in shooting panoramas, i will not recommend this book.



4. Fantastic book. I knew this book has been around in French for some time and was very pleased to see they translated it. Really worth the money.. covers all aspects of Panoramic photography. Highly recommended..

2 comments about African Elegance.

1. The price tag of AFRICAN ELEGANCE represents a bargain for an oversized feature loaded with full-page color photos throughout: any university art library and quite a few community library general lending collections will find it an outstanding addition to any African cultures section. Author Etagale Blauer's years of travel in Africa lends to his feature and interpretation of the masks and ritual objects which are a part of African cultural beliefs and values. Displays link cultural traditions to materials, adaptations, and choices in artistic rendering. Highly recommended: a top value and a top pick.



2. This is a beautiful book, full of gorgeous color photos. It highlights the unique and extrordinary costumes of the peoples of africa. A delight!

1 comments about Versailles: A Garden in Four Seasons.

1. This is a wonderfully realized book on a most deserving subject. The gardens of Le Notre, at Versailles, are the most spectaular in the world and the apex of French classical garden design, Louis XIV was heavily envoled in their creation, and the Sun King took most of the credit, but it was mostly the great Le Notre. This book has some spectacular images and the palace and grounds are just breathtaking, it really is hard to wrap your mind around this much splendor. If you have any interest at all amazing landscape architecture or just appreciate opulance then you will love this book. Thank goodness the palace was not pulled down during the Revolution, it was said because it was so vast it would be too much work to destroy so they let it languish in glorious decay, to this day France is trying to restore it to its apex during the ancient regime, this book lets us in on some of that opulance reflected in the splendid gardens. Highly recommended.

5 comments about How To Live At The Beach.

1. I loved this book & bought it for my aunt who has a beach house. It's a feel good book about placing value in the simple things like snow cones and seagulls. It is perfect for anyone who enjoys freeing themselves of life's business with an escape to the beach. More for adults but ok for all ages. Lovely simple water color sketches. Loved it! I will definatley buy from this author again and look at calendars next year.



2. People who DO live at the beach could relate to this whimsical fore tell.
   It is a coffee table book. Very small physically and short read. Inspire guests experience of there time spent at the beach. Good for a gift to some one moving to the beach. Light read poetic okay for all ages.



3. I bought this (sight unseen of course) for a friend as a small thank you for a wkend gathering at her beach house. I had to find something else however as I hated this book when it arrived in the mail. A collection of "Deep Thoughts" coupled w/not-very-attractive illustrations. Does Amazon take books back? I hope so.



4. I have this in my beach front condo and it fits in great.



5. This is written for small children and was somewhat a disappointment from the write-up. I was interested in light reading material for adults on vacation in a cottage at the beach.

5 comments about Paris: 550 photos by Maurice Suberive.

1. Since this book has pictures taken a long time ago with film, the granulations can be seen and it feels like some of the photos are old.
   I didnt read it all becouse it was a gift and I didnt had the time but after around 30 minutes I got bored becouse the pictures are not striking and beautiful enough. I am a photographer and that could be making my review a little more demanding but still I feel im being just.
   
   I was deciding between this book and another one with aerial shots from paris and wish I could have selected the other and maybe enjoy a diffent angle even if the pictures were old as well.



2. Paris is where my son proposed to his girlfriend. she is now his wife and I sent them this book as a reminder of this most romantic of cities!



3. At 9.5 x 7 inches, this is not a coffee table book. However it is a good photographic study of Paris printed on high quality paper and generally labled with at least the general area the photo was taken. I would recommend this book for first time visitors to Paris. It offers a sound preview, but sadly excruciating little information. Look to guide books for that.



4. I bought this book for $50 simply on the strength of reviews. They're right. Although it's only in paperback - a bad decision by the publisher -the photos are absolutely amazing. The coolest thing about it is that you can tell that the photographer's a Parisian, almost all the photos are of kind of nooks and crannies of Paris and Parisian people; they look like the sorts of sights that only come into view once you've lived a long time there. That's what makes this book so cool though - the photographer has a tremendous eye and feel for the "Frenchness" and "Parisian-ness" that makes Paris arguably the most beautiful city in the world. An absolutely great book!



5. I love this book so much I almost don't know where to begin. The photographs are so beautiful. I only wished that the book was a hard back because this is a perfect table book. I have many books on Paris and this is one of my favorites. If you love Paris and/or you've been to Paris this book is a must!

2 comments about Singular Images.

1. Great book with interesting approches on the images.
   I'm glad to have it.



2. Singular Images: Essays On Remarkable Photographs covers well over 150 years of photography, from Talbot's first negative to the latest changes in photographic art. Essays collect analysis of individual photos however, not the genre as a whole, focusing on a single image's achievements and exploring artist intention, technical and historical background, and the artistic community's response. Black and white photos blend with in-depth analysis to show what makes an achievement exceptional in the photography field.

5 comments about Photography: The New Complete Guide to Taking Photographs.

1. This book is wonderfully designed and covers everything a beginner as well as more advanced photographer could ask for. It is perfect for an advanced amateur/ semi-professional, such as myself, who's been shooting for several years and has a good grasp on aperture, shutter speed, and exposure. It's packed with a ton of information, and covers a wide range of topics, from the basics of different types of cameras, lenses, filters, and film, to the more advanced topics of panning, portraiture, macro, nudes (indoors as well as outdoors), shooting underwater, aerial photography, still life, interiors/ exteriors, urban and rural landscapes, mixed lighting, and even photographing food! And there's more! I especially liked the fact that this book even included discussions on cross-processing, digital toning, and polaroid emulsion lifts! In the Travel photograhy section, It even offers advice on the different lighting conditions one would face depending on all four of the seasons.
   
   His style of writing is very straightforward and to the point, and easy to absorb. Every page is filled with gorgeous photographs and great examples of good and bad solutions for each of the situations discussed. I've learned so much from it and feel that it was definetely $19.99 well spent (I bought it from a bookstore a year ago). It is like an encyclopedia on photography, and I just ordered his other books from the series - The Photographer's Guide to ... I bought the ones on Compostion, Black and White, Light, and Portraits. I feel that at about $13 -$15 each, they are an excellent way to add to my library. ;-) There are other topics covered in this series, but before getting too excited and buying them all, I am waiting to see if his books in the series that I just ordered are as informative as the one I just reviewed.
   
   To sum it up, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in owning an informative, well-written and beautifully photographed book on a wide range of topics in photography! Definitely worth the money!



2. If you think yourself as a serious beginner and wanna teach yourself photography, get this book.
   I borrowed this book from local public library, and I love it instantly.
   
   First, this book covers a lot of topics, which make me feel it's universal ^_^ form "One-use camera" to "Digital toning", all of them were well organized into 2pages and fit under 4 categories: Basic techniques, Photographing People, Travel Photography, Advanced Techniques.
   
   Second, In every topic, the author give you detailed technics to shoot right, plus the wrong/right picture samples, it's very easy to read and follow.
   
   To me, this book can be used as an Text book for Practicing Photography 101, - what you need to add are some quizes and home work after every chapter.
   
   How to use this book? Read this book, grab a camera and shoot!
   After practicing the technics or tricks the book covered, I'm sure you will shoot much better the most of other people.



3. I liked this book alot. It had a lot of information- as well as pictures to go along. I would Definitely Consider this book among others for first timers.



4. This book does just what it promises on the cover and more, it doesn't just guide you, it shows how to take great photographs! As a portrait photographer I found the chapter on studio lighting very helpful, and I found the other tips and examples truly inspiring. John Freeman not only writes clearly, he manages to get his message accross with great images, his photography style is refreshing without being pretentious, his landscapes are crisp and masterfully executed, and above all his captions do what they are suposed to do, they explain in detail how the result was obtained. This is a great book for any photography enthusiast, at any proficiency level, a worthy addition to any photography library.



5. This book talks about so many different aspects of taking photographs, and every step is so well illustrated, that everyone will find it very useful. The lay out of each chapter is very well-organized, and all details of photographing are described in understandable terms. I was very interested in photographic people, and I expected to get a couple of pages covering that at most. However, John Freeman went into detail showing how to photograph children, families, portraits and naked bodies. The examples he provided were stunning! I can't wait to try out new ideas I got from this book!

1 comments about Luxury Houses Country (Luxury Houses).

1. With room to spread out; often a view of the ocean, valley, mountain or lake; fewer restrictions on things like building codes, the opportunity to develop fantastic houses away from city life has long been popular. At one end of the scale is a crowded campground or small house in a crowded area. At the other end are the houses shown here.
   
   In this book the author has selected twenty-two houses that I believe any of us would call luxurious. From a 16,000 square foot house in upstate New York overlooking a valley to homes with a view of the sea in Hawaii, Italy and other places, the homes here are fantastic. Each house is profusely illustrated with color pictures.
   
   This book is produced by teNeues. The teNeues books are truly beautiful. The company is headquartered in Germany and they bring a sense of quality to their books that is not common. The books are printed on heavy paper using very high quality printing techniques. While this is essentially a coffee table picture book, or perhaps an idea book for the house you are planning, it is beautifully done, almost a work of art.