Long awaited, the first survey of the work of one of America's foremost contemporary fine art photographers For almost 40 years, Catherine Opie has been documenting with psychological acuity the cultural and geographic identity of contemporary America. This unique artist monograph presents a compelling visual narrative of Opie's work since the early 1980s, pairing images across bodies of work to form a full picture of her artistic vision. With more than 300 beautiful illustrations and made in close collaboration with Opie, the book marks a turning point in the consideration of this artist's work to date.
This book is a rich record of life in small-town southeastern Alaska in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is the first book to showcase the photographs of Vincent Soboleff, an amateur Russian American photographer whose community included Tlingit Indians from a nearby village as well as Russian Americans, so-called Creoles, who worked in a local fertilizer factory. Using a Kodak camera, Soboleff, the son of a Russian Orthodox priest, documented the life of this multiethnic parish at work and at play until 1920. Despite their significance, few of Soboleff’s photographs have been published since their discovery in 1950. Anthropologist Sergei Kan rectifies that oversight in A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country, which brings together more than 100 of Soboleff’s striking black-and-white images. Combining Soboleff’s photographs with ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, Kan brings to life the communities of Killisnoo, where Soboleff grew up, and Angoon, the Tlingit village. The photographs gathered here depict Russian Creoles, Euro-Americans, the operation of the Killisnoo factory, and the daily life of its workers. But Soboleff’s work is especially valuable as a record of Tlingit life. As a member of this multiethnic community, he was able to take unusually personal photographs of people and daily life. Soboleff’s photographs offer candid and intimate glimpses into Tlingit people’s then-new economic pursuits such as commercial fishing, selling berries, and making “Indian curios” to sell to tourists. Other images show white, Creole, and Native factory workers rubbing shoulders while keeping a certain distance during leisure time. Kan offers readers, historians, and photography lovers a beautiful visual resource on Tlingit and Russian American life that shows how the two cultures intertwined in southeastern Alaska at the turn of the past century.
A visual analysis of the dress of middle-class Americans from the mid- to late-19th century. Using images and writings, it shows how even economically disadvantaged Americans could wear styles within a year or so of current fashion.
Ten years in the writing, this probing biography examines the passionate, haunted and brilliant man whose quest for perfection resulted in an unparalleled photographic legacy. Photographs.
"The American Fraternity is a photobook that provides an intimate and provocative look at Greek culture on college campuses by combining contemporary photographs with scanned pages from a wax-stained 60 year old ritual manual. This book will shed new light on the peculiarities of the fraternal orders which count seventy-five percent of modern U.S. presidents, senators, justices, and executives among their members. These mysterious campus organizations are filled with arcane oaths and ceremonies and this book attempts to capture within its pages some of this dark power"--Publisher's website, January 23, 2019.