This striking book explores contemporary portraiture from the past decade. The selection features cutting-edge new work from the international art community and reflects an increasing interest in identity worldwide. Organised thematically, the book examines seven key strands of portraiture: The Body; The Self-Portrait; The Invented Portrait; The Anonymous Portrait; Social Identity; The Celebrity Portrait. With an essay by Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, that locates contemporary portraiture within a historic tradition, 21st Century Portraits examines current trends, showcasing the wide range of media today's artists are using. This book includes an extensive bibliography and is an essential reference work in the field of twenty-first-century portraiture. It will present many images to academic, curatorial and general audiences, including museum and gallery visitors and general art book buyers in the trade for the first time.
This book offers innovative readings of the motif of crisis as explored by twentieth- and twenty-first-century novelists, spanning personal and identity crisis, interpersonal relationships and family ties, and threats on a global scale.
Hans Eijkelboom: People of the Twenty‐First Century is an enormous and completely fascinating collection of "anti‐sartorial" photographs of street life by the Dutch conceptual artist/street photographer. From Amsterdam to New York and Paris to Shanghai, these photographs, taken over a period of more than twenty years, provide a cumulative portrait of the people of the twenty‐first century. A magnetic panoply of images, this cult object has a place in the library of every photography book collector as well as anyone interested in contemporary culture. Democratic, apolitical and unique, the archive of thousands of images offers an engrossing and engaging cross-section of society. Over the course of the last two decades, the Dutch photographer worked methodically on his monumental Photo Notes project: First he would select a busy pedestrian area – his favorite spots were often near shopping centers – where he would stay for 30 minutes up to a few hours. He then spent time observing passers-by before recognizing a common type, normally based on a garment, sometimes a behavior: people in band T‐shirts, fur caps or beige trench coats; young couples walking arm in arm; women in suit dresses; men with gelled hair or pushing shopping trolleys. . . He snapped them with a camera hung around his neck, attached to a trigger in his pocket. Back in the studio, the images were laid into grids called Photo Notes. Their simplicity of form and presentation belies their complex anthropological, social and artistic commentary.
As American and coalition troops fight the first battles of this new century -- from Afghanistan to Yemen to the Philippines to Iraq -- they do so in ways never before seen. Until recently, information war was but one piece of a puzzle, more than a sideshow in war but far less than the sum total of the game. Today, however, we find information war revolutionizing combat, from top to bottom. Gone are the advantages of fortified positions -- nothing is impregnable any longer. Gone is the reason to create an overwhelming mass of troops -- now, troop concentrations merely present easier targets. Instead, stealth, swarming, and "zapping" (precision strikes on individuals or equipment) are the order of the day, based on superior information and lightning-fast decision-making. In many ways, modern warfare is information warfare. Bruce Berkowitz's explanation of how information war revolutionized combat and what it means for our soldiers could not be better timed. As Western forces wage war against terrorists and their supporters, in actions large and small, on several continents, The New Face of War explains how they fight and how they will win or lose. There are four key dynamics to the new warfare: asymmetric threats, in which even the strongest armies may suffer from at least one Achilles' heel; information-technology competition, in which advantages in computers and communications are crucial; the race of decision cycles, in which the first opponent to process and react to information effectively is almost certain to win; and network organization, in which fluid arrays of combat forces can spontaneously organize in multiple ways to fight any given opponent at any time. America's use of networked, elite ground forces, in combination with precision-guided bombing from manned and unmanned flyers, turned Afghanistan from a Soviet graveyard into a lopsided field of American victory. Yet we are not invulnerable, and the same technology that we used in Kuwait in 1991 is now available to anyone with a credit card and access to the Internet. Al Qaeda is adept in the new model of war, and has searched long and hard for weaknesses in our defenses. Will we be able to stay ahead of its thinking? In Iraq, Saddam's army is in no position to defeat its enemies -- but could it defend Baghdad? As the world anxiously considers these and other questions of modern war, Bruce Berkowitz offers many answers and a framework for understanding combat that will never again resemble the days of massive marches on fortress-like positions. The New Face of War is a crucial guidebook for reading the headlines from across our troubled planet.
How multiracial people identify themselves can have a big impact on their positions in family, community & society. This volume examines the multiracial experience in the US.
This study discusses salient trends demonstrated by contemporary warfare of these first years of the 21st century. The authors reinforce previous notions of Fourth Generation Warfare, but most importantly explore the workings of new components and how these have modified the theory and practice of warfare beyond the basic divisions of conventional and unconventional warfare as witnessed in the preceding century. Throughout history there has been a close interaction between politics, communication and armed conflict and a main line of investigation of this book is to track changes that are presumed to have occurred in the way and manner in which armed conflicts are waged. Using cogent examples drawn variously from conflicts of the Arab Spring, the Islamic State and Russian adventurism in South Ossetia, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the authors demonstrate the application of Information Warfare, the practice of Hybrid Warfare, and offensive use of diplomacy, communications, economics and international law to obtain political and military advantages against the status quo states of the international community. The authors combine a theoretical framework with concrete empirical examples in order to create a better understanding and comprehension of the current events and processes that shape the character of contemporary armed conflicts and how they are informed and perceived in a highly mediatised and politicised world.
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year An Atlantic Best Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Politics Book of the Year How a new breed of dictators holds power by manipulating information and faking democracy Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such “spin dictators,” describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond. Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Peru’s Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits. The book reveals why most of today’s authoritarians are spin dictators—and how they differ from the remaining “fear dictators” such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech repression like Xi Jinping. Offering incisive portraits of today’s authoritarian leaders, Spin Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our time—from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like Donald Trump.
