Lester Walker
Like Lloyd Kahn, architect Lester Walker loves small homes. His book features an array of small homes, ranging from historic like those of Thoreau at Walden Pond and Thomas Jefferson’s “honeymoon cottage” to modernist mock-ups created by his students. There are less pictures of interiors than Kahn’s …
This immense collection of French photographer Robert Doisneau spans decades of his life. From the pre-WWII years of cafés, the opening of the Eiffel tower, Folies Bergére to the French Resistance during the war years and on into the 70s, these marvelous pictures show Paris in all its glory. The …
Stewart McPherson
I’m guessing most viewers of the Pixar flick Up were convinced that the surreal, twisted landscape on the top of the mountain where the balloon-house landed were figments of overheated animators’ brains. However, based on the pictures in Lost Worlds of the Guiana Highlands, it is clear that …
Andrew Moore
I find something incredibly satisfying about Moore’s photos of a decaying post-apocalyptic Detroit. While the building are crumbling to nothing, nature is reasserting herself. Man has not conquered nature, nor ever will. We may be doing our damnedest to overpopulate and pollute the planet, but nature will have …
Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio
Photographers Menzel and D’Aluisio have outdone themselves – again – with their fantastic new book What I Eat. Their incredible work was first brought to my attention through their book Material World. The husband and wife pair bring make the most mundane exotic and …
Terry Border
Using everyday objects, coupled with bent wire, Border creates a whole inner anthropomorphic life for inanimate objects – a kiwi shaves its fuzzy back, a banana lays battered and bruised in the boxing ring, a group of peanuts attend a funeral for a jar of peanut butter. Weird, …
Christopher Payne
This collection of photos is a true Rorschach test for the reader. The decrepit Victorian-era buildings are both beautiful and sinister. Abandoned rooms show both care and terrifying restriction – gardens, beautify parlors, movie theaters, coffee stands, barred doors and rooms of straightjackets. As one after another of …
Wolfgang Stuppy and Rob Kesseler
Kesseler and Stuppy have produced a few of the most beautiful micro-photography books I have ever seen. Focusing on the minutiae of plants – seeds and fruits – they highlight these miniscule life-capsules that we rarely see or think about. Tiny seeds and exotic fruits …
Slinkachu
Artist Slinkachu sets up teeny-tiny dioramas of teeny-tiny people doing naughty things throughout London. Using the surrounding “big people world” his minute people interact with their sets as though their size is perfectly normal. Amazing and devious.
Christopher Marley
On our honeymoon last year we stopped by the gallery in Prairie Edge Art Gallerie in South Dakota. A few of Marley’s insect pieces were on display and we were fascinated. Each piece is a small collection of real, exotic insects. Pheromone shows many of his pieces, along …
T
erry Bennett
The actual text of this book is dull beyond words. It chronicles the various European photographers who first photographed Japan, along with later European and Japanese photographers and their studios. Yep, dull.
The images are magnificent. They show an exotic and beautiful world, now long gone. Narrow …
Gregory Crewdson
Crewdson’s new photo book hits the perfect note between eerie familiarity and creepy confusion. Unlike his past books, the images in this collection don’t have the theatrical, almost unbelievably staged, look. Instead, the images are shot in small towns perfect for their generic blandness. Every page gave me …
Guillame de Laubier
WHOA! It’s library porn! Seriously, there are huge center fold out with *drool* spiral staircases, grilled shelves, tromp l’oil ceilings and (oh baby!) rare manuscripts housed in little nooks and alcoves. I think I need to lie down.…
The Full Body Project – Leonard Nimoy
I heard a lovely interview by Nimoy months ago on his new book and the fear of working in this “new” medium. Unlike his past works (and most other photographers) Nimoy used plus-size models for his project. After being approached by a member …
Claire Nouvian
This book is gorgeous. While the subject matter, sea creatures of the deepest abysses, is certainly fascinating the pictures are what makes this book so wonderful. Some show perfect, tiny jeweled creatures floating in the dark. Others, lit by ROV lights, look like computer generated movie sets. Unreal …
Teun Hocks – Aperture Books
Dutch photographer/painter Hocks creates amusing and bizarre painted photo images. Portraying a generic “everyman” Hocks highlights the absurdities of life. Standing on an ice-flow, his everyman looks concernedly at his briefcase and hat as they float away. Standing on top of a ladder, he shoves …
