Aperture masters of photography

In this redesigned and expanded version of a classic Aperture book, the work of Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) is introduced by historian Julia Van Haaften, and includes new, image-by-image commentary and a chronology of this artist's life. An innovative documentary photographer, Abbott pioneered the depiction of scientific subject matter and photographed the fast-changing landscape of her times. Abbott studied journalism for a year in Ohio before moving to New York in 1918 to study sculpture, where she met Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. She later moved to France in the 1920s and worked for Ray in his portrait studio before setting out on her own. Her portraits captured many individuals associated with avant-garde art movements, including author James Joyce and artist Max Ernst. Moving back to New York at the end of the decade, she began her renowned Changing New York series (later published as a book in 1939) and went on to become picture editor for Science Illustrated.

"W. Eugene Smith is the master of the photographic essay; he created essays which include some of the most dramatic and affecting single images of the twentieth century. Fiercely energetic, he made countless photographs memorable for their formal brilliance and for their compassion. This volume of Aperture's Masters of Photography series presents more than seventy of Smith's greatest photographs, selected from work created over the course of forty-five years.". "In his introductory essay, Jim Hughes, Smith's biographer, provides an overview of Smith's life and insight into his work."--BOOK JACKET.

updated and refreshed for today’s photography-hungry audiences, and introducing new, image-by-image commentary and chronologies of the artists’ lives Paul Strand's long career began as a student of Lewis Hine, and by 1917, he was already recognized as an important artist. After broadly exploring the modernist possibilities of photography and filmmaking, Strand moved to Mexico in 1932, where his work began to reflect his ambition to make comprehensive portraits of places. Thereafter, he made photo-essays about different regions around the world; each body of work is composed of portraits, landscapes, and architectural details. Peter Barberie contributes a new biographical essay and an image-by-image commentary on the photographs. Also included is a chronology of the artist's life.

From his first days as a photographer - with the backing of such greats as Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Paul Strand and Henri Cartier-Bresson - Manuel Alvarez Bravo worked over a wide range of styles and subject matter - formalist abstraction, architecture, interiors, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits - with a consistent focus on the landscape and social geography of Mexico. In his concise vision of his homeland, it was both a real and symbolic landscape populated with subjects detained in dream world tableaux of desire, solitude, candor and foreboding. Eyes in His Eyes reintroduces some of the artist's overlooked masterpieces, and reveals, for the first time, a broad selection of never-before-seen images from his private archives. In his 80-year career, Alvarez Bravo printed, published and exhibited only a thousand images. This portfolio, culled with the help of the artist himself, and completed after his death, is full of unfamiliar abstractions, portraits, landscapes and street photography. It provides an invaluable re-entry into the visual poetry of one of Mexico's most gifted artists and a Modern master of photography.

"Tina Modotti has emerged in recent years as one of the important photographers of this century. During her lifetime she struggled to find a balance between her political and social life and her art. A central figure in the modernist photography movement, she documented the people and tumultuous politics of Mexico. Her portraits range from hired studio shots of socialites to documentation of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo at a political rally that turned violent. She traveled throughout Mexico recording murals, cultural and religious icons, women in Tehuantepec, and workers at their daily tasks. Many of her most powerful images, such as Mexican sombrero with hammer and sickle, are modern in aesthetic, political in content. Modotti was a revolutionary in all matters, from her political activism to her modern and high-profile personal life, and her elegant and forthright photography." "The finest of Modotti's images are presented in this volume, accompanied by an essay by Margaret Hooks."--BOOK JACKET.