Down Country. The Tano of the Galisteo Basin, 1250–1782. Photographs by Edward Ranney. By Lucy R. Lippard. Museum Of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, 2010. 388 pp., 80 duotone and 30 black & white illustrations, 8½x10".

I love the beauty and quiet tranquility of these photographs.


Publisher's description:
"The Galisteo Basin is an ancient seabed, site of volcanic upheaval. The fertile basin provided temporary hunting and farming grounds for wanderers, and then became the home of Pueblo peoples who survived drought, warfare, disease, and invasion for almost a thousand years before the arrival of the Spanish.

'Down Country' is the history of five centuries of the Southern Tewa Pueblo Indian culture that rose, faltered, reasserted itself, and ultimately, perished in the Galisteo.
[...]
Renowned writer and Galisteo resident Lucy R. Lippard synthesizes...

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For a Language to Come. Photographs by Takuma Nakahira. Osiris, 2010. 160 pp., 100 black & white images 8¼x11¾". Images from Osiris.

Takuma Nakahira is a Japanese writer, photographer, political activist, co-founder of Provoke magazine and author of the influential 'For a Language to Come' (originally published in 1970, and now re-issued in 2010).


'For a Language to Come' was the first photobook by Takuma Nakahira "the photographer who brought about a turning point in contemporary Japanese photography from the late 1960s to the early 1970s by radically breaking away from the existing image aesthetics at that time.

This book consists of one hundred black and white photographs including his work from the legendary photography magazine Provoke.
[...]
The 2010 republication of 'For a Language to Come' with a new cover design is an attempt to engage Nak...

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A Thirty Year Retrospective. Photographs by Kenro Izu. Nazraeli Press, Portland, 2010. 140 pp., 100 duotone illustrations, 11x15".

Japanese-born and New York-based photographer Kenro Izu is a well-known still-life photographer, who's had a number of books published and exhibited his work frequently.


"A chance viewing of the mammoth plate photographs by the Victorian photographer Francis Frith led Izu to travel to Egypt in 1979, to photograph the pyramids and other sacred monuments.

Thus began the artist’s renowned series 'Sacred Places', which includes work from holy sites in Syria, Jordan, England, Scotland, Mexico, Easter Island and, more recently, Buddhist and Hindu sites in India, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Indonesia, and China.

Using a custom-made, 300-pound camera, Izu creates negatives that are 14 inches high by 20 inches wide. The...

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All My Lies Are True... Photographs by David J. Carol. Kabloona Press, 2009. Unpaged, black & white illustrations throughout, 9¼x6¼".

'All My Lies Are True...' - a monograph by photographer David J. Carol - is a collection of photographs taken over a period of 25 years. These black and white photographs were taken whilst traveling on other photo assignments or with family and friends.

"The book begins ‘A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving,’ a quotation from Lao Tzu appropriately juxtaposed with an image of a picturesque landscape, a Costa Rican mountain in the distance… accompanied by a statue of a rather large farm animal’s derriere in the foreground.
[...]
The book itself serves more as a vehicle for Carol’s photographs rather than an object produced for the object’s sake. And while there is simplicity in the book’s construc...

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Twenty One Red-Crowned Cranes and One Black Crow. (One Picture Book #27). Photographs by Camille Solyagua. Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2005. 16 pp., 11 duotone illustrations, 5½x7¼". Images from photo-eye.

One Picture Book is an ongoing series of limited edition artists' books published by Nazraeli Press, which I've previously written about here and here.

The artist is asked to create a book based on one image or series of connected images, from their previous work. The hardcover edition is limited to 500 and contains an original print by the artist.

'Twenty One Red-Crowned Cranes and One Black Crow' (One Picture Book #27) is Camille Solyagua forth book with Nazraeli Press. It's described as:

"Red-crowned cranes are considered to be sacred by the Japanese people. Once almost extinct, today approximately 2,000 of the rare birds remain in all of Eastern A...

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A Road Divided. Photographs by Todd Hido. Nazraeli Press, Portland, 2010. 64 pp., 28 colour illustrations, 14x17".

In 'A Road Divided' - photographer Todd Hido’s latest monograph of landscape photographs - "the artist again focuses his attention on the American landscape. Driving lonely roads on the outskirts of cities, Hido creates poignant images filled with inexplicable gravity, cinematic scenes of places that somehow exist in our collective memory.

In these new pictures, Hido demonstrates his fluidity within the daytime realm, putting aside the harder edge that characterizes his night work by photographing through veils of rain or ice. Delicately, potently, embracing the beauty of the pictorial, Hido’s new pictures present an image plane that is often fully disintegrated, recalling impressionist painting.

With an unquestionably mod...

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Miroslav Tichý. Photographs by Miroslav Tichý. The Douglas Hyde Gallery, 2010. 32 pp., 68 colour illustrations, 8¼x7¼".

This book (with the most hauntingly beautiful cover image) was published to coincide with the exhibition of photographs by Miroslav Tichý at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2008-2009).

Tichý's dreamlike and poignant photographs really resonates with me - especially the landscapes, whereas there are perhaps part of his work (mainly photographs of women) that are problematic. I have written about books featuring his work previously here and here.


The International Center of Photography recently showed the first American museum exhibition devoted to the work of Tichý. The ICP describes him and his work as:

"Tichý is a stubbornly eccentric artist, known as much for his makeshift cardboard cameras as for his haunting and distorted images of women a...

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Jetlag and Alcohol. Photographs by Morten Andersen. Poem by Terje Thorsen. Shadowlab, Oslo, 2009. 192 pp., 187 duotone illustrations, 10¼x8".

"The New York City described by Morten Andersen in Jetlag and Alcohol is brutal, tragic, funny, filthy, and beautiful from the inside out, which is how Andersen experiences it, as a fearless explorer with a sincere desire to hear the stories of its inhabitants and to send them back out into the world as hauntingly beautiful black and white images.

Taken in 1990 and 1991, Andersen's photographs depict the denizens of dark alleys, half-empty subway cars, all-night diners, and cheap bars with the gritty poetry of a Tom Waits song.

With an introductory text in English by Terje Thorsen."
-- quote from the Independent Photo Book.


'Jetlag and Alcohol' was selected as one of photo-eye's Best Books of 2009.

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Cuba. Photographs by Jeffrey Milstein. The Monacelli Press, 2010. 128 pp., 80 colour illustrations, 9x6".

"Trained as an architect, Jeffrey Milstein has an eye for symmetry, line, color, and detail. Focusing on streetscape and street life, he has created a unique portrait of Cuba that delves deep into the soul of that country.

As Milstein explained in an article for Creative Review, 'I have always been drawn to old industrial architecture - the decay and the sculptural shapes. I love to wander around these abandoned places with their history, and layers of old peeling paint and newer graffiti and paint ball splattering. It is a reflection on how everything eventually decays, no matter how hard we try, everything including our own bodies slowly decay, and yet it can be very beautiful.' "


In an introduction to this book Nilo Cruz says:

"The images containe...

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Piemonte. Photographs by Josef Koudelka. Editions Xavier Barral, 2009. 160 pp., 76 black & white illustrations, 13x8¼". Images from the photo-eye blog.

The book 'Piemonte' by Czech photographer Josef Koudelka "features work from the area of Piemonte, a region in Italy that borders France and Switzerland. Turin is its capital.

The book opens with an essay by Giuseppe Culicchia that speaks not just of Koudelka's work there, but mentions both historical and cultural references associated with this region - Giovanni Verga's story La Malora, the actress Silvana Mangano, and Hannibal's trek with his war elephants en route to defeat the Roman army.

The design is similar to a couple of earlier Koudelka books, 'Reconnaissance Wales' and 'Camargue', in that it has bare boards with a black stamped front and back cover.

Unlike these earlier titles, it is bound...

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