Articles / Best-Ofs

Award-winning photographer Craig Varjabedian's new book The Light of Days Gone By was 45 years in the making. It celebrates with stunning imagery the journey of a photographer and the beautiful light he has witnessed and captured along the way. The Light of Days Gone By is a testament to Varjabedian's vision and years of hard work and will appeal to anyone who appreciates fine photography.
Varjabedian's photographs from the magnificent red hills of Ghost Ranch and gleaming white dunes of White Sands to more faraway places—from strong Native Americans to weathered cowboys and more—these expansive landscapes and intimate portraits are all presented in this beautifully printed book.
The 48 color and black & white photographs were carefully curated by Varjabedian's long time studio director Cindy Lane, to not only share the breadth of this photographer's career but also to reveal relationships between individual images and from the themes he has explored over the years. Complementing the images are two essays. Cindy Lane provides insight into the photographer's artistic vision and Myra Bullington looks at the importance of photographs to memory and shares an appreciation for the photographer and his work. The book is not signed.
Museum curator Catherine Whitney writes “Craig Varjabedian's photography captures, with arresting clarity, the ineffable whispers of time and spirit layered deep in New Mexico's cultural landscape. Through the artful combination of his compassionate eye and technical virtuosity, he evokes the past in the present and the holy in the everyday." Craig Varjabedian is a photographer who explores the back roads of the American West, making pictures of the unique and quintessential. 45 years behind the camera, 14 books, 42 museum exhibitions and hundreds of fine art photographic prints all comprise a rich and rewarding career. His images share awe-inspiring stories of the land and the people who live on it—one photograph at a time.

British photographer Tariq Zaidi presents a fashion subculture of Kinshasa & Brazzaville: La Sape, Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes ("Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People"). Its followers are known as 'Sapeurs' ('Sapeuses' for women). Most have ordinary day jobs as taxi-drivers, tailors and gardeners, but as soon as they clock off they transform themselves into debonair dandies. Sashaying through the streets they are treated like rock stars - turning heads, bringing 'joie de vivre' to their communities and defying their circumstances. Traditionally passed down through the male line, many Congolese women and their children have recently begun donning designer suits. As Papa Wemba (1949-2016, Congolese singer and fashion icon who popularized Sape) once said: 'White people invented the clothes, but we make an art of it.'

Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850-1950 portrays the history of romantic love between men in hundreds of moving and tender vernacular photographs taken between the years 1850 and 1950. This visual narrative of astonishing sensitivity brings to light an until-now-unpublished collection of hundreds of snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the most varied of contexts, both private and public.

Taken when male partnerships were often illegal, the photos here were found at flea markets, in shoe boxes, family archives, old suitcases, and later online and at auctions. The collection now includes photos from all over the world: Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, Greece, Latvia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Serbia. The subjects were identified as couples by that unmistakable look in the eyes of two people in love - impossible to manufacture or hide. They were also recognized by body language - evidence as subtle as one hand barely grazing another - and by inscriptions, often coded.

Included here are ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, glass negatives, tin types, cabinet cards, photo postcards, photo strips, photomatics, and snapshots - over 100 years of social history and the development of photography.

Loving will be produced to the highest standards in illustrated book publishing, The photographs - many fragile from age or handling - have been digitized using a technology derived from that used on surveillance satellites and available in only five places around the world. Paper and other materials are among the best available. And Loving will be manufactured at one of the world's elite printers. Loving, the book, will be up to the measure of its message in every way.

In these delight-filled pages, couples in love tell their own story for the first time at a time when joy and hope - indeed human connectivity - are crucial lifelines to our better selves. Universal in reach and overwhelming in impact, Loving speaks to our spirit and resilience, our capacity for bliss, and our longing for the shared truths of love.

Of all the firearms in the world owned by private citizens for non-military purposes, half are in the United States. Numerically they exceed the country’s population: 393 million for 372 million people. This is no coincidence, nor a matter of market alone: but of tradition and Constitutional guarantee. It is the history of the Second Amendment, ratified in 1791 to reassure the inhabitants of the newly independent territories. Two hundred and fifty years later, it is still entrenched in all aspects of American life. This book frames its current status through what are seen as four fundamental American values: Family, Freedom, Passion, Style.
Gabriele Galimberti has travelled throughout the USA, from New York City to Honolulu, to meet proud gun-owners and see their firearms collections. He has photographed people and guns in their homes and neighbourhoods, including locations where no one would expect to find such collections. These often unsettling portraits, along with the accompanying stories, provide an uncommon and unexpected insight into what today is really represented by the institution of the Second Amendment.