Written by world-renowned photographer, writer, and broadcaster Tom Ang, Photography lavishly celebrates the most iconic photographs and photographers of the past 200 years.
Tracing the history of photography from its origins in the 1800s to the digital age, Photography: The Definitive Visual History is the only book of its kind to give a comprehensive account of the people, the photographs, and the technologies that have shaped the history of photography.
An entertaining and comprehensive compendium packed with fascinating trivia, delightful oddities, and compelling stories that will captivate photographers of all levels and interests!
Dive into photography's rich heritage with A Brief History of Photography, an engaging almanac-style book that offers far more than just the typical and dry historical accounts of the genre. With more than 400 fascinating trivia entries and delightfully odd anecdotes, this book breathes life into the background details, stories, and personalities behind the cameras and processes we know and love.
Meticulously researched and written over two decades, this thoroughly entertaining and highly readable book provides an understanding of photography's evolution, from its beginnings going as far back as the 16th century all the way up to the modern day. Whether you’re dipping into the book for just a few minutes or sitting down for an afternoon of reading, you’ll explore the seminal cameras, lenses, and chemical processes that paved the way, as well as the visionary inventors, influential magazines, and significant photographers who made photography what it is today.
Profusely illustrated with both photographs and line drawings, A Brief History of Photography is an essential addition to any photographer's library. Whether you're a seasoned professional, an avid enthusiast, or simply someone who appreciates the magic of capturing images with your smartphone, this book offers an entertaining and educational look into the genre's rich history. The perfect gift—for either yourself or the photographer on your list—A Brief History of Photography is a must-have for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding and appreciation of this extraordinary art form.
Walter Benjamin's A Little History of Photography offers a fascinating glimpse into the early development of photography and its broader implications, making it as relevant today as when it was first published in 1931. In this essay, Benjamin—a philosopher and cultural critic—demonstrates remarkable foresight about the transformative power of photography. His declaration that "the illiterate of the future ... will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph" underscores his belief that the medium would become essential to modern communication and culture.
Beginning with the pioneering experiments of Louis Daguerre and Nicéphore Niépce, Benjamin traces photography's evolution through to the work of August Sander and Germaine Krull. But his essay goes beyond a simple history of the medium, exploring its artistic, societal, and political potential. In doing so, Benjamin anticipates his later and more famous work, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, where he would further explore the concept of “reproducibility” and its implications for art in the modern age.
A Little History of Photography remains a seminal text for understanding photography as more than just a technical innovation—it’s a tool for analyzing art, culture, and politics. Benjamin’s insights gave early credibility to the medium and its practitioners, shaping the critical frameworks that are still used today. This essay is a must-read for anyone interested in the philosophical and historical dimensions of photography.
From a delivery boy to one of the most important industrialists in American history, George Eastman's career developed in a particularly American way. The founder of Kodak died in 1932, and left his house to the University of Rochester. Since 1949 the site has operated as an international museum of photography and film, and today holds the largest collection of its kind in the world. The continually expanding photography collection contains over 400,000 images and negatives - among them the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams and others - as well as 23,000 cinema films, five million film stills, one of the most important silent film collections, technical equipment and a library with 40,000 books on photography and film. The George Eastman House is a pilgrimage site and a place of worship for researchers, photographers and collectors from all over the world.
This volume shows in chronological order the most impressive images and the most important developments in the art of light that is photography. It provides in its huge collection and themes a unique survey of the medium from its origins until now.
Since its first publication in 1937, this lucid and scholarly chronicle of the history of photography has been hailed as the classic work on the subject. No other book and no other author have managed to relate the aesthetic evolution of the art of photography to its technical innovations with such an absorbing combination of clarity, scholarship and enthusiasm. Through more than 300 works by such master photographers as William Henry Fox Talbot, Timothy O'Sullivan, Julia Margaret Cameron, Eugene Atget, Peter Henry Emerson, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Man Ray, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, Brassai, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harry Callahan, Minor White, Robert Frank and Diane Arbus, author Beaumont Newhall presents a fascinating, comprehensive study of the significant trends and developments in the medium since the first photographs were made in 1839. New selections added to the fifth edition include photographs made in color, from hand-tinted daguerreotypes of 1850 to turn-of-the-century autochromes by Edward Steichen, to works by contemporary masters such as Eliot Porter, Ernst Haas, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel Meyerowitz.Beaumont Newhall (1908-1993) was an influential curator, art historian, writer and photographer. In 1935 he became the Librarian at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1940, he became the first Director of MoMA's Photography Department. He served as Curator of the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House from 1948 to 1958, then as its Director from 1958 to 1971. While at the Eastman House, Newhall was responsible for amassing one of the greatest photographic collections in the world.
Anastasia Samoylova’s Atlantic Coast is more than a photography book—it is a journey through the evolving landscape of the United States, both literal and metaphorical. Retracing U.S. Route 1 from Key West, Florida, to Fort Kent, Maine, seventy years after Berenice Abbott first documented the road, Samoylova offers a meditation on the tensions between nostalgia and progress, myth and reality, that define the American experience.
Gumsucker laments the loss of untamed Australian wilderness to civilization, ever encroaching, domesticating the land and spirit. It is a ghost story of sorts, populated by withering vestiges and isolated souls. Its title, drawn from the archaic term once used to describe native-born European Australians, also recalls ‘The Gumsucker’s Dirge,’ a 19th-century poem mourning the erasure of wilderness as the frontier was pushed further out and the dream of an untouched wilderness became increasingly inaccessible.
Having spent decades immersed in photography, encountering Daido Moriyama’s work is always a jolt to the senses—but Quartet, the new Getty Publication release edited by Mark Holborn, takes that jolt to another level. This isn’t just a photobook; it’s a journey into the formative pulse of one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century.
Janet Delaney has always been drawn to the ways work shapes people’s lives, families, and communities. In her latest book, she turns her lens closer to home, retracing a week she spent in 1980 with her father, a beauty salesman on the verge of retirement. What began as a daughter’s curiosity became a vivid portrait of long days on the road, endless conversations, and the quiet determination behind a lifetime of providing for others.
Through humor, candor, and empathy, Delaney’s photographs reveal not just the hustle of a salesman, but also the love that fueled it. To learn more about this project and her reflections on it, we asked her a few questions.
Blood Bonds: Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda is a new photobook by photographer Jan Banning and journalist Dick Wittenberg, with an essay on forgiveness by philosopher Marjan Slob. It addresses the genocide in Rwanda, the reconciliation programs that followed, and presents 18 joint portraits of survivors and perpetrators.
I first encountered a few of Coreen Simpson’s images without realizing it was her work, and receiving Coreen Simpson: A Monograph was a revelation. This book, the second volume in Aperture’s Vision & Justice series, offers an in-depth look at the career of a photographer and jewelry designer whose work spans over five decades. The monograph itself is beautifully produced, with a tactile, leather-like hardcover that makes holding it feel like handling an art object.
To commemorate the legacy of one of fashion photography’s most influential figures, the Rodney Smith Estate is pleased to announce several international exhibitions, both the first retrospectives in their countries, and a new book.
We’re excited to announce the release of Critical Photojournalism: Contemporary Ethics & Practices, a groundbreaking new book by Judy Walgren and Tara Pixley that reimagines how visual journalism can—and should—be practiced today.
TBW Books is pleased to announce Blood Green, a new artist book by Curran Hatleberg, conceived as a coda to the artist’s acclaimed 2022 monograph, River’s Dream. Blood Green offers an alternate vision—less an outtake than a parallel dream, a shadow of the original, expanding on the darker themes of contemporary American life.
