The Mindful Photographer, by Sophie Howarth - Published: Thames and Hudson Ltd - 21-04-2022 - 144 pages.
Photography - Practical Photography - Your guide to mindful photography, peaceful contemplation and a slow creative practice, including hands-on assignments, enlightening concepts and inspirational stories.
In a world where millions of images are shot at every moment of every day and where fast-paced environments exhaust and stifle creativity, The Mindful Photographer proposes an antidote: slowing down. Through twenty concepts as varied as ‘Confidence’, ‘Gratitude’, ‘Playfulness’ and ‘Compassion’, all combined with hands-on assignments, Sophie Howarth invites readers to reflect on their photographic practice and learn to pause, pay attention and become more at one with the world around them.
From the canonical to the contemporary, The Mindful Photographer features the works of photographers including Saul Leiter, Rinko Kawauchi, Sally Mann, Edward Weston, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Teju Cole, Sarker Protick, Tamsin Calidas and many more. Their images are accompanied by quotes, stories and anecdotes to inspire the reader, simultaneously broadening their photographic knowledge and creative perspectives.
Putting aside preconceived ideas and the competitive pressures of picture-perfect Instagram posts, the book rewires our relationship to photographic practice as one to be experienced as unconditionally joyful and rewarding. Sophie Howarth’s insightful and soothing texts work as a guide to both a mindful approach to photography, and a photographic approach to meditation. Offered in a highly affordable and pocketable format, this will be the must-have companion for anyone seeking the spiritual benefits of creative practice and a more mindful approach to engaging with their world through photography.
Cimarron: Freedom and Masquerade by Charles Fréger and Ishmael Reed - Published: Thames and Hudson Ltd - 28-03-2019 - 320 pages.
Photography - Photography Monographs - All across the Americas, from the 16th century onwards, enslaved Africans escaped their captors and struck out on their own. These runaways, having found their freedom, established their own communities or joined with indigenous peoples to forge new identities.
Cimarron, borrowing a Spanish-American term for these fugitive former slaves, is a new series of photographic portraits of their descendants. From Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean islands and Central America, as far as the southern United States, elaborate masquerades are staged that celebrate and keep alive the history and memory of African slaves and their creole or mixed-race descendants. Stock characters are portrayed in costume, or in grotesque or satirical representations. A huge variety of African tribal dress, wild ritual regalia and shimmering Mardi Gras outfits feature in breathtaking succession. Vividly coloured silks and cottons combine with woven fibres, leaves, feathers, and bodypaint; props include emblems of slavery and slavemasters – ropes, sticks, guns and machetes. These photographs record real people whose collective sense of memory, folk history and imagination dramatically challenges our expectations.
Charles Fréger’s work has established a large and growing following among connoisseurs of contemporary photography, defining a new genre of documentary portraiture that extends and deepens our sense of the human past and the present.
In the Black Fantastic by Ekow Eshun and Ralph Rugoff - Published: Thames and Hudson Ltd - 09-06-2022 - 304 pages.
Popular Culture - Contemporary Culture - Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, this is an expressive exploration of Black popular culture at its most wildly imaginative, artistically ambitious and politically urgent.
In the Black Fantastic assembles art and imagery from across the African diaspora that embraces ideas of the mythic and the speculative. Neither Afrofuturism nor Magic Realism, but inhabiting its own universe, In the Black Fantastic brings to life a cultural movement that conjures otherworldly visions out of the everyday Black experience – and beyond – looking at how speculative fictions in Black art and culture are boldly reimagining perspectives on race, gender, identity and the body in the 21st century.
Transcending time, space and genre to span art, design, fashion architecture, film, literature and popular culture from African myth to future fantasies and beyond, this vital, timely and compelling publication is an expressive exploration of Black popular culture at its most wildly imaginative, artistically ambitious and politically urgent.
Bill Brandt by Ramón Esparza and Maude de la Forterie - Published: Thames and Hudson Ltd - 2020-10-29 - 292 pages.
Photography - Photography Monographs - Featuring images spanning his entire career, this comprehensive monograph explores the hidden themes behind the work of photographer Bill Brandt.
With a career spanning nearly half a century, Bill Brandt was a master of several major genres of photography: photojournalism, portraiture, the nude and landscapes. At first glance, Brandt’s genres may appear unrelated, but when analysing his career in its entirety, a common theme comes to the forefront: what psychologist Sigmund Freud and philosopher Eugenio Trías called 'the sinister.' From his earliest photographs taken as an amateur in the 1930s to his late portraits and studies of the female body, Brandt expresses a fascination with the strange and dark aspects of life that only he can reveal.
With 200 photographs from throughout Brandt’s career, this book adds a crucial chapter to the analysis of this key figure in 20th-century photography. Bill Brandt is set to become an authoritative retrospective.
A World History of Women Photographers by Luce Lebart and Marie Robert - Published: Thames and Hudson Ltd - 14-07-2022 - 504 pages.
Photography - History & Themes - A magnificently illustrated showcase of the work of 300 women photographers from all over the world, from the invention of the medium to the dawn of the 21st century.
As in many fields of art history, the work of women photographers has often been overlooked, and few of their names are now widely recognized. However, women were closely involved in all major photography movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, and have used the camera as an extraordinary tool for emancipation and experimentation. These are artists who never stopped documenting, questioning and transforming the world, breaking down social boundaries, challenging gender roles and expressing their imagination and sexuality.
To capture the diversity of this global body of work, Luce Lebart and Marie Robert have invited 160 international women writers to contribute to this volume, which is a bold and beautifully illustrated manifesto as well as an invaluable work of reference.
