. Martineau – författare

It is a beautifully illustrated celebration of the images of Eliot Porter, and their role in the origins of the environmental conservation. Known for his exquisite images of birds and landscape, Eliot Porter (1901-1990) was a pioneer in the use of colour photography. His work also became a powerful visual argument for environmental conservation. Possessing a gift for close observation, Porter explored new ways of depicting nature, building blinds in trees so he could study his avian subjects at closer vantage, and producing landscape images that capture both pristine forest and ragged river canyons with equal force and brilliance. Initially encouraged by the ground-breaking photographers Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz, Porter went on to produce a body of work all his own. His 1962 Sierra Club book "In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World" transformed the concept of nature photography books. Ultimately, Porter's photographs came to the attention of Congress and led to the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, the foundational law in wilderness management today.

In the 1920s, a young American - Paul Outerbridge (1896-1958) burst onto the photographic art scene with images that were visually fresh, technically adept, and decidedly Modernist. Not only did he re-invigorate the photographic art of the period, he also applied his talent for composition to the commercial world, introducing an artist's sensibilities to advertisements for everything from men's haberdashery to JELL-O, for magazines such as "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair". An early master of the complex carbo colour process, "Outerbridge" also photographed nudes in poses that skirted the limits of propriety at the time. "Paul Outerbridge: Command Performance" is a visually stunning volume that brings together one hundred photographs from the whole of Outerbridge's career, including his Cubist still-life images, commercial, and nude photography. This is a visually stunning celebration of the pioneering work of photographer Paul Outerbridge.

This is a stunning collection of photographs - many never before published - celebrating the remarkable talent of Herb Ritts. "Herb Ritts" traces the life and career of the iconic photographer through a compelling selection of both renowned and previously unpublished, photographs and two insightful essays. Herb Ritts (1952-2002) was a Los Angeles-based photographer who established an international reputation for distinctive images of fashion models, nudes, and celebrity portraits. During the 1980s and 1990s, Ritts was sought out by leading fashion designers such as Armani, Gianfranco Ferre, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Valentino, and Versace, as well as magazine editors from "GQ", "Rolling Stone", and "Vanity Fair", among others, to lend glamour to their products and layouts. Largely self-taught, Ritts developed his own style, one that often made use of the California light and landscape and helped to separate his work from his New York-based peers.From the late 1970s until his untimely death from AIDS in 2002, Ritts' ability to create photographs that successfully bridged the gap between art and commerce was not only a testament to the power of his imagination and technical skill, but also marked the synergistic union between art, popular culture, and business that followed in the wake of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

This is a stunning visual celebration of one of photography's most enduring and evocative subjects. Born like Venus on the half shell from the centuries-long tradition of the nude in painting, the nude first appeared as a subject matter in photography with the introduction of the medium itself, between 1837 and 1840, and has continued as an ever-evolving theme through changing technical developments and cultural mores to the present day. This volume surveys the subject of nudity from the earliest surviving images of Greek and Roman sculpture through studies of living nude models to the burgeoning practice of exploring the human body as pure form. The 78 works, contextualized in the essay "Masterworks of the Nude," span the entire arc of the history of photography in a manner that is both fresh and illuminating.Among the 64 photographers included are 19th-century masters Julia Margaret Cameron, Edgar Degas, and Thomas Eakins; early-20th century artists Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston; mid-20th-century innovators Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan, and Minor White; late-20th-century image makers Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Herb Ritts; and contemporary artists Chuck Close, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, and Mona Kuhn.