Archive for the ‘photography’ Category

Human Bookshelf

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Joining the bibliochaise, reading chair, book-storage table and more in the halls of coolest bookish furniture and book gadgets ever, I give you….the human bookshelf.

Cool.

I want one. :-D

human-bookshelf

Eggs-ellent! Top 10 Egg Books

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

It’s that time of year when eggs are everywhere - chocolate eggs, dyed eggs, plastic eggs,  jelly bean eggs …

We can’t leave books out of the picture so here’s an eclectic Top 10 List of egg books:

1. Faberge’s Eggs: The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire by Tony Faber

faberges-eggsIn 1885, Carl Fabergé created a seemingly plain white egg for Czar Alexander III to give to his beloved wife, Marie Fedorovna. It was the surprises hidden inside that made it special: a diamond miniature of the Imperial crown and a ruby pendant. This gift began a tradition that would last for more than three decades: lavishly extravagant eggs commemorating public events that, in retrospect, seem little more than staging posts on the march to revolution. Above all, the eggs illustrate the attitudes that would ultimately lead to the downfall of the Romanovs: their apparent indifference to the poverty that choked their country, their preference for style over substance, and, during the reign of Nicholas II, their all-consuming concern withthe health of the czarevitch Alexis, the sickly heir to the throne-a preoccupation that would propel them toward Rasputin and the doom of the dynasty.

2. Egg & Nest by Rosamond Purcell

egg-nestThe beauty of the robin’s egg is not lost on the child who discovers the nest, nor on the collector of nature’s marvels. Such instances of wonder find fitting expression in the photographs of Rosamond Purcell, whose work captures the intricacy of nests and the aesthetic perfection of bird eggs. Mining the ornithological treasures of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, Purcell produces pictures as lovely and various as the artifacts she photographs. The dusky blue egg of an emu becomes a planet. A woodpecker’s nest bears an uncanny resemblance to a wooden shoe. A resourceful rock dove weaves together scrap metal and spent fireworks. A dreamscape of dancing monkeys emerges from the calligraphic markings of a murre egg.

Alongside Purcell’s photographs, Linnea Hall and René Corado offer an engaging history of egg collecting, the provenance of the specimens in the photographs, and the biology, conservation, and ecology of the birds that produced them. They highlight the scientific value that eggs and nest hold for understanding and conserving birds in the wild, as well as the aesthetic charge they carry for us.

3.  Good Egg by Barney Saltzberg

good-egg-kidsMeet Egg. Cuter than a button, enormously personable, and talented, too. Say “sit,” and Egg sits. Good Egg! Say “roll over,” and egg rolls over. What a good Egg! Of course, Egg does all of this with a toddler’s help, who lifts the flaps and pulls the tabs and operates the wiggle behind the wiggle-waggle. But that’s the most fun part: interacting with the Egg.

Then comes the pay-off. “Speak,” is the command, and children will crack up in delight and surscrambled-eggs-superprise with what happens next.

4.  Scrambled Eggs Super! by Dr. Seuss

Illus. in color. “Riotous humor in picture and verse as an enterprising Seuss creature hunts uncommon eggs for a super deluxe dish.”–Child Study Assn

5.  Intricate Eggs: 45 Egg-Cellent Designs to Color! by Chuck Abraham

intricate-eggsForget about messy dyes and hard-boiling eggs–with the simplicity of Intricate Eggs, kids and adults can decorate their own luxurious masterpieces. A perfect activity book format for on-the-road or at home, all it takes is Crayons, colored pencils, or markers and you’re set to illuminate forty-five of the most magnificent egg patterns, each as unique as you. With room to color inside–and outside–of the lines, this is coloring fun for everyone…minus the breakage!

6.  Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor by Julia Derek

confessionsGrowing by nearly 20 percent annually, the business of egg donors is exploding in the United States. Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor tells the true and disturbing story of how an independent college girl got so caught up by the tens of thousands of dollars she was making on her eggs her body shut down. With brutal honesty, always applying her own brand of humor, she will describe exactly what it was like to be a twelve-time egg donor, including how the broker of her eggs betrayed her viciously in the end.

7.  Mommy Laid An Egg!: OR Where Do Babies Come From? By Babette Cole

mommy-laid-eggIn this hilarious twist on one of the most difficult discussions in a child’s development, award-winning author Cole illustrates the one question all children are bound to ask–where do babies come from? Offbeat illustrations are accompanied by a text that is short, simple, and anything but predictable.

8.  The Good Egg: More than 200 Fresh Approaches from Breakfast to Dessert by Marie Simmonsgood-egg-simmons

Beginning with basics, such as how to make perfect scrambled eggs, and continuing on to sandwiches, soups, pastas, quiches, soufflés, and delectable meringues and cakes, The Good Egg artfully describes the many uses of one of cooking’s most essential and healthful ingredients.

9.  Fresh Eggs by Rob Levandoski

fresh-eggsCalvin Cassowary is ready to do whatever it takes to keep Cassowary Farm in the family for one more generation. Hatching a scheme to specialize in chickens, soon he’s got a million hens laying eggs for Gallinipper Foods, but he still finds himself deeper and deeper into debt. To make matters worse, his chicken-loving daughter Rhea is spending far too much time with the chickens and is starting to act very strange.

Filled with as many tears as chuckles, Rob Levandoski’s Fresh Eggs is a provocative father-daughter tale guaranteed to make you ponder the realities of modern farming and think twice the next time someone asks, “white or dark meat?joe-egg

10.  A Day in the Death of Joe Egg by Peter Nichols

This play is about the nightmare all parents must have dreamed of at some time, that of living with a child born so hopelessly crippled as to be, as the father says, “a human parsnip”.

Clever Photography Blending People With Books

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

I happened upon a blog post featuring really clever photography blending people with images from books and magazines. Check out these examples using Telle mère, telle fille by Caroline Brun and Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha:

caroline-brun-trick-photography

Photo by Meg Pickard

Photo by Meg Pickard

See more images at Toxel.com.

New York Public Library Digital Collection of Author Portraits

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

Neat. I’m tempted to spend hours browsing through this list of images of authors made available online by the New York Public Library.

Three I saw and particularly liked: John Steinbeck, Eileen Myles, and George Bernard Shaw (in his bathing suit).

steinbeck eileen-myles
george-bernard-shaw

Wayne F. Miller’s photography

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

David Miller’s Birth

Wayne F Miller: Photographs 1942-1958 might be a photography book worth looking up….if only for the stunning image above of the moment his son, David Miller, was born in September 1946. Wayne Miller was a leading photojournalist for more than 30 years and was also president of Magnum Photos for some years.

I hear all sorts of horror stories about video cameras being taken into hospitals to record births. Who needs a camera? I can remember every single second of the two births I’ve tagged along for.

“Look what I’ve got!”

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

I was just thinking that there is nothing of interest in the book world today when I came across this in an e-newsletter called Ibookcollector…..I wish I had been at this event.

The selling show “Tribal Portraits Vintage and Contemporary Photographs from the African Continent” at Bernard J Shapero Books in Mayfair is proving to be a very successful show. Over 270 people attended the preview on Tuesday 2 December. Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher - experts in the field of contemporary African photography - gave a fascinating slide show and an interesting talk.

However, we have heard that unfortunately during the evening a man was heard to shout disgusting, disgusting, on seeing pictures of bare breasts. A pretty girl [editor: Why is it always a "pretty girl"] then hauled up her pullover to show her bare breasts and shouted “Look what I’ve got” (this on the first floor) then ran down the stairs and half way down she pulled her trousers and knickers down to her ankles still shouting “Look what I’ve got!” The commissionaire was a real trouper and without a smile endeavoured to evict her from the building with her knickers round her ankles, but she ran back in! Eventually he succeeded in ushering her out of the premises.

Anyway, we hear that the evening was very successful with a brisk sale of photographs and artefacts.

Big books

Monday, December 8th, 2008

While the North American newspapers are cutting back on book coverage, the UK papers remain dedicated to writing about books. The Independent doesn’t have huge resources but keeps up a decent level of book stories, reviews and commentary. Today, the Indy offers up a story about big books and I mean big as in heavy books.

If you drop into the Taschen shop in London’s Chelsea, you discover that the luxury book market is booming like a volcano. Wool, a celebration of the messy abstract art of New Yorker Christopher Wool is available at £600, as is America Swings, a mildly emetic study of strenuous sexual misconduct in the US Bible belt. Both are in limited editions – the latter with a print run of only 100, and you get a special “chromogenic” print of a naked Viking and his girlfriend, gratis.

You might consider blowing £700 on Guts and Glory: The Golden Age of American Football – sports photographs by Neil Leifer, limited to 200 signed copies. This is, however, a trifle when put beside Koons, a £2,000 study of Jeff Koons’s entire glossy oeuvre, published in an edition of 1,500 signed copies. You wonder what strange land you’ve walked into, where, in the depths of recession, there are punters willing to pay a king’s ransom for a collection of photographs and a cardboard slipcase. Then you spot another Taschen volume which seems to provide an answer.

Collecting photobooks

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Check out the latest feature in the AbeBooks.com ‘Rare Book Room - collecting modern photobooks written by Scott Brown, editor of Fine Books & Collections magazine. Lots of great recommendations.

A Road Trip Journal

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

I like this article from today’s Guardian about Stephen Shore’s photography book A Road Trip Journal, which is a personal record of 1970s Americana.

When Shore set off in 1972 he decided to make a photographic diary of the journey, to record “every meal I ate every person I met, every bed I slept in; every toilet I used; every town I drove through. I wanted to be visually aware as I went through the day.” The result was hundreds of snapshot-size glossy colour prints of the minutiae of ordinary life, which he exhibited in New York that same year in a show called American Surfaces. Although some of these pictures were published in other books, it was nearly 30 years before they were brought together in one book, under the same title.

Arthur C Clarke in pictures

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke in pictures from The Guardian.

Authors in pictures

Friday, August 24th, 2007

The Guardian, a newspaper that always been well known for its use of creative photography, has a picture gallery of authors who have been appearing at the Edinburgh Book Festival. The Margaret Atwood picture is a bit scary, Richard Dawkins has bushy eyebrows and someone needs to have a word with Richard Ford about his choice in sweaters (purple never works, sunshine).

Body Type

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

I have a fascination with tattoos. I find myself interested in what people get applied to their bodies, where on their bodies they get them and most importantly the story behind why they get them.

Body Type explores the world of tattooing, but it looks specifically at typographic tattoos.

From Shakespeare to Radiohead, from Dante to James Joyce, from celebrations of love to homage and memorial, the wide breadth of messages captured provides insight into the human condition.

There is something more potent and mildly voyeuristic in reading a message on someone’s body versus a small image or icon - almost like overhearing a private phone call.

Librarything Cookbook Pile Contest Winners

Friday, May 25th, 2007

Librarything just announced the winners of their cookbook pile contest. The object of the game was to take the most interesting photo of your pile of cookbooks for fabulous cash and prizes.

You can take a look at the winners and runners up here

Vintage cookbooks

Monday, January 8th, 2007

As I have posted numerous times about food and drink, it may come as no surprise that I enjoy that part of life. And being a designer here at AbeBooks, I also appreciate the visual. So when the two collide it’s a marvelous thing…

There is a wonderful Flickr pool of vintage cookbooks. It really is a treat to see all the designs and recipes of days gone by. The style both in terms of the food, the preparation, the ingredients, and the designs all evoke that retro feel.

Now will future chefs and collectors look upon our contemporary glossy, food-porn styled books and molecular gastronomy with that same amusement? Very likely.

Manufactured Landscapes

Friday, November 17th, 2006

A documentary of version of Edward Burtynsky’s books Manufactured Landscapes and China came out recently. The books and film follow Burtynsky as he captures the landscapes as affected by human activity. He travels to quarries, factories, dams and cities to find images of such horrific beauty — stunning and alien to what most people see in their lives.

His photography is not inherently political, neither pro-environment nor anti-industry — the images are not didactic, rather narrative allowing the viewer to fill in the details and context. The series of images feel as if a beginning of conversation about humans and the environment, and it is up to the viewer to decide where the conversation will go.

The books are wonderful addition to anyone interested in photography or the environment, but they cannot match the power of his large scale photography in galleries, well worth the time to visit.

View the Manufactured Landscapes trailer or visit Burtynsky’s site.