“FSA: The American Vision,” by Gilles Mora and Beverly W. Brannan (Abrams, 358 pages, $85). During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Farm Services Administration launched one of the most ambitious documentary photography projects ever.
It hired a group of young photographers, many of whom became legends in the field, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Gordon Parks. This book offers a well-researched overview of their enduring accomplishments.
“A Couple of Ways of Doing Something,” photographs by Chuck Close and poems by Bob Holman (Aperture, 56 pages, $50). This large-format book, which is in many ways an artwork unto itself, brings together 20 up-close daguerreotypes by famed figurative artist Chuck Close with specially created poems by Holman.
The highly detailed, transfixing images depict Close’s artist-friends, such as Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Kiki Smith and Robert Wilson.
“Face: The New Photographic Portrait,” by William A. Ewing (Thames & Hudson, 240 pages, $50). Not only have photographers not grown tired of the human face, but they also continue to find fresh ways technologically, psychologically and artistically to engage it.
With bold-faced quotes and minimal text, it offers glimpses at the work of 100 or so of the most important innnovators, ranging from Cindy Sherman to Emmanuelle Purdon and Douglas Gordon.
“Jazz Image: Masters of Jazz Photography,” by Lee Tanner (Abrams, 176 pages,$40). There is something endlessly alluring about the jazz world, with its musical innovators, sultry singers and one-of-a-kind characters.
Collected in this book are some of the best images ever of this milieu by such leading photographers as William Gottlieb, Herman Leonard and Chuck Stewart.
“Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots,” edited and designed by Mark Michaelson and Steven Kasher (Steidl, 304 pages, $50). Nick Nolte’s infamous wild-haired mugshot was not the first to capturer the public imagination.
This imaginative, stunningly designed volume brings together an assortment of oddly irresistible highlights from a collection of black-and-white mugshots dating from the 1880s to the 1970s.
“Dave Anderson: Rough Beauty,” introduction by Anne Wilkes Tucker
“Brassaï: An Illustrated Biography,” by Diane Elisabeth Poirier
“Lola Alvarez Bravo,” by Elizabeth Ferrer
“An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson,” introduction by Jean-Luc Nancy
“My Life in Politics: Tim Davis,” essay by Jack Hitt
“Walker Evans: Lyric Documentary,” by John T. Hill
“Irving Penn: A Career in Photography,” edited by Colin Westerbeck
“Richard Renaldi: Figure and Ground,” essay by Roger Hargreaves
“Cindy Sherman,” Régis Durand and Jean-Pierre Criqui
“Philip Trager,” essay by John Wood
