January 2023 MBR The Photography Shelf

The Photography Shelf

Michael Freeman On... Light & Shadow
Michael Freeman
Ilex Press
c/o Octopus Books
236 Park Avenue, New York NY 10017
www.octopusbooksusa.com
9781781578544, $27.99, PB, 176pp

https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Freeman-Light-Shadow/dp/1781578540

Synopsis: With the publication of "Michael Freeman On... Light & Shadow: The Ultimate Photography Masterclass", and drawing upon more than 40 years of practical experience, author and photographer Michael Freeman examines the most fundamental building-blocks of photography (light and shadow) bringing this key element of the picture-making process into the 21st century.

In this combination of instruction guide and 'how to' manual, Freeman takes a new and different view of photography's prime commodity, arguing that for the photographer, the rich and evocative world of shadows is the full equal of the actual light that casts them and bathes scenes. He defines the varied qualities of both light and shadows (of which there are at least ten distinct types), and shows how they have particular meaning and purpose. He also argues for integrating exposure and processing with an appreciation of light and shadow quality so as to have full and subtle control. Armed with this understanding and these techniques, the creative photographer can work with light and shadow to add depth and quality to imagery.

"Michael Freeman On... Light & Shadow: The Ultimate Photography Masterclass" includes: All new content from the master of photography guides; Concise and easy-to-follow format clearly explains the fundamentals of light and shadow; A light and shadow discussion of photographic image-making; Real-life examples, clearly illustrated, cut through the jargon and show the theory of light and shadow in practice.

Critique: Informatively and beautifully illustrated in full color throughout, "Michael Freeman On... Light & Shadow: The Ultimate Photography Masterclass" is an ideal DIY instruction guide that will prove to be an invaluable resource for aspiring and experienced photographers alike. While also available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $7.99), "Michael Freeman On... Light & Shadow: The Ultimate Photography Masterclass" is unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and academic library Photographic Lighting and Reference collections.

Editorial Note: Michael Freeman (http://www.michaelfreemanphoto.com) was born in England in 1945, took a Masters in Geography at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and then worked in advertising in London for six years. In 1971 he made the life-changing decision to travel up the Amazon with two secondhand cameras, and when Time-Life used many of the pictures he came back with, he embarked on a full-time photographic career. Since then, working for clients that include all the world's major magazines, most notably the Smithsonian Magazine (for which he has shot more than 40 stories over 30 years), Freeman's reputation as one of the world's leading reportage photographers has been consolidated. Of his many books, which have sold over 4 million copies worldwide, more than 60 titles are on the practice of photography. For this photographic educational work he was awarded the Prix Louis Philippe Clerc by the French Ministry of Culture.

Jews of Iran: A Photographic Chronicle
Hassan Sarbakhshian, author
Lior B. Sternfeld, author
Parvaneh Vahidmanesh, author
Penn State University Press
820 North University Drive, University Park, PA 16802-1003
www.psupress.org
9780271092645, $29.95, HC, 128pp

https://www.amazon.com/Jews-Iran-Photographic-Chronicle-Imagination/dp/0271092645

Synopsis: Westerners often imagine Jews in Iran as a captive and oppressed community, alienated within their home nation yet restricted from leaving it. The reality is much more complex. "Jews of Iran: A Photographic Chronicle" is a photographic journey through twenty-first-century Iran, providing a unique view of the country's Jewish community in situations typically unknown to the Western world.

Photojournalist Hassan Sarbakhshian spent two years living among Iran's Jewish communities, joining them for holidays, family gatherings, and travels, and (with the help of fellow journalist Parvaneh Vahidmanesh) documenting how they lived. Moving beyond the well-known state and regional confrontations, the photos that Sarbakhshian took tell a broader story about a community of people who live in the figurative and literal middle. They are Iranian nationals by birth and by choice, and they are Jews by religious affiliation. Full loyalty to their country is expected, even as their ancestral homeland is at odds with their political homeland. This photographic chronicle illuminates the grey zone that they inhabit.

Featuring over one hundred full-color photos which are contextualized with extensive annotations, and accompanied by a substantive introduction written by historian Lior B. Sternfeld, "Jews of Iran: A Photographic Chronicle" calls into question Western views of this religious community.

Critique: Given the current political unrest in Iran today, "Jews of Iran: A Photographic Chronicle" is a timely reveal of one of the most beautiful and complicated untold stories of contemporary Iran. A visual documentation of an Iranian story that is obscured by a political and cultural unrest that dominates the news headlines of today. An inherently fascinating photojournalism volume, "Jews of Iran: A Photographic Chronicle" is a highly recommended and unique addition to personal, professional, community, and academic library Judaic History, Photojournalism, and Contemporary Iranian History collections.

Editorial Note #1: Hassan Sarbakhshian has thirty years of experience in journalism, television production, and photojournalism. He began his journalism career at Voice of America in Washington, DC. His photographs have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, The Economist, and other international newspapers and magazines.

Editorial Note #2: Lior B. Sternfeld is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at The Pennsylvania State University and the author of Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran.

Editorial Note #3: Parvaneh Vahidmanesh has seventeen years of experience in journalism inside and outside of Iran. She is currently a broadcast journalist at Radio Free Europe's Persian service in Prague.

Eye Dreaming: Photographs by Anthony Barboza
Anthony Barboza, et al.
Getty Publications
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500, Los Angeles, CA 90049-1682
www.getty.edu/publications
9781606067833, $40.00, HC, 184pp

https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Dreaming-Photographs-Anthony-Barboza/dp/1606067834

Synopsis: Anthony Barboza (b. 1944) is a celebrated artist, photographer, and writer who has made thousands of photographs in the studio and on the street since 1963. A member of the Kamoinge collective of photographers in New York, Barboza is largely self-taught and has an inimitable, highly intuitive vision that he refers to as "eye dreaming," or "a state of mind that's almost like meditation".

Throughout the years he has made countless commercial images, including celebrity portraits, advertisements, and album covers. His personal photographic projects illuminate his deep investment in the art and concerns of Black communities, not only in the United States but also around the globe.

"Eye Dreaming: Photographs by Anthony Barboza" is a lavishly illustrated, coffee-table style (9.75 x 0.8 x 12 inches, 3.22 pounds) volume that showcases Barboza's prolific career from his youth in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to his formative years in New York in the 1960s, to the present day.

An introduction by renowned author and critic Hilton Als underscores Barboza's importance and impact. An essay by curator Aaron Bryant contextualizes Barboza's life and career as they map against major civil rights events in the United States. In an intimate interview between the artist and curator Mazie M. Harris, Barboza offers astute, humorous, and intimate musings on his long career, foundational influences, and artistic legacy.

Critique: "Eye Dreaming: Photographs by Anthony Barboza" is impressive, informative, and beautifully published monograph from the J. Paul Getty Museum is the first on the artist, will have a very special appeal to anyone with an interest in contemporary photography, as well visual depictions of Black art and culture. While unreservedly recommended as an addition to personal, professional, community, and academic library American Photography/Photographers collections, it should be noted for photography students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "Eye Dreaming: Photographs by Anthony Barboza" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $38.00).

Editorial Note #1: Anthony Barboza (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Barboza) is an artist, historian, and writer. He has been making photographs in the studio and on the street since 1963.

Editorial Note #2: Aaron Bryant (https://www.arts.gov/stories/podcast/aaron-bryant) is curator of photography and visual culture at the National Museum of African American History & Culture, Smithsonian Institution.

Editorial Note #3: Mazie M. Harris (https://www.photoculture.la/blog/2018/5/21/mazie-harris) is assistant curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Her research focuses on American photography. She is the author of Paper Promises: Early American Photography (Getty, 2018).

Kali: Artographer
Len Prince, et al.
powerHouse Books
https://powerhousebooks.com
9781648230219, $50.00, HC, 224pp

https://www.amazon.com/Kali-Artographer-Len-Prince/dp/1648230210

Synopsis: Joan Archibald (https://www.kaliartography.com) left her Long Island home and family in 1966, and ran away to the West Coast to reinvent herself as Kali and take up photography at the College of the Desert in Palm Springs. After palling around with the likes of Richard Chamberlain in Malibu, she moved to a house in Palm Springs once owned by Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, and began creating "Artography" in earnest as Kali: haunting portraits and double-exposed landscapes made with film, developed in her large bathtub, and finished by hand coloring with dyes, spray paint, and even dirt and bugs, in her swimming pool. Trippy, painterly, intensely colorful prints and later Polaroids were made and seldom seen outside a tight circle (one muse was a teenage Cindy Sherman). She published a few pieces in photo magazines, but by the late 70s locked the work away in suitcases inside a locked shed, never to be seen again for over 40 years.

Kali's daughter, when cleaning out the house after her death, discovered the work and something more: journals and journals of photos from closed circuit TV monitors, copied and illustrated with diagrams, drawings and coded notes: she had been housebound for years, convinced that aliens and supernatural beings were visiting, spooking, and tormenting her, perhaps trying to make contact.

The discovery of the work by Kali's daughter Susan Archibald and her ex Len Prince is being heralded as a west coast version of the Vivian Maier discovery, and a limited edition release of a four-volume set of the work (Matt Tyrnauer essay monograph, Portraits and Landscapes, Polaroids, and Outer Space) was published to wild acclaim in the fall of 2021 (Kali Ltd. Ed., powerHouse Books).

The first major museum exhibition to show Kali's work will open at the Columbus Museum of Art September 10, 2022 and run through March 12, 2023, and travel thereafter.

Critique: Showcasing the use of photography as a media for creating art, "Kali: Artographer" is an inherently fascinating compendium of images and will prove to be of special appeal to readers with an interest in contemporary and avant garde photography. Unique, fascinating, thought-provoking, "Kali: Artographer" is highly recommended as an usual addition to personal, professional, community, and academic American Photography/Photographer collections.

Persona Non Grata
Booghie
powerHouse Books
https://powerhousebooks.com
9781648230011, $45.00, HC, 81pp

https://www.amazon.com/PERSONA-NON-GRATA-Boogie/dp/1648230016

Synopsis: "Persona Non Grata", a coffee-table style (8.25 x 0.7 x 11 inches, 2.1 pounds) compendium of both color and b/w candid, gritty, edgy, stunning photographs by Booghie that reveal, illustrate and document the darker side of Bangkok, Thailand.

Critique: Informatively enhanced with a Foreword by TracyQuan, "Personal Non Grata" is an inherently fascinating photographic study that will have a special appeal to readers with an interest in street photography and individual photographic portraiture -- making it unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and academic library Photojournalism collections.

Editorial Note #1: Serbia, Boogie (https://boogiephotographer.com) was born and raised in Belgrade, and began photographing rebellion and unrest during the civil war that ravaged his country during the 1990s. Growing up in a war-torn country defined Boogie's style and attraction to the darker side of human existence. He moved to New York City in 1998. He has shot campaigns for high-profile clients and has been published in top fashion publications around the world, and has exhibited widely in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Boogie lives and works between Brooklyn and Belgrade, and is the author of some nine influential photo books, among them is It's All Good (2006, updated 2016), Boogie - the Limited Edition (2007), Belgrade Belongs to Me (2008), and Moscow (2019), all with powerHouse Books.

Editorial Note #2: Tracy Quan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_Quan) is the author of "Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl", and "Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl".

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