Words cannot adequately explain the emotions that make up a relationship. But a single photograph can speak volumes. The baby strapped to her mother’s bosom as she works the fields. The mom watching her child on a playground. The woman in church, trying not to notice that her child has fallen asleep. These moving images have been captured in black-and-white and in color. No matter how--or where--each was created, the amazing bond between the mother and her child is evident.

In Mothers and Children, world-famous contributors Annie Griffiths Belt, Sam Abell, Jodi Cobb, Joel Sartore, and more reveal the whimsical and poignant emotions of the maternal relationship, caught on camera in 100 beautiful photographs from around the world. Destined to be a perennial gift book, Mothers and Children celebrates the fascinating array of expressions for the universal themes of work, play, and home life of families.  Sam and Jodi are especially great photographers.  Jodi is one of Geo's best photo-essayists.  You owe it to yourself to check out this new book.

 

 

"We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be."
--Richard Avedon, 1974

The preeminent stars and artists of the performing arts from the second half of the 20th century offered their greatest gifts—and, sometimes, their inner lives—to Richard Avedon. More than 200 are portrayed in Performance, many in photographs that have been rarely or never seen before. Of course, the great stars light the way: Hepburn and Chaplin, Monroe and Garland, Brando and Sinatra. But here too are the actors and comedians, pop stars and divas, musicians and dancers, artists in all mediums with public lives that were essentially performances, who stand at the pinnacle of our cultural achievement.  The celebrated author and critic John Lahr offers an elegant assessment of Avedon’s achievement. Four supremely talented artists from the performing arts—Mike Nichols, André Gregory, Mitsuko Uchida, and Twyla Tharp—contribute lively and moving memoirs about their collaborations with Avedon.

 

 

 

RICHARD AVEDON PORTRAITS OF POWER

Richard Avedon, America's preeminent portraitist and fashion photographer, photographed the many faces of politics throughout his career. Portraits of Power brings together Avedon's political portraits for the first time. Juxtaposing images of elite government, media and labor officials with counter-cultural activists, writers and artists, as well as ordinary citizens caught up in national debates, it offers a five-decade taxonomy of politics and power by one of America's best-known artists. The book features several of Avedon's extended projects addressing these themes, including coverage of the civil rights debate in the early 1960s (published in 1964 in Nothing Personal); the American anti-war movement and the war in Vietnam from 1969-1971; portraits of the American power elite in 1976, produced for his groundbreaking Rolling Stone portfolio "The Family;" "Exiles: The Kennedy Court at the End of the American Century," a retrospective homage to the Camelot generation published in the New Yorker in 1993; and his final photo-essay, "Democracy," surveying the national mood during the politically fractious period prior to the 2004 presidential elections (published posthumously in the New Yorker in 2004).

 

 

 

VANITY FAIR PORTRAITS - A CENTURY OF ICONIC IMAGES by Graydon Carter and the Editors of Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair magazine has a reputation as one of the preeminent showcases for portraits in the world, and this book gathers together a good chunk of them in all their glossy, artificial splendor. There''s almost as much celebrity behind the lens as in front of it: Edward Steichen, Herb Ritts, Mario Testino, David LaChapelle and, of course, Annie Leibovitz are all included, and the portraits themselves amount to a who''s who of culture and politics, with the quality of the images justifying the inclusion of the occasional lesser-known figures. The photographs have been arranged to supply the reader with subtle (and not so subtle) visual and cultural frisson: what are we meant to think when Joseph Goebbels is juxtaposed with Richard Perle? In a face-off between Rob Lowe and Louise Brooks, who has the most glamorous jaw line? For posing questions such as this, and for the production values and sheer scale, not to mention introductory essays by Graydon Carter, Christopher Hitchens, Terence Pepper and David Friend, this is a book that will no doubt be adorning the coffee tables of the world''s culture brokers for many years to come. (Publishers Weekly )

 

 

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ AT WORK

Annie Leibovitz describes how her pictures were made, starting with Richard Nixon's resignation, a story she covered with Hunter S. Thompson, and ending with Barack Obama's campaign. In between are a Rolling Stones Tour, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, The Blues Brothers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keith Haring, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Patti Smith, George W. Bush, William S. Burroughs, Kate Moss and Queen Elizabeth. The most celebrated photographer of our time discusses portraiture, reportage, fashion photography, lighting, and digital cameras.