Portraits and Photos Books

This series is an absolutely amazing value for money, very large, high quality print photos at a very reasonable price.

Rankin's photos are masterful - technically brilliant, thought provoking yet playfull.

Triple thumbs up.

a very pleasant and informative pictorial of spring lake. a bit short on history, but worthwhile nonetheless. Interesting usage of post cards as reference.

This well-written book vividly illustrates the various aspects of urban life in Saint Petersburg before World War I. The photographs are stunning. They help the reader see the great contrasts between the various classes of Petersburg's people. While one might enjoy the fine views of the city's palaces and pictures of the Tsars and other members of the upper classes, the vivid pictures of the city's flophouses (dross houses) remind the reader of the hideous gap between the rich and the poor classes. This book is a must read for history buffs who want to see what life was like in pre-World War I Russia. It is entirely suitable for the family--the pictures will surely grab the attention of school-age children, while the older readers will enjoy the highly readable texts which accompany the photographs. The last photograph in this book is quite poignant. It shows Tsar Nicholas II at the balcony of his palace at the start of Russia's participation in World War I. One can tell, from Nicholas' face, that his decision to participate in that war would be, in the end, a fatal one. World War I would help hasten the end of the Russian monarchy and the coming of the Soviet regime.

I received this book as a Christmas gift back in 1985 and have held on to it ever since. The book is composed of the most srtiking and beautiful photographs of cinimatic celebrities. Indeed this scrapbook treats photographs as art, preserving the exciting image and impact all the celebrities featured. Stars! also includes their real names, biographical statistics, filmography, and list of Academy Awards for each movie star. Stars! takes us on a journey from the kings and queens of the 1920s and 1930s, the originals of the 1940s and 1950s, the new generation of the 1960s, the individualists of the 1970s, and the phenomena of the 1980s.
(...)

This is a great collection of photographs of opera stars from a fine scholar and dealer of historic opera and music related photographs, letters, autographed items and other interesting documents. What do these things have to do with music? Well, they certainly provide an added psychological connection with the past and the artists and a human dimension to the understanding of their artistry. This book is a great addition to every music lover's library.

A wonderful book and the perfect gift for an actor. The iamges are really excellent.

In the back of this book there's a very telling 1938 quote from William Eglinton, Chief of Camera and Stills for RKO: 'At the end of each scene, the director and his crew step aside for a brief moment and the still camera man poses the principals in the climax of that particular scene'. The sixty-two stills in the book are the best that Keaton and Heiferman selected from the many they looked at.

I liked the idea that the contents are roughly from the end of the Second World War to the early Sixties, a particularly glossy period for Hollywood and it shows in several of the stills showing sets. Many group shots are really frozen in time photos, looking like tableaus from a waxworks others look like 'candids' with the actors totally unaware of the camera.


I've had this book for some years and I still find it fascinating. The contents are just movie stills but present them in a large, square (twelve by twelve inches) beautifully designed and printed book with the use of a 200 screen on quality paper and the mundane becomes intriguing. Less is definitely more.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

It introduced this reader to artists I hadn't known. And any book that contains 6 pages of work by Tee Corinne is a winner in my eyes.

Although I was looking for more works from artists I was familiar with hopefully featuring works I hadn't seen in other publications, this book is delightful and provides many hours of enjoyment.

From the back of the book - Stolen Glances brings together the work of lesbian photographers and writers from North America and Britain to explore the representation of lesbianism. The book is a strong defense of the right to diversity in images and in sexual practices.

This is not your standard coffee-table photo book. Rather, it's a window into the heart of a unique college... one so totally unlike any other college in America (the world?) that it's almost mind-boggling.

I came across it while getting obsessive about my older son's college search. (He's a high school junior and totally blase at this stage; I'm going blissfully insane pouring through the 3-inch-thick college guides.) I kept reading in the college guides about Deep Spings, and every description impelled me to look for more information.

Imagine: A huge cattle and alfalfa ranch in the middle of nowhere (the California high desert near the Nevada border). A student body of 26 young men with average SATs of 1500 who literally run the place and do most of the ranch work. A faculty of a half-dozen or so (essentially hired by the students), some just stopping by for a semester; none tenured. Two years of an intense combination of studying and discussion, physical work, and incredible community spirit. Students finish their undergraduate work by transferring to a "regular" college (typically Ivy League and Ivy-quality).

The book is mostly just pictures of the students, with a short commentary by each of them. There are also a couple of good essays, one by the college's president. The black & white photos are of high quality, though nothing extraordinary. But the combination of the students' images and their own words is amazingly effective in conveying who they are and what they feel about the school and about life.

Immensely cool, but only for a select audience. Five stars if you are in that audience. Not worth the money if you are just curious.

Pick up a book called "Subway Love" by Nobuyoshi Araki, a photographer/pornographer equally notorious for both his documentation of the Kabuki red light district in the book "Tokyo Lucky Hole" as well as his several arrests for breaking Japanese obscenity laws, and you would rightfully expect something salacious, titillating or even downright dirty. Subway sex, illicit gropings, panty shots captured with ninja-like stealth from oblivious victims, ...the mind boggles at what this master of the underground sex scene might come up with in darkened corners of late night Ginza Line runs.

But this is not that Araki. At the time, 1963-1972, Araki was working for an advertising agency, Dentsu, and still finding his voice as an artist. Riding the subway to and from work, he became obsessed with photographing his fellow passengers, partly to kill time and partly because of the empathy he felt with them, all taking the weary daily ride together.

The photographs in "Subway Love" are raw. Printed directly from the contact sheet, there is a marvelous intimacy created between camera and subject, and then between subject and viewer. Araki refused to use his camera's viewfinder for the portraits, wanting them to come off the same way the eye does when people watching, random and uncentered. In a way, as mentioned in the interview following the photographs, this was his attempt to capture filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu's poetry of everyday life. Many of the shots are from low angles, emulating Ozu's tatami-level camera.

Raw the photographs may be, but the subjects themselves are reverenced and always treated with the respect that daily life deserves. Araki was sure not to publish embarrassing photographs, no nose picking or sleeping office girls with their legs splayed wide. He called this collection "Subway Love" because he loved them all, these warriors of the working day, and wanted to show them as "individuals, not symbols." There are a thousand faces here, some happy, some sad, some tired, some lively. But each and every one of them is a human being, and probably familiar to all of us who at one time or another have made the journey home on the subway.