Manfred Heiting

This enormous and authoritative survey of Czech and Slovak photo publications commemorates the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 2018. It demonstrates the persistent tradition of superior artistic imagination and technical ingenuity that is uniquely and wonderfully Czech and Slovak.

In the course of more than 1,000 years of existence, the Czech and Slovak people only experienced free nationhood between 1918 and 1938―and again after 1989. show more Finally living under their own rule, photographers and writers, typographers and book designers, graphic artists and printers were free to express a love of country and documented its landscapes, cities, national treasures, monuments and the life of its people with unflinching attention―thus forming their unique cultural identity, even during Nazi annexation and 40 years of communist occupation.

In nine chapters this comprehensive book explores over 800 publications from 1918 to 1989, highlighting the work of more than 250 photographers and graphic artists, including Frantisek Drtikol, Libor Fára, Jaromír Funke, Karel Hájek, Vladimír Hipman, Bohdan Holomícek, Tibor Honty, Karol Kállay, Josef Koudelka, Jan Lukas, Martin Martincek, Alphonse Mucha, Karel Plicka, Josef Prosek, Jaroslav Rössler, Pavel Stecha, Jindrich Streit, Jindrich Styrsky, Josef Sudek, Ladislav Sutnar, Karel Teige and Zdenek Tmej. show less

Imagining Paradise is the first book to showcase the treasures of The George Eastman House's incomparable Richard and Ronay Menschel Library. It features over 250 rare books, each beautifully illustrated here and accompanied by commentary from prominent scholars. A large and handsome volume itself, as befits its subject, it ranges over the history of the medium of photography, its practitioners and its processes--from bucolic landscapes, to travel and exploration, science and medicine, the show more literary and the illustrious. It encompasses the incunabula of William Henry Fox Talbot through the reveries of Maxime Du Camp and Francis Frith; the vision of Peter Henry Emerson to Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work and 291; and the exceptional published and unpublished books by Alvin Langdon Coburn. It documents works illustrated with tipped-in original salt prints, albumen prints, platinum prints, photogravures, carbon prints, collotypes and Woodburytypes. It includes translations in five languages of Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre's seminal instructional manual describing the daguerreotype process and works of great and unusual beauty, such as a red leather, bronze-trimmed Bible, illustrated in the 1860s with 56 photographs by Francis Frith. No other library in the world holds this breadth and depth of the history, aesthetics and technology of photography and no other book can bring them so thoroughly into the reader's hands. This exceptional collection of rare books was formed from the Eastman Historical Photographic Collection of the Kodak Company, which encompassed the collections of many of the most important photographic scientists, historians and collectors in the world. show less

Like the other Icon art books, this is all about the images - and being Man Ray, they are pretty special images.

An introduction to one of the influential 20th century photographers, accompanied by an essay by Andre Breton himself. An extensive portfolio of photographs with commentaries. The essay by E. de l'Ecotais (in French) features also in English and German translations.