Recommendations based on "In Focus National Geographic Greatest Portraits"

Longlisted for the National Book Award · A New York Times Notable Book of the Year · Winner of the New York City Book Award · Shortlisted for the Apollo Book of the Year Award · Shortlisted for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography · Finalist for the Gotham Book Prize · Finalist for the Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award at Interlochen The never-before-told story of an obscure little street at the lower tip of Manhattan and the remarkable artists who got their start there. For just over a decade, from 1956 to 1967, a collection of dilapidated former sail-making warehouses clustered at the lower tip of Manhattan became the quiet epicenter of the art world. Coenties Slip, a dead-end street near the water, was home to a circle of wildly talented and varied artists that included Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. As friends and inspirations to one another, they created a unique community for unbridled creative expression and experimentation, and the works they made at the Slip would go on to change the course of American art. Now, for the first time, Prudence Peiffer pays homage to these artists and the unsung impact their work had on the direction of late twentieth-century art and film. This remarkable biography, as transformative as the artists it illuminates, questions the very concept of a “group” or “movement,” as it spotlights the Slip’s eclectic mix of gender and sexual orientation, abstraction and Pop, experimental film, painting, and sculpture, assemblage and textile works. Brought together not by the tenets of composition or technique, nor by philosophy or politics, the artists cultivated a scene at the Slip defined by a singular spirit of community and place. They drew lasting inspiration from one another, but perhaps even more from where they called home, and the need to preserve the solitude its geography fostered. Despite Coenties Slip’s obscurity, the entire history of Manhattan was inscribed into its cobblestones—one of the first streets and central markets of the new colony, built by enslaved people, with revolutionary meetings at the tavern just down Pearl Street; named by Herman Melville in Moby Dick and site of the boom and bust of the city’s maritime industry; and, in the artists’s own time, a development battleground for Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. The Slip’s history is entwined with that of the artists and their art—eclectic and varied work that was made from the wreckage of the city’s many former lives. An ambitious and singular account of a time, a place, and a group of extraordinary people, The Slip investigates the importance of community, and makes an argument for how we are shaped by it, and how it in turns shapes our work. 

SUNDAY TIMES MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEARROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEARMOJO BOOK OF THE YEARIn 1975, Viv Albertine was obsessed with music but it never occurred to her she could be in a band as she couldn't play an instrument and she'd never seen a girl play electric guitar.A year later, she was the guitarist in the hugely influential all-girl band the Slits, who fearlessly took on the male-dominated music scene and became part of a movement that changed music.A raw, thrilling story of life on the frontiers and a candid account of Viv's life post-punk - taking in a career in film, the pain of IVF, illness and divorce and the triumph of making music again - Clothes Music Boys is a remarkable memoir.

Contact sheets unveil the story of what went into a photograph. Was it the outcome of what a photographer had in mind from the outset? Did it emerge from a diligently worked sequence? Was the right shot a matter of being in the right place at the right time? Here, for the first time, are the best contact sheets created by Magnum photographers. They reveal the creative methods, strategies, and editing processes used by some of the acknowledged greats of photography, from legends such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliott Erwitt to Magnum’s latest generation, including Jonas Bendiksen, Trent Parke, and Alec Soth.Events, places, and people from over seventy years of history are contained in Magnum’s contact sheets, including the Normandy landings by Robert Capa, Che Guevara by Rene´ Burri, the Paris riots of 1968 by Bruno Barbey, Malcolm X by Eve Arnold, and New York street scenes by Bruce Gilden.With supporting texts by the photographers or by those selected by the estates of deceased Magnum members, and ancillary material such as press cards, notebooks, and filed captions, this landmark publication provides a depth of understanding and a critical analysis of the backstory to a photograph.

Lauren Redniss, acclaimed author of the brilliant biography-in-collage Radioactive, delivers a stunning visual journey through the life of the last Ziegfeld girl, Doris Eaton Travis. Now in paperback for the first time, Century Girl spans the brightest moments in early show business, the major historical landmarks of the 20th century, and the intimate milestones of one woman’s long life. Incorporating hundreds of archival photos and personal clippings with inventive line drawings and a compelling, hand-written narrative, Century Girl is a more than a biography, more than a graphic novel, and more than an art book—it is a singularly original and major work of art that Slate magazine calls “a visually dazzling mélange . . . unlike anything . . . ever seen before” (Best Books of 2006).

The perfect primer on acclaimed French artist Sophie Calle, this book reproduces images from her most important works.Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Her work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is renowned for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives, which she has deployed in her renowned works Suite Vénitienne, The Hotel, and Address Book. She has had major exhibitions all over the world, including at the Venice Biennale, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and has also worked closely with the writer Paul Auster. The Guardian called her “the Marcel Duchamp of dirty laundry,” and she was among the names in Blake Gopnik’s “10 Most Important Artists of Today,” with Gopnik arguing, “It is the unartiness of Calle’s work―its refusal to fit any of the standard pigeonholes, or over anyone’s sofa―that makes it deserve space in museums.”A new entry in the acclaimed Photofile series, Sophie Calle contains over one hundred reproductions together with a critical introduction by Clément Chéroux and a full bibliography of the artist. 118 illustrations

A humorous look at shoes covers shoe myths, shopping, shoe accessories, etiquette, style, and the shoe psyche

From the team who brought you Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell comes this must-have companion to the movie millions have been waiting for. This sleek hardcover volume gives reader exclusive entrée into the world of Sex and the City: The Movie.In addition to a storybook-style telling of the film, the book includes mouth-watering bonus features not available anywhere else: behind-the-scenes stories from Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, star and producer Sarah Jessica Parker, writer and director Michael Patrick King, as well as producers and other key cast and crew members; a guide to the movie's multi-million—dollar fashion closet, including insight from costume designer Patricia Field; and an insider's tour of the movie's many locations, some of which have never before appeared on film.All of this behind-the-scenes information is accompanied by more than three hundred stunning, luscious, full-color images. This beautiful keepsake is sure to bring some big-screen glitz and glamour to every reader's bookshelf.

The Las Vegas Strip has impersonated the Wild West, with saloon doors and wagon wheels; it has decked itself out in midcentury modern sleekness. It has illuminated itself with twenty-story-high neon signs, then junked them. After that came Disney-like theme parks featuring castles and pirates, followed by replicas of Venetian canals, New York skyscrapers, and the Eiffel Tower. (It might be noted that forty-two million people visited Las Vegas in 2015—ten million more than visited the real Paris.) More recently, the Strip decided to get classy, with casinos designed by famous architects and zillion-dollar collections of art. Las Vegas became the "implosion capital of the world" as developers, driven by competition, got rid of the old to make way for the new—offering a non-metaphorical definition of "creative destruction." In The Strip, Stefan Al examines the many transformations of the Las Vegas Strip, arguing that they mirror transformations in America itself. The Strip is not, as popularly supposed, a display of architectural freaks but representative of architectural trends and a record of social, cultural, and economic change.Al tells two parallel stories. He describes the feverish competition of Las Vegas developers to build the snazziest, most tourist-grabbing casinos and resorts—with a cast of characters including the mobster Bugsy Siegel, the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and the would-be political kingmaker Sheldon Adelson. And he views the Strip in a larger social context, showing that it has not only reflected trends but also magnified them and sometimes even initiated them. Generously illustrated with stunning color images throughout, The Strip traces the many metamorphoses of a city that offers a vivid projection of the American dream.

The definitive history of the world’s most influential fashion trend from the people who wore it bestThe story begins in 1972 in Jersey City, the birthplace of Trash and Vaudeville, the first- ever streetwear shop; it then moves on to the start of punk, which was a decisive influence on what is considered “streetwear” today. From the dresser/casual movement born out of British soccer culture to the skater scene of California, from the paninari poseurs of Milan to the surfer dudes of Hawaii, the authors show how streetwear has permeated a vast range of seemingly disparate tribes. Streetwear recounts the remarkable history of how subcultural fashion trends have grown into a multi-billion-dollar global industry taking both high-end and fast fashion by storm. The intent behind streetwear remains the same: a powerful sense of identity and belonging. With more than 500 photographs and illustrations, exclusive interviews, profiles of industry pioneers, spotlights on significant brands, and snapshots of key cities, this is the complete history of fashion’s fastest- growing and most influential trend.

The award-winning, field-defining history of gay life in New York City in the early to mid-20th centuryGay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait of a vibrant, cohesive gay world that is not supposed to have existed. Called "monumental" (Washington Post), "unassailable" (Boston Globe), "brilliant" (The Nation), and "a first-rate book of history" (The New York Times), Gay New Yorkforever changed how we think about the history of gay life in New York City, and beyond.