Books

Jacob A. Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half, A Complete Catalogue of His Photographs, Yale University Press, 2015

This important publication is the first comprehensive study and complete catalogue of Riis’s world-famous images, and places him at the forefront of early-20th-century social reform photography. It is the culmination of more than two decades of research on Riis, assembling materials from five repositories (the Riis Collection at the Museum of the City of New York, the Library of Congress, the New-York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, and the Museum of South West Jutland, Denmark) as well as previously unpublished photographs and notes.

Rediscovering Jacob Riis, Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn of the Century New York, with Daniel Czitrom, University of Chicago Press, 2014 (First published by The New Press in 2007)

With Rediscovering Jacob Riis, art historian Bonnie Yochelson and historian Daniel Czitrom place Jacob Riis’s images in historical context even as they expose a clear sightline to the present. Yochelson describes for the first time Riis’s photographic practice: his initial reliance on amateur photographers to take the photographs he needed, his own use of the camera, and then his collecting of photographs by professionals, who by 1900 were documenting social reform efforts for government agencies and charities. She argues that while Riis is rightly considered a revolutionary in the history of photography, he was not a photographic artist. Instead, Riis was a writer and lecturer who first harnessed the power of photography to affect social change.

As staggering inequality continues to be an urgent political topic, this book, illustrated with nearly seventy of Riis’s photographs, will serve as a stunning reminder of what has changed, and what has not.

Alfred Stieglitz New York, Skira/Rizzoli, 2010

Bonnie Yochelson places Stieglitz’s work within the context of the burgeoning commercial world around him and other artists of the period. Stieglitz witnessed a key period in New York’s history when the city suddenly transformed into a modern metropolis. As a child, he grew up in an upper Fifth Avenue brownstone still surrounded by empty lots and dirt roads. Naturally, he was fascinated by the monumental buildings rising around him, and you can sense his wonder in these images. Among the classic buildings he so artfully captured here are the (now demolished) Madison Square Gardens, the Flatiron, Rockefeller Center, the Waldorf Astoria, the Chrysler, and the Empire State. His images formed archetypes that would go on to shape the imagination of generations. This intimate volume makes for a beautiful souvenir of timeless New York, a city of striving and dreaming.

Esther Bubley On Assignment, Aperture, Inc., 2005

Yochelson explains the working life of Esther Bubley, a photojournalist during the pre-television era when picture magazines dominated the national media. In collaboration with Yochelson, Tracy Schmid, archivist of the Bubley estate, and Jean Bubley, executor of the estate, contribute original research and interviews with Esther's colleagues and contemporaries, highlighting her achievements and accomplishments. The book includes 75 of her finest images as well as magazine layouts, which illustrate how Bubley's photographs were originally seen by millions of Americans. While Bubley's talent was well recognized at the time--her work was shown in three Museum of Modern Art exhibitions--she was not a celebrity and did little to promote herself. Having received far less attention than she deserves, this book aims to introduce a selection of her best work to a wider audience.

New York Changing: Rephotographing Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York,” Photographs by Berenice Abbott and Douglas Levere, Princeton Architectural Press, 2004

In 1935 the renowned photographer Berenice Abbott set out on a five-year, WPA-funded project to document New York's transformation from a nineteenth-century city into a modern metropolis of towering skyscrapers. The result was the landmark publication Changing New York, a milestone in the history of photography that stands as an indispensable record of the Depression-era city.

More than sixty years later, New York is an even denser city of steel-and-glass and restless energy. Guided by Abbott's voice and vision, New York photographer Douglas Levere has revisited the sites of 100 of Abbott's photographs, meticulously duplicating her compositions with exacting detail; each shot is taken at the same time of day, at the same time of year, and with the same type of camera. New York Changing pairs Levere's and Abbott's images, resulting in a remarkable commentary on the evolution of a metropolis known for constantly reinventing itself.

Jacob A. Riis, Phaidon 55 series, London, 2001

The 55 Series represents the work of many of photography s most important figures. Each book contains 55 of the photographer s key works, presented chronologically and through them tells the photographer s own story. These books are small, but surprisingly rich in content and reproduction quality. They are a most economical way to bring the world of photography into your home.

Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, The New Press, 1997; German ed. Schirmer-Mosel, 1997; French ed. Musees de Paris, 1999; reissued 2009

Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) was one of this century's greatest photographers, and her New York City images have come to define 1930's New York. The response to The New Press's landmark hardcover publication of Berenice Abbott: Changing New York was extraordinary. In addition to receiving rave reviews, it was chosen a best book of the year by the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and New York Newsday, and was featured in Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and the New York Daily News.

Berenice Abbott features more than 300 duotones, arranged geographically in eight sections tracing the photographer's New York City odyssey. It also includes 113 variant images, line drawings, and period maps, as well as an explanatory text, which explores Abbott's compositional choices, her artistic and historical preoccupations, and the history of New York.

Pictorialism into Modernism: The Clarence H. White School of Photography, George Eastman House and Rizzoli, 1996

This book traces the profound influence Clarence H. White had on American photography. Featuring work by Karl Struss, Anne Brigman, Doris Ulmann, Ralph Steiner, Margaret Bourke-White, Laura Gilpin, Dorothea Lange, and many others, the book is beautifully reproduced in color, duplicating the appearance of the original prints. The texts by Yochelson and Fulton provide a penetrating biographical history of White's career, and illustrate his influence on other photographers. This is a fine book, and a necessary addition for those with an interest in Pictorialism.

New York to Hollywood, Photography by Karl Struss, with Richard Koszarski and Barbara McCandless, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, and University of New Mexico Press, 1995

Karl Struss (1886-1981) was a master of both still and motion picture photography. A native of New York City, he first studied photography with Clarence White and soon mastered the tenets of pictorialism. Alfred Stieglitz featured his work in a 1910 exhibition and a 1912 issue of Camera Work and invited Struss to become a member - as it turned out, the last member - of the Photo-Secession.

New York to Hollywood: The Photography of Karl Struss surveys this consummate artist's long career with the camera, including his pioneering color photography using the autochrome process, his photographic explorations of New York and Europe before War World I, his images of Hollywood stars and western landscapes and seascapes, and his motion picture work. Essayist Bonnie Yochelson surveys his early work in New York, Richard Koszarski his career in cinematography, and Barbara McCandless examines how Struss' background and early work not only led him to Hollywood but greatly contributed to the artistry of the still-young film industry there. John and Susan Edwards Harvith, who rediscovered Struss' work in the 1970's and interviewed him at length in his later years, round out the portrait of both the man and the artist.