Reflections in a Looking Glass : A Centennial Celebration of Lewis Carroll, Photographer by Carroll, Lewis

Published on the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), Reflections in a Looking Glass presents Carroll's remarkable photography. Richly illustrated, this important book presents seldom-seen works-most of them formal portraits and staged scenes that combine Carroll's famous...

Bodies and Souls: The Century Project by Cordelle, Frank

The Century Project, by photographer Frank Cordelle, is a chronological series of nude photographic portraits of more than one hundred women and girls from the moment of birth to nearly a hundred years of age. A diverse group of photographs comprising women of many ages, shapes, sizes, and life experiences is presented in this exquisitely disarming project. Most of the images are accompanied by moving statements written by the women themselves.

Rineke Dijkstra: Portraits by Dijkstra, Rineke

Editorial Reviews
Rineke Dijkstra is renowned for her uncanny and thoughtful portraits series of teenagers and young adults: girls and boys of various nationalities at the beach, children of Bosnian refugees, Spanish bullfighters straight out of the arena, Israeli youngsters before and after military service, and here, documented for the first time, her series of photographs taken of aspiring, young ballet dancers. Her subjects are shown standing, facing the camera, against a minimal background. Formally, the images resemble classical portraiture with their frontally posed figures isolated against minimal backgrounds. Yet, in spite of the uniformity in the photographer's works, there is a marked individuality in each of her subjects. Dijkstra often deals with the development of personality as one moves from adolescence to adulthood, or through a life-changing or potentially threatening experience such as childbirth, or a bullfight.

Until Now by Geddes, Anne

Sleeping angels. Flower fairies. Woodland nymphs and watermelon seeds. Anne Geddes's magical world is populated by hundreds of beautiful, chubby babies and gorgeous children dressed as peapods, pansies, peonies, and pearls. Geddes fans will be thrilled by Until Now, a lush, coffee-table-sized, 10-year retrospective of Geddes's work, including 1991's crowd-pleasing "Cabbage Kids", featured on calendars and coffee mugs everywhere, as well as many previously uncollected shots from Geddes's New Zealand studio.

The Age of Innocence by Hamilton, David

Many of the photos are soft, muted, elegant, and almost dream-like, while others are sharp and rich in color and contrast. There are full figure studies and a variety of portraits.

Pictures of Innocence : The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood (Interplay) by Higonnet, Anne

Pictures of Innocence--with 100 illustrations that range from Caravaggio's raunchy Cupid to Edward Weston's luminous, analytical nude studies of his son Neil to anonymous family Christmas-card snapshots--is the kickoff title in what is billed as "a new series of books about controversial themes and issues in the arts that cut across traditional disciplines." Higonnet marshals masses of material to develop her argument that the way we look at children and childhood is changing, and that this change affects our judgment of art, freedom of expression, sexuality, privacy, consent, exploitation, and child abuse.

Eva: Eloge De Ma Fille by Ionesco, Irina

This is an amazing body of work, and one might think it was done in the 1920's as the style is sort of the flapper mode. Irina chronicles her daughter as she grows from a young child to a young women. It is disturbing as one cannot look at the pictures of Eva as a young child and not think of the tragedy of Jon Benet. Eva as a little child is made up as a siren with a combination of innocence and provocation.

Children by Jan Saudek, Anne Tucker, William Ropp

Editorial Reviews.
The French photographer William Ropp is well-known for the unique style in which he captures the mysterious aspects of human nature. Taking outstanding pictures of children is only one part of the internationally renowned photographer's oeuvre. Surprisingly, it is not the viewer who gazes at the children; they rather redirect the stare towards the person looking at the unfathomable black and white pictures. Seemingly coming from a different time, these young human beings unify ancient mysteries and timeless questions in their appearances. The artist's foreword gives an insight into his technique, illuminating the enigmatic pictures.

Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors by Jane Kallir, Ivan Vartanian

Editorial Reviews
Co-director of the Galerie St. Etienne in New York, Kallir takes the reader through Schiele's incredibly fast development as a figurative artist of explosive sexuality, ending with his death at age 28 during the 1918 flu epidemic. More than 300 full-color, full-page plates carry titles, dates and physical descriptoins at the bottom of each page ("Standing Nude with Orange Stockings. 1914"), but the book itself is small for an art book, about the size of a typical hardcover novel, which makes turning the pages feel like reading the story of Schiele's life, a life inseparable from the decline of decadent, WWI-era Vienna. Richard Avedon has written a short foreword, and in his introduction Vartanian (Andy Warhol: Drawings and Illustrations of the 1950s) makes a plea for the reader to interpret Schiele's vision of sexuality as a kind of sacred message. After a "Biographical and Stylistic Study" by Kallir, 11 chapters covering one year each follow, with an essay introducing an uninterrupted arrangement of each year's images. Schiele's fleet, obsessive, searching work on paper includes beautifully colored landscapes, flowers and clothed figures, and his nudes retain a vital and unflinching immediacy that is perhaps even more clear here than in the paintings. The book deepens one's appreciation of a very overexposed artist's achievement-a difficult feat indeed.

Balthus by Jean Clair

Editorial Reviews.
Balthazar Klossowski, known as Balthus, is largely regarded as one of the twentieth century's most important painters-- as well as the most scandalous. His dreamlike canvases populated with pubescent girls in provocative poses garnered him both praise and scorn from artists and critics alike. This volume, edited by renowned scholar Jean Clair, includes more than 400 color plates and includes essays by the premier experts on Balthus's work and life as well as recollections of the artist by his colleagues and friends.