Aperture's Holiday Gift Guide

This year, Aperture publications have explored how fashion photography can serve as a vehicle for social change, how photography empowers transgender communities, the black dandy movement, our relationship to food, and more. From iconic monographs by master photographers, to groundbreaking, never-before-published work, we offer titles for everyone on your holiday list.

For the Collector

Intimate Distance: Twenty-five Years of Photographs, A Chronological Album
Intimate Distance is the first comprehensive monograph charting the career of acclaimed American photographer Todd Hido. Though he has published many smaller individual bodies of work, this book gathers his most iconic images for the first time and brings a fresh perspective to his oeuvre with the inclusion of many unpublished photographs.

Illuminance Limited-Edition Box Set
Rinko Kawauchi’s work has frequently been lauded for its nuanced palette and offhand compositional mastery, as well as its ability to incite wonder through careful attention to tiny gestures and the incidental details of her everyday environment. In Illuminance, Kawauchi continues her exploration of the extraordinary in the mundane. This limited-edition boxed set includes a specially bound copy of the artist’s monograph Illuminance (Aperture, 2011) and two beautiful prints of images found in the book, all presented in a clothbound case.

Stephen Shore: Selected Works, 1973–1981
Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places is a canonic body of work—a touchstone for those interested in photography and the American landscape. Remarkably, this series of photographs has yet to be explored in its entirety. Over the past five years, Shore has scanned hundreds of negatives shot between 1973 and 1981. In this volume, Aperture has invited an international group of fifteen photographers, curators, authors, and cultural figures to select ten images apiece from this rarely seen cache of images.

John Chiara: California
John Chiara creates his own cameras and chemical processes in order to make unique photographs that use the direct exposure of light onto reversal film and paper. Each resulting image is a singular, luminous object. This highly anticipated first book includes the surreal and thrilling landscape and architectural photographs for which the artist has become known. John Chiara: California features pictures taken in the artist’s hometown of San Francisco and other locations along the Pacific Coast.

Great Storytelling

The Notion of Family
Now available in a paperback edition, LaToya Ruby Frazier’s award-winning first book, The Notion of Family, offers an incisive exploration of the legacy of racism and economic decline in America’s small towns, as embodied by her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania.

Jonas Bendiksen: The Last Testament
Imagined as a sequel to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, The Last Testament features visual accounts and stories of seven men around the world who claim to be the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Susan Meiselas: On the Frontline
Susan Meiselas, one of the most influential photographers of our time and an important contributor to the evolution of documentary storytelling, provides an insightful personal commentary on the trajectory of her career.

Tabitha Soren: Fantasy Life
In 2002, Tabitha Soren began photographing a group of minor league draft picks for the Oakland A’s. Fifteen years after that first shoot, Fantasy Life portrays a selection of these stories, gathering together a richly textured series of photographs taken on the field and behind the scenes at games, along with commentaries by each of the players and memorabilia from their lives.

Intersectional Inspirational

Future Gender
The Winter 2017 issue of Aperture magazine is dedicated to the representation of transgender lives, communities, and histories in photography. Guest edited by Zackary Drucker, the artist, activist, and producer of the acclaimed television series Transparent, “Future Gender” considers how trans and gender-nonconforming individuals have used photography to imagine new expressions of social and personal identity, from the nineteenth century to today.

Muse: Mickalene Thomas Photographs
Mickalene Thomas, known for her large-scale, multi-textured, and rhinestone-encrusted paintings of domestic interiors and portraits, identifies the photographic image as a defining touchstone for her practice. Thomas’s portraits draw equally from 1970s black-is-beautiful images of women such as supermodel Beverly Johnson and actress Vonetta McGee to Édouard Manet’s odalisque figures.

On Feminism
The winter 2016 issue of Aperture, “On Feminism,” focuses on intergenerational dialogues, debates, and strategies of feminism in photography, and considers the immense contributions by artists whose work articulates or interrogates representations of women in media and society. Across more than one hundred years of photographs and images, “On Feminism” underscores how photography has shaped feminism as much as how feminism has shaped photography.

Question Bridge: Black Males in America
Question Bridge assembles a series of questions posed to black men, by and for other black men, along with the corresponding responses and portraits of the participants. The questions range from the comic to the sublimely philosophical: from “Am I the only one who has problems eating chicken, watermelon, and bananas in front of white people?” to “Why is it so difficult for black American men in this culture to be themselves, their essential selves, and remain who they truly are?”

Wanderlust

Highway Kind
Since 2004, Justine Kurland, known for her utopian photographs of American landscapes and their fringe communities, and her young son, Casper, have traveled in their customized van, going south in the winter and north in the summer. Her life as an artist and mother is finely balanced between the need for routine and the desire for freedom and surprise. Kurland’s deep interest in the road, the western frontier, escape, and living outside mainstream values pervade this stunning and important body of work.

The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip
The road trip is an enduring symbol in American culture. As photographers have embarked on trips across the United States with the express purpose of making work, they have created some of the most important photographs in the history of the medium: from images by Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Berenice Abbott to Robert Frank’s 1950s odyssey, The Americans. From Stephen Shore to Ryan McGinley, hundreds of other photographers have continued the tradition. The Open Road is the first book to explore the photographic road trip as a genre.

This Is Mars: Midi Edition
This Is Mars offers a thrilling visual experience of the surface of the red planet. The award-winning French editor and designer Xavier Barral has chosen and composed images, drawn from the comprehensive photographic map of Mars made by the U.S. observation satellite MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter), to revel in the wonder of Mars.

Foodie

Feast for the Eyes: The Story of Food in Photography
From basic sustenance to savory repasts, food awakens the senses and touches both private and public life. This is the first book to cover food photography’s rich history—not only in fine art photography, but also in crossover genres such as commercial and scientific photography and photojournalism.

The Photographer’s Cookbook
Playing off George Eastman’s famous recipe for lemon meringue pie, as well as former director Beaumont Newhall’s love of food, the cookbook grew from the idea that photographers’ talent in the darkroom must also translate into special skills in the kitchen. An extensive and distinctive archive of recipes and photographs are published in The Photographer’s Cookbook for the first time.

Downtown Kid

Lyle Ashton Harris: Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs
Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, a radical cultural scene emerged in cities across the globe, finding expression in the galleries, nightclubs, and bedrooms of New York, London, Los Angeles, and Rome. In Lyle Ashton Harris: Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs, the artist’s archive of 35 mm Ektachrome images are presented alongside journal entries and recollections by contributors such as Vince Aletti, Rashid Johnson, and Sarah Lewis.

Manhattan Sunday
Drawing heavily on personal experience, Richard Renaldi captures that ethereal moment when Saturday night bleeds into Sunday morning across the borough of Manhattan. This collection of portraits, landscapes, and club interiors evokes the vibrant nighttime rhythms of a city that persists in both its decadence and its dreams.

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a visual diary chronicling the struggle for intimacy and understanding between friends, family, and lovers—collectively described by Goldin as her “tribe.” Her work describes a world that is visceral, charged, and seething with life. First published in 1986, this reissue recognizes the persistent relevance and freshness of Nan Goldin’s cutting-edge photography.

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life
Underappreciated during his lifetime, Peter Hujar is now a revered icon of the downtown art scene. He is best-known for his portraits of New York City’s artists, musicians, writers, and performers, which feature characters such as Susan Sontag, William S. Burroughs, David Wojnarowicz, and Andy Warhol. Hujar and was admired for his completely uncompromising attitude toward work and life.

Inner Child/Actual Child

Seeing Things, A Kid’s Guide to Looking at Photographs
Aimed at children between the ages of nine and twelve, Seeing Things is a wonderful introduction to photography that asks how photographers transform ordinary things into meaningful moments. In this book, acclaimed and beloved photographer Joel Meyerowitz takes readers on a journey through the power and magic of photography.

The Martin Parr Coloring Book!
Photography and Pop-culture buffs, get out your crayons and colored pencils! Martin Parr’s colorful, tongue-in-cheek photographs—his comedy of contemporary manners—have been transformed into a coloring book.

Go Photo!
Go Photo! features twenty-five hands-on and creative activities inspired by photography. Aimed at children between eight and twelve years old, this playful and fun collection of projects encourages young readers to experiment with their imaginations, get messy with materials, and engage with the world in new and exciting ways.

Nature Lover

A Wild Life: A Visual Biography of Photographer Michael Nichols
A Wild Life is Michael “Nick” Nichols’s story, told with passion and insight by author and photo-editor Melissa Harris. Nichols’ story combines a life of adventure, with a conviction about how we can redeem the human race by protecting our wildlife.

Picturing America’s National Parks
Picturing America’s National Parks brings together some of the finest landscape photography, from America’s most magnificent and sacred environments. Photography has played an integral role in both the formation of the National Parks and in the depiction of America itself. This book traces that history and delights readers with stunning photographs of the best American landscapes.

Cape Light
Cape Light, Joel Meyerowitz’s series of serene and contemplative color photographs taken on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, quickly became one of the most influential and popular photography books in the latter part of the twentieth century. Now, over thirty-five years later, Aperture is pleased to bring back this classic collection in its original form.

Fashion Forward

Fashion Photography: The Story in 180 Pictures
Fashion photography captures our desires and fantasies about how we present ourselves to the world, while reflecting the changing values of our culture and society. Fashion Photography: The Story in 180 Pictures explores the profound influence that fashion photography has had over the past eight decades, presenting its evolution as a language, and a genre, while showcasing some of its most glamorous moments.

Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style
Suits that pop with loud colors and dazzling patterns, complete with a nearly ubiquitous bowtie, define the style of the new “dandy.” Described as “high-styled rebels” by author Shantrelle P. Lewis, black men with a penchant for color and refined fashion ave gained popular attention in recent years. Lewis’s carefully curated selection of contemporary photographs surveys the movement across the globe, with all of the vibrant patterns, electrifying colors, and fanciful poses of this brilliant style subculture.

Louise Dahl-Wolfe
Louise Dahl-Wolfe opens a window onto the work of one of the most influential fashion photographers of the twentieth century. After being discovered by Edward Steichen and having her work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1937, Louise Dahl-Wolfe went on to revitalize the Hollywood portrait and invigorate fashion photography of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s.

Design Savvy

Rinko Kawauchi: Halo
In recent years, Rinko Kawauchi’s exploration of the cadences of the everyday has begun to swing farther afield. In Halo, Kawauchi expands this inquiry, this time with photographs of the southern coastal region of Izumo, in Shimane Prefecture and interweaving them with images from New Year celebrations in Hebei province, China, plus her ongoing fascination with the murmuration of birds along the coast of Brighton, England. Kawauchi mesmerizingly knits together cycles of time, implicit and subliminal patterns of nature, and human ritual.

The Many Lives of Erik Kessels
The Many Lives of Erik Kessels presents the highly anticipated first illustrated survey of this pioneering and influential curator, editor, and artist whose varied experiments with photography and photographic archives reconsider the medium’s vernacular and narrative possibilities in today’s inundated image landscape.

Self Publish, Be Happy: A DIY Photobook Manual and Manifesto
An economic and cultural revolution has shaken the photobook world in the last five years: self-publishing. An army of photographers operating as publishers have had an instrumental role in today’s photobook renaissance. This book offers a do-it-yourself manual and a survey of key examples of self-published success stories, as well as a self-publishing manifesto and list of resources.

Classic Cat

Bruce Davidson: Survey
This survey focuses on the work that has made Bruce Davidson one of the most influential documentary photographers to this day. In his work, Davidson prizes his relationship to the subject above all else. From his profound documentation of the civil rights movement to his in-depth study of one derelict block in Harlem, he has immersed himself fully in his projects.

Elliot Erwitt: Home Around the World
Elliott Erwitt: Home Around the World offers a timely and critical reconsideration of Erwitt’s unparalleled life as a photographer. Produced alongside a major retrospective exhibition, the book features examples of Erwitt’s early experiments in California, intimate family portraits in New York, major magazine assignments, long-term documentary interests, and ongoing, personal investigations of public spaces.

Lisette Model
Lisette Model is an unsurpassed introduction to one of the twentieth century’s most significant photographers—a woman whose searing images and eloquent teachings deeply influenced her students who included Diane Arbus, Larry Fink, and many others.