“I hope that my work will encourage self expression in others and stimulate the search for beauty and creative excitement in the great world around us.” – these words became Ansel Adams‘ credo, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West. He is the author of famous trilogy prints, “The Camera”, “The Negative” and “The Print”. Moreover, he is also famous for his Zone System that helps photographers to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print. Ansel Adams was the co-founders of the Group f/64 that specialized on sharp-focused and carefully framed images.

“Illustration Now!” is a series of books about illustration art, edited by Julius Weidemann, an author of many Taschen digital and media titles.

Illustration Now! Portraits

The book is a spectrum of nowadays portrait masterpieces, from caricatures to realism. During last ten years illustration has been on easy street as for computer working artists, as for artists who work by hand. The most interesting and also difficult thing about illustrations is a portrait. It is usually used in editorials, advertising, and recently has become a subject of big exhibitions. “Illustration Now! Portraits” by German publishing house Taschen consists of exclusive and even not published portraits of artists from all over the world, also such famous names as Aaron Jasinski , André Carrilho, Hanoch Piven, Anita Kunz, Jody Hewgill, and Dugald Stermer. Steven Heller has written an introduction to the “Illustration Now! Portraits”.

Photo Memory: an Album in the Epoch of Photography is a monograph from Aperture, the non-profit agency established in 1952 for showcasing photographic excellence, that since 1960 has been publishing pioneering and eclectic photo albums.

The author Verna Posever Curtis, a curator of photography in the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, reviews the history of photo albums. From the chronicle of an expedition to Alaska to an anonymous family album, the author considers the album’s stylistic features and analyzes their functions – to memorialize, document, cultivate, teach, promote, and share experiences.

The book contains works of famous photographers and filmmakers like Jim Goldberg, Dorothea Lange, Duane Michals, Leni Riefenstahl and Paolo Ventura. In this era of dematerialization the topic becomes especially urgent: will paper photo albums survive as a genre? Will they become an anachronism against the background of hard disks and internet downloads? Ms. Curtis also offers advice about how to preserve and restore photo albums.