One of America’s most highly regarded photographers, Burk Uzzle has claimed a territory all his own as a chronicler of the quirky and strangely beautiful in the vast American landscape. A Family Named Spot gathers seventy-seven black-and-white photographs taken during the photographer’s many trips across the United States in the last decade. Also included is an Allan Gurganus short story inspired by the photographs and published originally in The New Yorker.

A Family Named Spot: Photographs by Burk Uzzle

Arts & Photography

Allan Gurganus

Individual Artists

Five Ties Publishing

During his fifty-year career, Leigh Wiener photographed every US president from Truman to Reagan, Hollywood legends from Marilyn to Marlon, musicians from Miles to Sinatra, and scores of writers, athletes, politicians, and industry titans. Among Wiener’s most unforgettable images are a series of portraits of singer--songwriter Johnny Cash taken in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, showing Cash in his iconoclastic, legendary prime.

Johnny Cash: Photographs by Leigh Wiener

The twentieth century brought technological advances that led to improved quality of life for millions. But technology also brought devastation at Chernobyl, Bhopal, Minamata, Love Canal, and other places throughout the world now synonymous with the dark side of technology and human action. Vulnerable on This Earth is the first comprehensive book to explore the causes and consequences of fifteen major manmade environmental disasters in the twentieth century. Author Robert Emmet Hernan tells the story of toxic materials dumped into the sea, buried on land, and discharged into the air; of polluters recklessly advancing their own financial interests and ignoring dangers to others; and above all, of the determination and dignity of ordinary people who heroically fought for justice and change. From the preface by Bill McKibben: In the years to come, the line that Hernan draws between natural and environmental disasters will blur. . . . What will remain the same, however, is human vulnerability. That vulnerability endangers us, of course-but it is closely related to the love, the shared concern, that might save us yet.

Vulnerable on this Earth: Environmental Disasters of the Twentieth Century

Science & Math

Hernan, Robert Emmet

Earth Sciences

Independently and through prestigious commissions, photographer Jenny Okun has traveled the world for more than twenty-five years creating dazzling, multi-layered interpretations of buildings by Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Richard Rodgers, and many other renowned architects. Commissions have included the J. Paul Getty Museum; the Tate Modern; and the Whitney Museum of American Art. This is the first major book of Okun’s photography.
 “Okun’s artwork,” writes Craig Krull, “consists of large-scale color photographic abstractions of architectural works. Rather than produce literal representations of buildings, Okun distills the essential qualities of form, texture, color, and detail . . . developing a Cubist interpretation of forms.”
 “Looking at architecture,” Okun has written, “is like listening to music. Both are dramatic forms that reveal multiple, repeating themes. Above all, both need time. Just as a symphony cannot be experienced in a few seconds, it is impossible to see a whole building, all at once. When I photograph a building, I feel as if I am conducting with my camera, as I explore the architect’s themes in time and space. The harmonious overlapping shapes create new playful variations on the theme of the original architecture.”
The preface to the book is by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Thom Mayne. With essays by Henry T. Hopkins and Michael Webb.

Variations: The Architecture Photographs of Jenny Okun

In 1966, Italian publisher Mondidori invited Jack Kerouac (1922â¬"1969) to Milan to promote the Italian edition of Big Sur. On one of his first assignments as a young photojournalist, Massimo Vitali spent two days with Kerouac for a local newspaper in Milan. The result was a series of intimate portraits, unpublished until now, of the already deteriorating Kerouac as he struggled from one press event to the next, in an episode that marked the decline that would lead to his early death two and a half years later.

Kerouac in Milan, 1966: Photographs by Massimo Vitali

Pivano, Fernanda

Photography & Video

A self-described “hard puppy to keep under the porch,” photographer Burk Uzzle created the images in Just Add Water by traveling across the United States with his 8 x 10 camera, capturing the vivid, celebratory, sometimes eccentric personality of the American landscape in the unique style that has become his trademark. This large-format book marks Uzzle’s first major published series of color photographs.
Burk Uzzle, on the photographs in this book: “In most of these pictures I am exulting in America’s personality out on a limb with itself. That teeter-totter balance between logic and humor as the limb seems about to break also relates to how I strive for formally impeccable compositions but then have some loose lug nut rattling around somewhere in the frame, giving a subversive aspect to the dialogue between graphics and content. It’s as if America and I try so hard to get everything right, but in spite of ourselves we invariably end up out on that limb, finding that often the only real salvation comes with a gentle chuckle and a sly, knowing smile. All my pictures seem to conclude that logic, while useful to a point, is by itself a bore. So we might as well have a little fun, even if it’s in between some tears.”
 Burk Uzzle was born in 1938 in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a former LIFE contract photographer and two-term president of Magnum Photos. His work has been published and exhibited internationally and is represented in many private and museum collections. Now an independent photographer based in Florida, he spends several months of each year traveling and photographing throughout the United States.
 Vicki Goldberg, former photography critic for The New York Times, is one of the major voices in the world of photography. She is the author of, among many other works, American Photography: A Century of Images, The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives, and Margaret-Bourke White: A Biography. In 2006 Aperture published Light Matters, a collection of Goldberg’s essays spanning twenty-five years. Goldberg writes frequently on photography and the arts for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, American Photo, and other publications.

Just Add Water: Photographs by Burk Uzzle

“Let the East learn from Western civilization. Let the West learn from the Eastern culture. In the world of freedom, we naturally create a relationship to each other.”—Isamu Noguchi, in an address to the staff at the Industrial Arts Research Institute in Tokyo
Isamu Kenmochi (1912–1971) was one of the pioneers of industrial design in Japan. Postwar Japanese artists struggled to create their own original industrial products. Kenmochi sought to establish Japanese modern design while reinventing traditional techniques and materials. Like many Japanese artists of his generation, Kenmochi was inspired by Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), a pivotal figure in twentieth century sculpture and design. Through Noguchi’s influence and subsequent introductions to creative masters such as Alexander Girard, Walter Gropius, George Nelson, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Kenmochi traveled abroad and collected furniture, household products, and thousands of color slides documenting American and European design, which he brought back to Japan to share with contemporaries in the field.
Noguchi and Kenmochi first met at the architect Kenzo Tange’s office at Tokyo University on June 24, 1950. In August of that year, Noguchi spent two weeks teaching with Kenmochi at the Industrial Arts Research Institute in Tokyo. Basing his approach on Japanese design traditions, Noguchi persuaded the artists at the institute to look beyond the mere exotic. The ideology they developed came to be known as Japanese Modern, or Japonica Design.
 Bonnie Rychlak is curator and director of collections at the Noguchi Museum in New York. An artist herself, Rychlak worked as Isamu Noguchi’s assistant until his death in 1988, and is a leading authority on Noguchi’s life and art.

Design: Isamu Noguchi and Isamu Kenmochi

Mori, Hitoshi

Decorative Arts & Design

In his provocative new book, photographer and actor Leonard Nimoy captures images of full-bodied women, some of whom are involved in what is known as the “fat acceptance” movement. “The average American woman,” Nimoy writes, “weighs 25 percent more than the models selling the clothes. There is a huge industry built up around selling women ways to get their bodies closer to the fantasy ideal. Pills, diets, surgery, workout programs. . . . The message is ‘You don't look right. If you buy our product, you can get there.’”
 Leonard Nimoy, best known to the public from his role as Spock on Star Trek, has been a lifelong photographer. His work has been widely exhibited and is in numerous private and public collections. A previous book of his photographs, Shekhina, was published in 2002.

The Full Body Project: Photographs by Leonard Nimoy

Best of Friends: Isamu Noguchi and Buckminster Fuller

Sadao, Shoji

From the stainless steel curves of its striking exterior to its hardwood-paneled main auditorium, Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall is one of the most sophisticated concert halls in the world. Produced with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles office of Gehry Partners, Symphony: Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall chronicles the extraordinary history of this icon of world architecture, from its conception in the late 1980s to its completion in 2004. This will be the first trade softcover edition of the book.
Frank Gehry’s renowned works include the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Dancing House in Prague. Gehry received architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 1989.

Symphony: Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall

Architecture

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