Amanda Maddox

The extraordinary story of one Life photo-essay by Gordon Parks and its impactThis book explores a once-popular picture story by Gordon Parks and the extraordinary chain of events it prompted. Published in Life magazine in June 1961 as "Poverty: Freedom's Fearful Foe," this empathetic photo-essay profiled the da Silva family, living in a hillside favela near a wealthy enclave of Rio de Janeiro. Focused primarily on the eldest son Flavio, an industrious 12-year-old suffering from crippling asthma, Parks' story elicited more than 3,000 letters and $25,000 in donations from Life readers to help the family and the favela.In Brazil the story sparked controversy; one news magazine, O Cruzeiro, retaliated against Life and sent photographer Henri Ballot to document poverty in New York City. Undeterred, Life embarked on a multi-year "rescue" effort that involved moving Flavio to a Denver hospital, relocating the family to a new home and administering funds to support the favela. The story, as well as Parks' relationship to Flavio, continued to develop over many years. The details of this extraordinary history provide a fascinating example of US exceptionalism during the early 1960s and a revealing look inside the power and cultural force of the "Great American Magazine."

Thomas Annan (1829-1887) was the preeminent photographer of Glasgow in the mid-nineteenth century, a period when the rise in industry and population dramatically altered the landscape of the "second city" of the British Empire. Often working in conjunction with civic projects, Annan produced numerous series that underscore the transformation of the city and its environs, though he remains best known for one series in particular: a group of enigmatic photographs of central Glasgow alleys, or "closes," on the verge of demolition. These haunting images, made between 1868 and 1871, and sometimes regarded as precursors of the documentary tradition in photography, represent the notion of progress that underpins much of Annan's oeuvre. Annan's publication history serves as the organizing principle for this book, which considers both the breadth of his body of work as well as the multiple formats in which his photographs appeared and circulated. Featured here are seven examplesincluding private albums and commercial booksthat focus on subjects as varied as the city's streets and closes, the Loch Katrine aqueduct, Glasgow College, the cathedral, and the country estates of the landed gentry, and highlight Annan's extensive engagement with the city of Glasgow. Plates from each of these works are faithfully reproduced in full color, and an introductory essay by the leading authority on Annan surveys the life and career of this little-known but influential photographer.

A maverick in the history of photography, lshiuchi Miyako burst onto the photography scene in Tokyo in the mid-1970s, at a time when men dominated the field in Japan. Working prodigiously over the last forty years, she has created an impressive oeuvre and quietly influenced generations of photographers born in the postwar era. Recipient of the prestigious Hasselblad Award in 2014, lshiuchi ranks as one of the most significant photographers working in Japan today. Spurred by her contentious relationship with her hometown, Yokosuka - site of an important American naval base since 1945 - lshiuchi chose that city as her first serious photographic subject. Grainy, moody, and deeply personal, these early projects established her career. This choice of subject also defined the beginning of lshiuchi's extended exploration of American occupation and the shadows it cast over postwar Japan. lshiuchi has since addressed the theme of occupation both indirectly - through her photographs of scars, skin, and other markers of time on the human body - and, more explicitly, with her Images of garments and accessories once owned by victims of the atomic blast in Hiroshima. Essays featured in this volume reveal the past as the wellspring of lshiuchi's work and the present moment as her principal subject. Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows - which includes a selection of more than 100 works - is published on the occasion of an exhibition by the same name, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, from October 5, 2015 to February 21, 2016.

Orphan. Tri-blood. Dragonrider? As if they need an introduction. Meet Den and Souliei the greatest Dragonrider team history could offer. A true warrior and a chosen, but when their way of life and everything they know and love is threatened by Seara Gorum, the spoiled daughter of the guild head and fellow Dragonrider. Den and Souliei will stop at nothing to stop her and the army she has acquired. Souliei, a young dragon born with out a rider, his egg stolen by a man bent on total domination, but is freed by his own hand, meets Den a young orphan who found herself on the verge of destiny, their destiny. But on their way to battle the team is knocked out of the sky, separated, both bruised and broken in their own way. Den, her body, and Souliei, his mind. Now Den must discover what has happened to them, and at the same time help her best friend rediscover who he is and they were and win a war that threatens their very existence.